Social Studies of Science current issue

Technologies of stage magic: Simulation and dissimulation

Smith, W. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

The craft of stage magic is presented in this article as a site to study the interplay of people and technology. The focus is on conjuring in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when magicians eagerly appropriated new optical, mechanical and electrical technologies into their acts. Also at this time, a modern style of conjuring emerged, characterized by minimal apparatus and a natural manner of performance. Applying Lucy Suchman’s perspective of human-machine reconfigurations, conjuring in this modern style is interpreted as an early form of simulation, coupled with techniques of dissimulation. Magicians simulated the presence of supernational agency for public audiences, while dissimulating the underlying methods and mechanisms. Dissimulation implies that the secret inner workings of apparatus were not simply concealed but were rendered absent. This, in turn, obscured the production of supernatural effects in the translation of agencies within an assembly of performers, assistants, apparatus, apparatus-builders, and so on. How this was achieved is investigated through an analysis of key instructional texts written by and for magicians working in the modern style. Techniques of dissimulation are identified in the design of apparatus for three stage illusions, and in the new naturalness of the performer’s manner. To explore the significance of this picture of stage magic, and its reliance on techniques of dissimulation, a parallel is drawn between conjuring and recent performances of computerized life forms, especially those of social robotics. The paper concludes by considering what is revealed about the production of agency in stage magic’s peculiar human-machine assemblies.

Trading twitter: Amateur recorders and economies of scientific exchange at the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds

Bruyninckx, J. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

Scientists have long engaged in collaborations with field collectors, but how are such collaborations established and maintained? This article examines structures of collaborative data collection between professional scientists and various field recorders around the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. The Library collects animal sound recordings for use in education, preservation, and entertainment, but primarily in the scientific field of bio-acoustics. Since 1945, the Library has enlisted academic researchers, commercial recorders and broadcasters (such as the British Broadcasting Corporation), and amateur sound hunters in its expansion. I argue that the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds managed to craft and sustain a crucial network of contributors through creative and strategic brokering with its collection of recordings/data. Drawing on notions from exchange theory, I show that sound recordings were valued not just as scientific data, but also as copyrighted commodities that could be bought, sold, traded, and converted in a range of economic, social, and symbolic capitals within collaborators’ respective social fields. Thus, aligning collaborators’ interests, these exchange relations enabled the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds to negotiate amateur recorders’ reliability, willingness to share work, and commitment to scientific standards, as well as the bonds that solidified their collaboration with the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. Attending to the micro-economics of data exchange, this article thus brings into perspective the multi-dimensional processes through which data-flows are managed.

Crafting the group: Care in research management

Davies, S. R., Horst, M. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

This article reports findings from an interview study with group leaders and principal investigators in Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. Taking as our starting point current interest in the need to enhance ‘responsible research and innovation’, we suggest that these debates can be developed through attention to the talk and practices of scientists. Specifically, we chart the ways in which interview talk represented research management and leadership as processes of caring craftwork. Interviewees framed the group as the primary focus of their attention (and responsibilities), and as something to be tended and crafted; further, this process required a set of affective skills deployed flexibly in response to the needs of individuals. Through exploring the presence of notions of care in the talk of principal investigators and group leaders, we discuss the relation between care and craft, reflect on the potential implications of the promotion of a culture of care and suggest how mundane scientific understandings of responsibility might relate to a wider discussion of responsible research and innovation.

The little death: Rigoni-Stern and the problem of sex and cancer in 20th-century biomedical research

Aviles, N. B. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

Approaches to the organization and conduct of cancer research changed dramatically throughout the 20th century. Despite marked differences between the epidemiological approaches of the first half of the century and molecular techniques that gained dominance in the 1980s, prominent 20th-century researchers investigating the link between sexual activity and anogenital cancers continuously invoked the same 1842 treatise by Italian surgeon Domenico Rigoni-Stern, who is said to originate the problem of establishing a causal link between sex and cancer. In this article, I investigate 20th-century references to Rigoni-Stern as a case of a broader phenomenon: scientists situating their work through narratives of venerated ancestors, or originators. By explaining shifting versions of originator narratives in light of their authors’ cultural context and research practices, we can reimagine as meaningful cultural symbols the references that previous scholars have treated as specious rhetorical maneuvers. In this case, references to Rigoni-Stern provide an interpretive anchor for American scientists to construct continuity between their work and a diverse historical legacy of cancer research.

