STS 19_11_11 Вулгар

Where Did All the Provocation Go? –
reflections on the fate of Laboratory Life

Steve Woolgar

Science and Technology Studies
Saïd Business School
University of Oxford

STS Workshop, EU St Petersburg, 18-20th November 2011

Where Did All the Provocation Go? –
reflections on the fate of Laboratory Life

 Laboratory Life
 Shifting provocations in STS
 Mundane governance
 The values of STS
 Conclusions

STS Workshop, EU St Petersburg, 18-20th November 2011

Laboratory Life (1979, 1986)
• STS in the time of Kuhn: Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
– The problem of retrospective history
• Origin stories: a health warning
• 1976 San Francisco meeting Use of
Quantitative Indicators in History of Science
• 1976 First 4S meeting (Cornell)
• A visit to the laboratory (Salk Institute)

• Science as it happens
– in situ
– contemporary (pace Kuhn)
• Bloor/Laudan disputes: objectivist philosophers
as targets of provocation
• Mertonian sociologists as targets of provocation
• Access negotiations for lab studies involve
philosopher stereotypes
• Retrospective history again: Multiple discovery
of lab studies?
– Latour and Woolgar, Lynch, Knorr-Cetina, Traweek
(Pasadena 4S 2006?)

Shifting provocations on science
Epistemology Symmetry Character of study
Scientific Social scientific
knowledge knowledge

Realist Realist Science as a Mertonian sociology
social
institution
Relativist? Realist Paradigm Kuhn

Relativist Realist True/false Strong programme
(Edinburgh)
Relativist Realist Human/non- Actor network theory
human Ethnography
Relativist Relativist Analyst/subject Reflexivity
Technography

Shifting provocations in STS
essentialism
Technological determinism
Technology as neutral

Constructivism: technology as
social (and political) construction

Technology as interpretive action (discourse)

post
Relational ontologies: ambivalence, multiplicity, fluidity, deferral
essentialism

essentialism

It could be
otherwise


post
essentialism

essentialism

T is
congealed It could be
social otherwise
relations


post
essentialism

essentialism

T is
social otherwise
relations
T is action
at a
distance

post
essentialism

essentialism

T is
social otherwise
relations
T is action
at a
T is distance
politics Technology as interpretive action (discourse)

by other
means

post
essentialism

essentialism

T is
social otherwise
relations
T is action
at a
T is distance
T is society
made durable
by other
means

post
essentialism

essentialism

T is
social otherwise Reception and
relations use are
T is action socially
at a distributed
T is distance
T is society
made durable
by other
means

post
essentialism

Shifting from essentialism to post-
essentialism
• Constructivism usefully opens up technical phenomena, but
– Restricted use of “it could be otherwise”
– Assumes interpretive flexibility ends at moment of consensus
– Collusion with definitive readings of technical capacity
• Less dependence on standard social/political
variables, motives, interests, technical capacity, context, identity
etc
• Greater emphasis on process, fluidity, performativity, messiness
• Technology is achieved, rendered, constituted as an unavoidable
feature of the constant reproduction of social order
• Technologies are
recursive, tentative, messy, indeterminate, contingent and multiple
• Technology as situated action

Technology as situated action

• Imagine that technology is a constitutive social
phenomenon.
• Treat questions about the definition and use of
technology, and the deployment of terms such
as „technical‟ and „technical capacity‟, as
situated social actions.
• Examine how technical capacity is conferred,
maintained, broken down, in specific social and
institutional circumstances.

Objects as situated action

• Imagine that objects are a constitutive social
phenomenon.
• Treat questions about the definition and use of
objects, and the deployment of terms such as
the „character‟ and „nature of objects‟, as
situated social actions.
• Examine how the nature of an object is
conferred, maintained, broken down, in specific
social and institutional circumstances.

essentialism

T is
relations use are
at a distributed
T is distance
T is society
made durable
by other
means T is situated
social action
post
essentialism

Implications of relational ontology
• Need to adopt strong not weak perspective on governance
– Governance in practice; not mere descriptions of reporting
structures (corporate governance)
– Governance of ontologies not just of people
– Governance based on recursive ontological accomplishment
• Is-ought connections are built into ontological constitution
– Appropriate “solutions” are made preferentially available through
performance of accountability relations
– What- the-object-is performs appropriate responses to it
• The achieved ontological status of objects is key to “behaviour”, not
the “mentality” of the individuated human subject
• Ontology is situated, recursive
– Between representational epistemology and idealised ontology
– Making the object seem what it is

essentialism

T is
relations use are
at a distributed
T is distance
T is society
made durable
by other
means T is situated Making T
social action seem
post
Relational ontologies: ambivalence, multiplicity, fluidity, deferral what it is
essentialism

