Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Border Matters: Embodiment, Environment, and Infrastructure of Border Spaces, Warszawa, Polonya, 4 - 06 Mayıs 2026, ss.1-2, (Yayınlanmadı)
Beyond Borderlines: Paper Walls as Mobile Boundary Infrastructures in Transnational Surgical-Craftscapes
Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography centered on Samsun (Türkiye) with links to Tuttlingen (Germany) and Sialkot (Pakistan), within the DFG-funded “MediCluster” project, we show how outsourcing shifted from cost-saving collaboration to re-bordering through standards. Grounded in Star & Griesemer’s (1989) boundary objects and a sociotechnical craftscapes lens (Şahinol forthcoming), we conceptualize regulatory documents (CE/MDR dossiers), inspection metrics, and origin markings (“Made in …”) as boundary objects/infrastructures that coordinate and constrain transnational surgical-instrument manufacturing. We analyze from an STS perspective how documents and standards materialize borders, shape flows of people, materials, and knowledge, and co-produce borderscapes in everyday practice, beyond cartographic lines. Manufacturers describe “paper walls” of certifications and documentation that route goods back to Germany for inspection, packaging, and stamping. These walls enable coordination yet stabilize epistemic asymmetries and recognition gaps (Şahinol 2025): “If the same instrument carries a German stamp, it is praised; if it comes from us, some customers turn up their noses” (interview partner).
We show how documented and embodied knowledge intertwine at three
points: when conformity is verified along the chain and channelled through
“paper walls”; when quality is negotiated between metrics and haptic
sensitivity; and when targeted rework sustains compliance and craft reputation
while recognition is recorded elsewhere. Read through Akkerman & Bakker
(2011) boundary-crossing mechanisms, these map onto identification
(we/they labels; “Made in Germany” elevates price/status), coordination
(CE/MDR dossiers and routing/traceability sheets stabilise flows), reflection
(audits translate tactility into thresholds, exposing limits of metric
control), and transformation (limit templates, in-process metrology, and
strategic shifts toward higher-end devices).
Adopting an oceanic perspective within a sociotechnical craftscapes
frame, we read standards as mobile border infrastructures that form a
regulatory regime, redirecting flows of materials, documents, and esteem, and
revealing how recognition is produced, routed, and sometimes withheld across
this archipelago of surgical craft.