Formalization and separation: A systematic basis for interpreting approaches to summarizing science for climate policy

Sundqvist, G., Bohlin, I., Hermansen, E. A., Yearley, S. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

In studies of environmental issues, the question of how to establish a productive interplay between science and policy is widely debated, especially in relation to climate change. The aim of this article is to advance this discussion and contribute to a better understanding of how science is summarized for policy purposes by bringing together two academic discussions that usually take place in parallel: the question of how to deal with formalization (structuring the procedures for assessing and summarizing research, e.g. by protocols) and separation (maintaining a boundary between science and policy in processes of synthesizing science for policy). Combining the two dimensions, we draw a diagram onto which different initiatives can be mapped. A high degree of formalization and separation are key components of the canonical image of scientific practice. Influential Science and Technology Studies analysts, however, are well known for their critiques of attempts at separation and formalization. Three examples that summarize research for policy purposes are presented and mapped onto the diagram: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the European Union’s Science for Environment Policy initiative, and the UK Committee on Climate Change. These examples bring out salient differences concerning how formalization and separation are dealt with. Discussing the space opened up by the diagram, as well as the limitations of the attraction to its endpoints, we argue that policy analyses, including much Science and Technology Studies work, are in need of a more nuanced understanding of the two crucial dimensions of formalization and separation. Accordingly, two analytical claims are presented, concerning trajectories, how organizations represented in the diagram move over time, and mismatches, how organizations fail to handle the two dimensions well in practice.

Ontological turns, turnoffs and roundabouts

Sismondo, S. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

There has been much talk of an ‘ontological turn’ in Science and Technology Studies. This commentary explores some recent work on multiple and historical ontologies, especially articles published in this journal, against a background of constructivism. It can be tempting to read an ontological turn as based and promoting a version of perspectivism, but that is inadequate to the scholarly work and opens multiple ontologies to serious criticisms. Instead, we should read our ontological turn or turns as being about multiplicities of practices and the ways in which these practices shape the material world. Ontologies arise out of practices through which people engage with things; the practices are fundamental and the ontologies derivative. The purchase in this move comes from the elucidating power of the verbs that scholars use to analyze relations of practices and objects – which turn out to be specific cases of constructivist verbs. The difference between this ontological turn and constructivist work in Science and Technology Studies appears to be a matter of emphases found useful for different purposes.

Performing ontology

Aspers, P. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

Ontology, and in particular, the so-called ontological turn, is the topic of a recent themed issue of Social Studies of Science (Volume 43, Issue 3, 2013). Ontology, or metaphysics, is in philosophy concerned with what there is, how it is, and forms of being. But to what is the science and technology studies researcher turning when he or she talks of ontology? It is argued that it is unclear what is gained by arguing that ontology also refers to constructed elements. The ‘ontological turn’ comes with the risk of creating a pseudo-debate or pseudo-activity, in which energy is used for no end, at the expense of empirical studies. This text rebuts the idea of an ontological turn as foreshadowed in the texts of the themed issue. It argues that there is no fundamental qualitative difference between the ontological turn and what we know as constructivism.

Stuck with/in a 'turn': Can we metaphorize better in Science and Technology Studies?

Vasileva, B. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

This contribution encourages loosening the cast-iron mould of the ‘turn’ metaphor that the practices of general and ontology-related turn-talking/making in Science and Technology Studies forge and fortify. Could framing novel themes and thinking in terms of ‘turn’ be as good as fettering? Not specific to the ‘ontological turn’ or ‘turn to ontology’, but haunting Science and Technology Studies across the board to signify supposed tidal change, the metaphor warrants dissection. Thus, this commentary expounds four distinct yet not unrelated versions of ‘turn’ – rotation, change of course/direction, change in general and occasion/opportunity to act – together with the worlds they beget. Then, the operation of these ‘turns’ in the debates on the ‘ontological turn’ is pursued. Enactments of the first three modes/moulds of ‘turn’, all entailing and tainted by the inexorable directedness of change the coupled ‘turn to’ framing imparts, either debunk or qualify the extent of the professed ‘turn’, with the effect of betraying its conceptual and methodological offerings. The fourth version, less substitutable with ‘turn to’ and thus less infected by intransigent directedness, escapes the rigidity that diminishes the value of ontology-minded studies. Clear of either a resolution to the debate or an alternative trope to cure the maladies of ‘turn’, the conclusion wishes to open space for pondering how to metaphorize more consciously and judiciously evolution and innovation in Science and Technology Studies.

Missing the (question) mark? What is a turn to ontology?

Woolgar, S., Lezaun, J. — 2015-06-25T22:45:22-07:00

Our introductory essay in this journal’s 2013 Special Issue on the ‘turn to ontology’ examined the shift from epistemology to ontology in science and technology studies and explored the implications of the notion of enactment. Three responses to that Special Issue argue that (1) there is no fundamental qualitative difference between the ontological turn and social constructivism, (2) we need to be wary of overly generic use of the term ‘ontology’ and (3) the language of ‘turns’ imposes constraints on the richness and diversity of science and technology studies. In this brief reply, we show how each of those critiques varies in its commitment to circumspection about making objective determinations of reality and to resisting reification. We illustrate our point by considering overlapping discussions in anthropology. This brings out the crucial difference between the science and technology studies slogan ‘it could be otherwise’ and the multinaturalist motto ‘it actually is otherwise’.