Invisibilizing politics: Accepting and legitimating ignorance in environmental sciences

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 839-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
June Jeon
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Although sociologists have explored how political and economic factors influence the formation of ignorance in science and technology, we know little about how scientists comply with external controls by abandoning their prior research and leaving scientific innovations incomplete. Most research in science and technology studies (STS) on ignorance has relied on structural and historical analyses, lacking in situ studies in scientific laboratories. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article examines the habitus of ignorance as a mechanism of the social production of ignorance. Scientists have a set of dispositions that establish practical contexts enabling them to ignore particular scientific content. Leaders of the organization repeatedly legitimate the abandonment of unfinished projects, while ordinary laboratory scientists internalize the normalized view that the scientific field is inherently opportunistic and that unfunded research should be left undone. A cycle of legitimation and acceptance of ignorance by actors at distinctive positions within the organization provides a mechanism of social control of scientific knowledge. As the mechanism is habitually self-governed by the rules of the game of current scientific institutions, the result is an indirect, although deeply subjugating, invisible and consolidating form of political and economic domination of the scientific field.

scholarly journals Thinking with attachments: Appreciating a generative analytic

2021 ◽  
pp. 030631272110488
Author(s):  
Marianne de Laet ◽  
Annelieke Driessen ◽  
Else Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Obesity Surgery ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Dementia Care ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
The Social

Much current work in Science and Technology Studies inflects knowing with care. Analyses of the ethos of objectivity, and of the practices by which objectivity is crafted, have shown that knowing and caring cannot be thought apart from each other. Using case studies from our own work we analyse how, in the sociotechnical relationships that we study, knowing and caring are entangled through ‘attachments’. We appreciate – both in the sense of valuing or respecting and in the sense of evaluating or assessing – how the notion of ‘attachment’ invites re-imagining relations between the social and the technical, between knowers and objects known, and between sociotechnical work and the affective sensibilities that enable, and are brought to life by, such work. Our respective ethnographic engagements with dog-human relations, obesity surgery and dementia care demonstrate that it is agents’ diverse and shifting attachments to technologies and techniques that shape the ways in which bodies, knowledge and practices form. The affects that arise in this process, or so we claim in neo-pragmatist fashion, are not preconditions to, but rather the result of such practices of attachment; rather than a prerequisite, they are an effect of the work of attaching itself. Thinking with attachments recognizes how techno-scientific work builds and shapes passions, aesthetics and sensory experience, allowing us to trace how varied sensibilities to what constitutes ‘the good’ come to be and come to matter in practices of relating between humans, animals and things.

scholarly journals Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097597
Author(s):  
Nicole Vitellone ◽  
Michael Mair ◽  
Ciara Kierans
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
The Social

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love’s work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love’s provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love’s intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into ‘indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality’ (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love’s invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason.

Following the Fukushima Disaster on (and against) Wikipedia: A Methodological Note about STS Research and Online Platforms

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 938-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Moats
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
English Language ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Lay Knowledge ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fukushima Disaster ◽  
Digital Research ◽  
Research Tools

Science and technology studies is famous for questioning conceptual and material boundaries by following controversies that cut across them. However, it has recently been argued that in research involving online platforms (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), there are also more practical boundaries to negotiate that are created by the variable availability, visibility, and structuring of data. In this paper, I highlight a potential tension between our inclination toward following controversies and “following the medium” and suggest that sometimes following controversies might involve going “against platforms” as well as with them. I will illustrate this dilemma through an analysis of the controversy over the coverage of the Fukushima disaster on English language Wikipedia, which concerns boundaries between expert and lay knowledge but also the social and technical functioning of Wikipedia itself. For this reason, I show that following the controversy might mean making use of less formatted and less obvious data than Wikipedia normally provides. While this is not an argument against the use of automated digital research tools such as scrapers, I suggest that both quantitative and qualitative researchers need to be more willing to tweak their approaches based on the specificities of the case.

Situating Technology: Confrontations over the Use of Sonar among Turkish Fishermen and Marine Scientists

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ståle Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Fishing Practices

AbstractSince its introduction in the Turkish fisheries in 1980, use of the fish finder device sonar has been a controversial issue among fishermen and between fishermen and scientists. Most fishermen claim that sonars scare away or kill fish while local marine scientists contend that sonars have no such effect. What can study of this conflict tell us about the use of advanced technology in regions of the world far away from the metropolitan production of such technologies? In this ethnographic approach to a study in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) the fishermen's use of and the scientists' research on the sonar are surveyed. The article discusses the degree to which the adoption of sonar in the Turkish fisheries has resulted in a standardization of fishing practices—not only technologically, but possibly also in the way the fishermen perceive the hunt. Some theoretical arguments on how people relate to technology are reviewed and a phenomenologically inspired perspective advanced. It is argued that too much attention on finding the "Truth"—in this case whether the sonar is harmful to fish or not—diverts attention from more fundamental issues, such as what kinds of change sonar has brought to the social relations of production.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of information society conceptualizations from an STS point of view

