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Wrap-up: An editorial view Michael Lynch, Cornell University

Wrap-up: An editorial view Michael Lynch, Cornell University. STS: The Next 20 Conversations within and beyond the field Harvard University April 8, 2011. What can an editor say about the next 20?. I read 150 plus new submissions a year many by students and recent PhDs

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Wrap-up: An editorial view Michael Lynch, Cornell University

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  1. Wrap-up: An editorial viewMichael Lynch, Cornell University STS: The Next 20 Conversations within and beyond the field Harvard University April 8, 2011

  2. What can an editor say about the next 20? • I read 150 plus new submissions a year • many by students and recent PhDs • we reject the vast majority • Don’t trust me, I’m a gatekeeper: a blunter of cutting edges • STS provides strong arguments with which to treat its own success as contingent and fragile. • Be wary of talk of progress! • Plan: an impression of current state of the art -- a Borges list -- followed by a near-term problem and possible responses.

  3. Current trends • The decline in studies of “hard cases”: physics and mathematics; and the proliferation of studies of “sciences of the particular” (Shapin). • Increased isolation from HPS, increased closeness to anthropology & cultural studies.

  4. Trends (cont.) • Post-pomo decline in overt contentiousness. Arguments about relativism, constructionism, and ‘postmodernism’ fade into background. • Tendency to invoke STS, themes, literature without explication. • to assert that science is (socially) constructed, rather than to argue for that position; to cite (Latour, 1987) without saying what is relevant or how. • (name, date: no page number) citation format encourages this (call me a format determinist). • Much of what we publish has no clear connection with a single guiding theory or ideology.

  5. Trends (cont.) • A normative turn, but not a ballet. A renewed tension between epistemography (P. Dear), ontography, and ethigraphy and work that claims STS as a basis for epistemology, ontology, or ethics. • Big-P Politics and Big-I Institutions are more prominently featured than their lower case counterparts.

  6. Trends (cont.) • Symbolic enrolment of the ‘global south’. • ‘Global south’ is an increasingly prominent theme in STS lit, conference program • N. America / N. Euro still prevail in English language literature • More participation from E. Asia, Brazil, India

  7. Some short-term trends • Public engagement exercises (e.g., GM Nation) • Funding initiatives in UK, Europe • Critical participation by STS • Interest in ‘futures’ embedded in presents; e.g., ‘sociology of expectations’.

  8. Unity in hybridity • Interconceptuality: an alternative to ‘interdisciplinarity’ • A love of hybrids and an aversion to dichotomies, binaries, distinctions • Borderlands: trading zones, boundary objects, boundary work, boundary organizations … • Coproduction, coconstruction, interactional expertise … • Bio+ (biosociality, biocitizenship …) • Displacements and respecifications – mutable mobiles

  9. Silence Studies and the New Science War • The polemical theme of ‘silence about …’ • Latour’s (1984) criticism of critique • NY Times quote from Republican strategist: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled,” he writes, “their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue.” • “Artificially maintained controversies. • Example: A witness for the defense of “intelligent design” against establishment science

  10. Symmetry toward certainty & uncertainty? • “Symmetry” and “impartiality” should apply no less strongly to claims about uncertainty than to claims about certainty: • General constructionist arguments differ from particular arguments in specific controversies. • The two are readily confused when STS studies ‘science of the particular’ - interests, corporate and political alignments, etc. are overtly part of dispute. • Administrative objectivity

  11. Responses? • Pick our fights wisely; use arguments about certainty and contingency selectively, for political purposes we support • Deploy STS arguments for hire • Collins & Evans - neo-demarcationism • Position ourselves as neutral experts about expertise, controversy, consensus • A reversion to pre-SSK (social) realism? • Can it handle the (new) hard cases (climate change)?

  12. Case-embedded critique • Not an application of general ‘STS’ or ‘constructionist’ position • STS arguments provide initial incentive to pursue case • STS ‘theory’ is thin • Immersion in the study; the case-in-context provides the basis for normative judgment and critique (when relevant)

  13. Conclusion • History of last 20 (actually 40+) years of STS: • Cast doubt on any attribution of abstract norms to ‘science’ • Questioning conventional foundationalist & demarcationist programs of advice & administration • Still, many of us hanker for something ‘more’ than a descriptivist, anti-conventional programs • Easy route is to ‘mature’ into a new conventionalism, ‘forgetting’ the field’s history of arguments • Does this summit forecast a harder path?

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