What is the value of STS?
• STS as a set of provocations
– Perspectives and approaches which include eg actor networks, certainty
trough, it could be otherwise
• STS as a fund of examples, stories, case studies, research reports
which can organise and/or stimulate thinking
– Cf relation between management consultants/gurus and managers
• STS as a set of sensibilities
– A propensity to cause trouble, provoke, be awkward
– A preference to work through difficult conceptual (theoretical) issues using
specific detailed empirical cases
– An inclination to deflate grandiose concepts and claims
– An emphasis on the local, specific and contingent
– Caution about the unreflexive adoption and use of standard social science
lexicons (eg power, culture, meaning, value)
– Reflexive attention to (frequently unexplicated) notions of
audiences, value and utility
• STS scepticism: It could be otherwise

It could be otherwise
• Convert revered and standard ideas and concepts into objects of
analysis
• 1. Emphasise historical contingency: revert to a time when the
concept was not established or taken for granted
• 2. Emphasise the concept‟s cultural specificity: identify a
different cultural context in which the concept is not the same as
in our own situation
• “Ethnographise” the target concept: add “-ography”
– Epistemology – epistemography
– Scale – scalography
– Ontology - ontography
• 3. Emphasise complex processes and practices
• “Gerundise” the target concept: add – “ing”
– Governance – governancing
– Futures – futuring
– Ethics – ethicising
– Evidence - evidencing

Mundane Governance
• Steve Woolgar and Dan Neyland: Mundane
Governance (OUP, forthcoming)
• Increasing regulation and control in relation to
everyday objects and ordinary technologies
– Recycling and waste
– Traffic (speed cameras, parking, traffic lights)
– Passenger movement and security in airports

Current thinking on governance
• Main focus on human, social and organisational relations
– Procedures, structures, committee composition, frequency of
meetings, reporting protocols, retirement age
• Neo Foucauldian perspective: governance is idealised compliance through
subject positions
“To govern without governing society, that is to say, to govern through
the regulated and accountable choices of autonomous agents – citizens,
consumers, parents, employees, investors” (Rose, 1993: 298)

– Little evidence of widespread internalisation
– No acknowledgement that governance is uncertain, disconnected and messy
– Does not explain resistance, disruption, ambivalence
• Weak perspective:
– Neglect of material things, objects, devices, technologies, instruments
– Ontological indifference: existence and status of entities taken for granted

An alternative perspective
• Governance through accountability relations
• The importance of the mundane
– More pervasive and consequential
• Two senses of “mundane”
– Routine, everyday, taken for granted
– Of the world, just the way things actually are (Latin:
mundus)
• Accountability relations enact entities
(objects, things, others/audiences) and vice versa
• Accountability is performative rather than an
intrinsic property of actors or objects

Disquiet/outrage about the mundane
• Recent marked changes in governance and
accountability regimes
• Accountability good and bad
• Public consternation, outrage, indignation
• Excessive government interference, nanny state, over
zealous policing
• Especially in relation to “ordinary” objects and practices
• Nature and extent of governance and accountability
appears to centre upon common place things

Examples
• Fines for putting “inappropriate” materials in a recycling
container
• Newly issued wheelie bins are discovered to contain
microchips
• Speed cameras generate excessive income for the police
• Courses for re-educating speeding drivers
• Schadenfreude with failures of traffic control systems
(break down of traffic lights, suspension of parking
improves traffic flow)
• Proposals to introduce ID cards with biometric data
• Extraordinary airport security measures in response to
threat of terrorists attacks; liquid rules

Mundane terror
Passage through the
airport of objects and their
persons
Passenger management
and security: monitoring
and assessing the object-
person relation
Mundane terror: ordinary
objects possess potentially
extraordinary properties
Ordinary objects acquire
an insecure ontology; they
are not what they seem

August 2006: EU wide change
in security rules about carry on
liquids

Who is going to read and
learn these detailed
instructions?
Typology of liquids enacts
the “responsible traveller”
Compliance with the
typology enacts the “person
with nothing to hide” (cf ID
cards)

Ontological politics
• Research principle: it could be otherwise
• Examine social and material practices whereby
entities acquire mundane status
• Mundanising and de-mundanising
• Not just objects but ontologies
• Specify ontological politics
• The processes and practices whereby entities
emerge from an ontological soup
• “Politics” to denote the contingency of processes
and practices

