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

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

Steve Woolgar

Science and Technology StudiesSaïd Business School University of Oxford

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

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

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?)

Epistemology Symmetry Character of studyScientific knowledge

Social scientific knowledge

Realist Realist Science as a social institution

Mertonian sociology

Relativist? Realist Paradigm Kuhn

Relativist Realist True/false Strong programme (Edinburgh)

Relativist Realist Human/non-human

Actor network theoryEthnography

Relativist Relativist Analyst/subject ReflexivityTechnography

Shifting provocations on science

Shifting provocations in STS

Technological determinism

Technology as neutral

Relational ontologies: ambivalence, multiplicity, fluidity, deferral

Constructivism: technology associal (and political) construction

Technology as interpretive action (discourse)

essentialism

postessentialism

essentialism

postessentialism

It could be otherwise

essentialism

postessentialism

T is congealed

social relations

essentialism

postessentialism

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

distance

essentialism

postessentialism

T is congealed

social relations

T is politics by other means

T is action at a

distance

essentialism

postessentialism

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

distanceT is society made durable

essentialism

postessentialism

Reception and use are socially

distributed

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

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

postessentialism

distributed

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

essentialism

postessentialism

distributed

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

T is situated social action

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

postessentialism

distributed

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

essentialism

postessentialism

distributed

T is congealed

social relations

T is action at a

Making T seem

what it is

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

• 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

Mundane Governance

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

– 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

“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)

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

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

Mundane terror

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

• The contrast is between evil doers (barmy council bosses etc) and innocent victims (normal people, unmarried mum of four)

• Barmy/normal turns on apprehension of the object ( a bin bag) and what counts as appropriate behaviour with and towards it

• The mundaneity of the bin bag – what every reasonable person knows about the nature and purpose of bin bags - reinforces the moral contrast between barmies and normals

• What the object (bag) is, what it’s for, what should be in it, what is (in)appropriate behaviour towards it, are all tied to (and exemplify) the structure of the moral order

Evil doers Innocent victims

Barmy council bosses

Lynette

Over zealous wardens

Unmarried mum of four

Ripped open the bags

Kids to feed and clothe

Any normal family

Wardens for Crewe and Nantwich Borough council

A woman fined for littering (while feeding …

….Birds

The influence of STS• The growing influence of STS:

• 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?!

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)

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

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

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