I find it interesting that you say that you have more troubles with articulating your object and that you are more attracted to look after the myriad relations into which it enters. I kind of have the same "problem" and usually have to ponder a lot when making decisions about what to follow in research and writing since physically and intellectually we are limited. As anthropologists, I think that we are badly equipped to recognise that we do make various selections and simplifications of reality given the more dominant research imaginary centred on surprise, openness, and freedom. One article that I find interesting in its critical assessment of how open can one be is Matei Candea's Arbitrary Locations* which discusses how the various decisions that we have to make on doing fieldwork create a bounded space and some of them are more constrained by external circumstances rather than a consequence of "just following the actors".
And, yes I agree with that using the term "object" might be confusing to use in social sciences given the various debates related to subject-object distinction, that sometimes challenge the Western nature-culture distinction, while in others they take issue with processes of objectivation of human subjects. Indeed, one of its main connotations is that of a material thing in the word, but I think that its usage in sciences refers more to the subject-object relationship, in which an object may be material (e.g. a microscope), ideal (e.g. value), social (e.g. community) and is defined, at least philosophically, by the fact that it is external to a subject, entering an observer - observed type of relationship.