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Aibar
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social

Science and Technology Studies (STS) have developed over the last four decades very rich and deep analysis of the interaction between science, technology and society. This paper uses some STS theoretical and methodological insights and findings to identify persistent misconceptions in the specific literature on ICTs and society. Technological deterministic views, the taken-for-granted image of technological designs, the prospective character of many studies that focus mainly on potential effects, a simplistic view of uses and users, and an uncritical distinction between the technical and the social, are discussed as some of the most remarkable theoretical flaws in the field.

scholarly journals Science and Democracy Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Joseph Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Normative Commitment ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociological Society ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
Social Construction Of Science

To what extent is the normative commitment of STS to the democratization of science a product of the democratic contexts where it is most often produced? STS scholars have historically offered a powerful critical lens through which to understand the social construction of science, and seminal contributions in this area have outlined ways in which citizens have improved both the conduct of science and its outcomes. Yet, with few exceptions, it remains that most STS scholarship has eschewed study of more problematic cases of public engagement of science in rich, supposedly mature Western democracies, as well as examination of science-making in poorer, sometimes non-democratic contexts. How might research on problematic cases and dissimilar political contexts traditionally neglected by STS scholars push the field forward in new ways? This paper responds to themes that came out of papers from two Eastern Sociological Society Presidential Panels on Science and Technology Studies in an Era of Anti-Science. It considers implications of the normative commitment by sociologists working in the STS tradition to the democratization of science.

Dis/Abling Spaces of Calculation: Blindness and Money in Everyday Life

10.1068/d4173 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schillmeier
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Visually Disabled ◽  
Empirical Material

In this paper I attempt to explore how ‘ordinary acts’ of dealing with money and with money technologies fabricate enabling and disabling—dis/abling—spaces of calculation. Rather than referring to money merely as a general symbolic medium of exchange, I highlight the materiality and the sensory practices involved in handling money and shaping the practice of sociality. Drawing on empirical material, I explicate some of the ways in which everyday practices with money are distinctively important for visually disabled people. Combining sociological and social philosophical thoughts with insights from science and technology studies, I rethink the social understanding of money and disability. I explore how (visual) dis/ability is situated in everyday practices and suggest that it can be understood neither as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Both money and blindness become visible as complex sets of calculate practices, linking bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices, I conclude, draw attention to the heterogeneous fabrication of sociality and to the emerging dis/abling spaces of calculation that unfold in the course of everyday life.

scholarly journals Informing Science (IS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS): The University as Decision Center )

10.28945/2416 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Castelao-Lawless ◽  
William Lawless
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Technology Policy ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Technology Literacy ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decision Center ◽  
The University

Students of history and philosophy of science courses at my University are either naive robust realists or naive relativists in relation to science and technology. The first group absorbs from culture stereotypical conceptions, such as the value-free character of the scientific method, that science and technology are impervious to history or ideology, and that science and religion are always at odds. The second believes science and technology were selected arbitrarily by ideologues to have privileged world views of reality to the detriment of other interpretations. These deterministic outlooks must be challenged to make students aware of the social importance of their future roles, be they as scientists and engineers or as science and technology policy decision makers. The University as Decision Center (DC) not only reproduces the social by teaching standard solutions to well-defined problems but also provides information regarding conflict resolution and the epistemological, individual, historical, social, and political mechanisms that help create new science and technology. Interdisciplinary research prepares students for roles that require science and technology literacy, but raises methodological issues in the context of the classroom as it increases uncertainty with respect to apparently self- evident beliefs about scientific and technological practices.

scholarly journals Molecular Detector (Non)Technology in Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Reyes-Galindo
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Scientific Policy ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Global North

This paper discusses the introduction of fraudulent “molecular detector” (non)technology into Mexico. The case is used to argue that contemporary science and technology studies’ approaches to scientific policy-making make basic assumptions about the societies they operate in that are inconsistent with the Mexican context. This paper also argues that contrary to what happens in the so-called Global North, the relative power of Mexican science in government and policy circles is as much limited by its relatively weak position as much as it is by self-censorship and unrealized impact in the country’s fragile democracy. The case is also used to highlight the necessity for more politically involved scientific institutions in Mexico, as these become critical safeguards against incoming destabilizing technologies from more powerful nations into the local “peripheral” context.

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