Constitutive Exploitation

Dr. Basil Wiesse

Project duration: 04/01/2021 to 03/30/2024

Planned publication: Journal articles

The project, designed as ethnomethodological workplace study, examines the field of practices revolving around information security. Of particular interest here is what may be termed an exploitative disposition for manipulating boundaries, e.g. when identifying and testing potential attack vectors within a system, and its relation to participant conceptualisations of (digital) space, situation, and place. On a larger scale and in spirit of Goffman's and Garfinkel's sociologies, the project queries how and to what extent this exploitative work of boundary manipulation is not confined to specific work fields, but presents itself as socially constitutive in everyday life.