Ontological politics
• Ontography
• Document how the existence, nature and capacity
(indeed, all attributes) of these entities come into being
– The nature of entities is not pre determined ie not just
“labelling” of known entities
– The nature of relations between them is not predetermined
• Interrogate the relational basis for agency
• Invert (subvert) accepted definitions, understandings and
agential relations
– Eg Mundane governance: objects and their persons

A. McOntology

• Who/what is accountable for obesity caused by fast
foods?
– McDonalds‟ products make children obese/diabetic (Pelman vs
McDonalds, 2002)
– Media response derides the lawsuit: of course fast foods have
propensity for obesity!
– Case succeeds on unreasonable danger and inadequate warning;
but fails on causation
• Who/what is accountable for burns caused by hot coffee?
– Woman sues McDonalds for serving hot coffee, which she spilt
on her lap (Liebeck vs McDonalds, 2005)
– Another example of an over litigious society where individual
refuses to accept responsibility? Coffee is meant to be hot!

Accountability shifts
• Lawyers argue that the coffee:
– Is hotter than other restaurants
– Caused “the most serious kind” of (third degree) burn
– Is just one of a long series of similar burns
• Award of $2.7 million for “wilful, reckless or malicious
conduct”
• Ontological respecification of the coffee performs a
redistribution of accountability relations
• The capacities, identities, expectations shift in relation to
the shift from “hot” to “recklessly-knowably-in-defiance-
of-warnings-ably, as just-the-latest-in-a-series-of-similar-
events-ably hot”

B. The Wrong Bin
Bag
A tabloid depiction of the
moral order of waste
disposal (The Sun)

The wrong bin bag
• What are processes of political constitution of entities?
• How does discursive organisation make possible the
relations of governance (Smith: “relations of ruling”)?
• Organisation of text provides for moral order: makes
available a cast of characters, assigns attributes to each,
depicts network of rights and responsibilities
• Not just a story weaved around acceptable/curious
behaviours in relation to a given object
• The very character of the object, the ontology of the bin
bag, is constituted in and through the organisation of the
text
• Can a mere bag disrupt political relations? How can a bag
become an event? How can a bin bag be wrong?

• Moral order is portrayed through an
additive contrast structure between
entities in the story Evil doers Innocent victims
• The contrast is between evil doers Barmy council Lynette
(barmy council bosses etc) and
innocent victims (normal bosses
people, unmarried mum of four) Over zealous Unmarried mum
• Barmy/normal turns on wardens of four
apprehension of the object ( a bin
bag) and what counts as Ripped open the Kids to feed and
appropriate behaviour with and bags clothe
towards it
• The mundaneity of the bin bag –
what every reasonable person Any normal family
knows about the nature and
purpose of bin bags - reinforces the
moral contrast between barmies Wardens for A woman fined for
and normals
Crewe and littering (while
• What the object (bag) is, what it‟s Nantwich feeding …
for, what should be in it, what is
(in)appropriate behaviour towards Borough council
it, are all tied to (and exemplify) ….Birds
the structure of the moral order

The influence of STS
• The growing influence of STS:
In the past decade and a half, STS has evolved intellectually, built institutional
strength, forged links with other disciplines, new communities and policy relevant
areas. STS has begun to make its mark in economic
theory, anthropology, music, environmental governance, legal discourse, science
education, and science policy; and a broad range of public institutions – from
funding agencies to science museums to transnational NGOs are beginning to
incorporate STS insights into their thinking (Cornell, 2003)
• The potential utility (use, value) of STS
– For a wide range of disciplines
– For scientists and technologists (a distraction or a help?)
– For business and management
• What happens when STS is appropriated by new institutions eg business
schools?
• How much is the radical/critical provocation of STS attenuated?
– Pollner (1991) “Radical reflexivity has settled down and moved out to the suburbs”!
– Consumers “misuse” STS? eg citation of Laboratory Life in US court case
– “Misuse”, or the reader writes the text?
– Has STS now both settled down and got its MBA?!

Conclusions
• What is value of STS?
– Capacity to renew and reinvent itself
– Capacity to provoke and challenge assumptions
• Use STS itself to answer this question….
– What is STS‟ actor network?
– How can users of STS be configured; how can they
be taught what to want?
– What is STS‟ certainty trough?
• Is there one thing called STS?
– no! it could be otherwise
– no! there are multiple STSs

Conclusions
• A central enduring provocation of STS:
– “It could be otherwise”
• This cashed out in different dimensions
– Symmetry
– Essentialism
• New audiences for STS
• BUT tendency towards safe explanatory formulae
• Ethnography – technography – ontography
• Science is no longer the hardest possible case eg
mundane governance

STS 19_11_11 Вулгар

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