“The second important concept used to explain how museum workers managed both diversity and cooperation is that of boundary objects. This is an analytic concept of those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds (see the list of examples in the previous section) and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them. 15 Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds” (Star and Griesemer 1989, 393).
Topically, the authors are investigating historical collaborations built by and between California scientists, local elites, amateur naturalists, University of California administrators, and local farmers and trappers, with the end goal being a natural history research museum with a repository of accurate and preservable data on the local fauna and their habitats.
More conceptually, the authors refuse to reduce collaboration to concensus: “Consensus is not necessary for cooperation nor for the successful conduct of work” (Star and Griesemer 1989, 388). Instead they argue that before scientific problems can be approached and resolved, the diverse actors that “come from different social worlds” must first “establish a mutual modus operandi” (Star and Griesemer 1989, 388). The distinction between consensus and a mutual modus operandi, is that in the latter case, these standardized methods do not need to be understood or valued in the same way.