Technography
Also known as: Ethnography of technology-in-use, Technographic analysis, Algorithmic technography
Technography is the ethnographic description of technology-in-use: how tools, machines, and systems are actually handled, skilled, and enacted in the course of real tasks. Articulated as a method by Kees Jansen and Sietze Vellema in the Wageningen tradition of agrarian and development studies, it places the technical at the centre of ethnographic attention, asking how people and artefacts together accomplish work. A digital strand, exemplified by Taina Bucher's study of algorithmic power, extends technography to software and platforms, examining how algorithms are encountered, felt, and acted upon. Across both, the method treats technology not as a finished object but as something performed in practice within particular social and material settings.
Key highlights
- Centres the technical, revealing skilled and tacit practice that design-focused or discourse-focused studies miss.
- Connects the embodied use of a single tool to the wider networks of tasks, tools, and people it depends on.
- Extends naturally from physical tools to digital and algorithmic systems, keeping pace with contemporary technology.
- Links close description of practice to questions of power, value, and inequality in how technologies order work.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use technography when you want to understand how a technology actually functions in the hands of its users—its skilled, embodied, and improvised use in real tasks—rather than its design intentions or its public representation. It suits studies of tools and machines in work settings, of technologies in development and agrarian contexts, and of digital and algorithmic systems as they are encountered and acted upon by users. The method assumes that technology is best understood as performed in practice, that close observation can surface tacit skill, and that the analyst can gain access to use settings (or, for digital systems, devise ways to study elusive software). It is less appropriate when only design documents or aggregate usage data are available, when the research question is about the artefact's internal mechanism alone, or when large-scale comparison rather than situated description is the goal.
Strengths & limitations
- Centres the technical, revealing skilled and tacit practice that design-focused or discourse-focused studies miss.
- Connects the embodied use of a single tool to the wider networks of tasks, tools, and people it depends on.
- Extends naturally from physical tools to digital and algorithmic systems, keeping pace with contemporary technology.
- Links close description of practice to questions of power, value, and inequality in how technologies order work.
- Intensive, situated fieldwork limits the number of cases and the scope for generalisation.
- Tacit and embodied skill is hard to observe and articulate, depending on the researcher's own competence and access.
- Studying digital and algorithmic systems is complicated by their opacity, proprietary nature, and constant change.
- The close focus on practice can underplay the design decisions and political-economic forces upstream of use.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How does technography differ from laboratory ethnography?
Laboratory ethnography studies how scientific facts are produced inside research settings, focusing on knowledge-making, while technography focuses on technology-in-use—how tools and systems are skilfully handled in tasks across many settings, from farms to platforms. Both are ethnographic and attend to material practice, but technography foregrounds the technical performance and skill of users rather than the construction of facts. Technography can study any site where technology is put to work, not only laboratories.
Can technography study software and algorithms?
Yes. A growing digital strand, exemplified by Taina Bucher's If...Then, applies technographic methods to algorithmic systems, studying how they are encountered, anticipated, and felt by users rather than only how they are coded. Because algorithms are often opaque and proprietary, digital technography devises indirect ways to observe their effects in use—through users' experiences, workarounds, and the platforms in which they are embedded. This extends the Wageningen emphasis on skilled practice into the world of software.
What is the role of tacit knowledge in technography?
Tacit, embodied skill is central, because competent use of a technology typically relies on know-how that is never written in any manual—the feel for a tool, the anticipation of breakdown, the improvised workaround. Technography aims to surface and describe this skilled practice through close observation and, often, participation. Capturing tacit knowledge is also one of the method's hardest challenges, since the very competence at stake resists easy articulation.
Sources
- 1.Jansen, K., & Vellema, S. (2011). What is technography? NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 57(3-4), 169-177.
- 2.Bucher, T. (2018). If...Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780190493028
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Technography. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/science-technology-studies/technography