I once asked what the “knowledge myth” might mean for STS, but this was really just a ploy to raise the issue of what it would take to generate a post-humanist form of behaviorism in STS.

How might we talk about the behavior of humans and non-humans parsimoniously without getting too bogged-down with endless debates of “who/what is congizant?” and “what role do intentions play?” This well-drodden issue was raised once again during our 4S sessions on the state.

One of the primary issues in behaviorism regarding the knowledge myth is “do you need to know how to do something to do it?” with the important follow-up that “if you do it, then you have shown (a) that you know how to do it, by benefit of doing it, or, if not that, (b) then knowing and doing are not nearly as related as we might otherwise demand in our social science accounts.”

Gary Marx, who wrote a great paper in Surveillance & Society, insists that surveillance in our high-tech age is different in non-trivial ways from traditional Foucauldian imagery of the somewhat distant past of “white hot pincers” during torture or the grand Panopticon. In particular, Marx’s analysis focuses on “unintended” data collection that is likely to be amassed by automated machines; think: data about data, for example, the location of a purchase, or the time stamp of a facebook post (Marx 2002:15). He goes into a, upon first glance, cool example: there is suspicion that a university building was going to fall prey to arson after a gatorade bottle full of explosive material was found on site. By cross-listing the keycard entry registries and the shipping code on the gatorade bottle, the culprit was found, and upon being found, s/he confessed. This seems like a straightforward case where data was collected and then used to capture a miscreant, but these data were never collected with the direct and explicit intention to be used for the purpose of catching criminals or criminal acts. These data were not intended to result in this end (I’d prefer a different term than “unintended,” but that will be another post).

Drawing on these materials liberally is Michalis Lianos (2003:412), in another paper in the same journal about Post-Foucauldian studies, who adopts and develops the idea that diverse technologies at “points of use” (let’s call them) result in data, which then contributes to what is referred to as “unintended control” which is not really intended to promote any values in particular, but that can be used in matters of control after collected.

The technologies so often utilized in Post-Foucauldian analyses are many and diffuse, but they rarely have any intentional politics, according to Lianos.This was quite a surprise, as I had always read these Post-Foucauldians as having an almost unanimous position that armies of little technologies were “out there” doing the dirty work of making neoliberalism a reality.

Back to Lianos: The data these automated machines collect might be used in political ways, big and small, but in a shrewd move, Lianos demands that in studies of control and surveillance, we must “break this correspondence between motive and outcome” or, put more exactly, “the intention to control is not a necessary precondition for effectively producing serious consequences for the sphere of control” (424). And, thus, we are left with an odd behaviorial post-humanist vision of technology where the “intentions” of the designer or user drift from primacy in analysis, and instead we observe what is collected or made, what is done with it, and what this contributes to  local levels and beyond.

Bravo, Lianos.

For us in STS, I have always been concerned that Foucauldians place so much emphasis on dispotif and governmentality when their analyses so often hinge on diffuse, micro-levels of technological use for the purpose of voluntary self-regulation. I am not referring to micro-physics or the art of government either. Instead, we get a nuanced view from Lianos of how the, to borrow a beloved phrase from Bruno, the “missing masses” do all the hard work in Post-Foucauldian Governmentality studies … although not intentionally.

This is a great future publishing series for folks interested in infrastructure:

Check it out: Geoffrey C. Bowker and Paul N. Edwards, Associate Series Editors

In recent years, awareness of infrastructures has been building to a remarkable degree in virtually every area. The information infrastructure which subtends the revolutionary new forms of sociability, science, scholarship and business is one example. A second is the state of roads, bridges, dams, and other large, expensive, long-term investments as our national and international infrastructures fall into disrepair. A third is the energy infrastructures, both old (fossil fuels) and new (renewables), that subtend the world economy.

A few centers of important scholarship on infrastructures have emerged, such as large technical systems theory (history of technology), urban infrastructures (urban planning, geography), and information infrastructures (information studies, computer-supported cooperative work). Yet too much of this work has been siloed, focusing only a particular system or scale, and with few exceptions it has remained sequestered within some of the smaller academic fields. Finally, remarkably little work has been done on the comparative study of infrastructures: taking lessons from one field and modifying it for another.

The first book in the series is “Standards: Recipes for Reality”

Standards
Recipes for Reality
Lawrence Busch

Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education–for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as “recipes for reality.” Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves.  

Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power–that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. He examines the use of standards to differentiate and how this affects our perceptions; he discusses the creation of a global system of audits, certifications, and accreditations; and he considers issues of trust, honesty, and risk. After exploring the troubled coexistence of standards and democracy, Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.

About the Author

Lawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards in Society in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University and Professor of Standards and Society in the Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics at Lancaster University, U.K.

One of the common topics of discussion between Jan-Hendrik and I is “What’s the next great infrastructure study?”

Patrick Carroll is writing about bogs and water infrastructure again, only this time in California rather than Ireland.

Anique Hommels is writing about re-building and unbuilding cities.

David Ribes is writing about cyberinfrastructure (in a paper worth reviewing).

A long time ago, to some, Tom Hughes wrote on the electricity infrastructure in Networks of Power.

What are some of the other classic infrastructure studies, and if we review enough of them, what stones seem obviously unturned? (that might become the next great infrastructure study)

I have always enjoyed reading Stephan Timmermans’s research, and his new piece in STHV is no exception.

The abstract, which is below, is not only a good reversal on an old idea, but also solid prose  — worth the read.

Abstract

Sociologists of science have argued that due to the institutional reward system negative research results, such as failed experiments, may harm scientific careers. We know little, however, of how scientists themselves make sense of negative research findings. Drawing from the sociology of work, the author discusses how researchers involved in a double-blind, placebo, controlled randomized clinical trial for methamphetamine dependency informally and formally interpret the emerging research results. Because the drug tested in the trial was not an effective treatment, the staff considered the trial a failure. In spite of the disappointing results, the staff involved in the daily work with research subjects still reframed the trial as meaningful because they were able to treat people for their drug dependency. The authors of the major publication also framed the results as worthwhile by linking their study to a previously published study in a post hoc analysis. The author concludes that negative research findings offer a collective opportunity to define what scientific work is about and that the effects of failed experiments depend on individual biography and institutional context.

Christian Bueger and Felix Bethke presented this piece at the 51st Annual Conference of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, February 2010.The paper basically recognizes that international relations is being and should be studied in less “social” ways and instead uses some of the topography and geography of ANT to do so. Interesting stuff.

Here’s the abstract:

Abstract: The discipline of International Relations is increasingly studied as a social
phenomenon. In contrast to universalist understandings of IR as global knowledge,
sociologies of IR have localized and pluralized our understanding of the discipline. IR is
understood as a conglomerate of national communities. These national communities are
depicted as each having their own culture, organizations and knowledge and are seen as
interdependent to each other, while they all circulate around a centre, the North American
community of IR scholars. We challenge such communitarian understandings of the
discipline. Basing our discussion in Actor-Network Theory (ANT), we argue to conceive of
IR as different spatial form, that is a network or rhizome. Such an understanding enables us
to study the relations of IR to other entities, to emphasis actor and practices as constituting
the discipline and to address issues of power relations, that go beyond inter-community
power relations. To make a case which phenomena come into sight from an ANT
perspective we study the case of research on Failed States. We disentangle the network, and
sketch how IR is enroled as well as transformed.

Nice paper by Cornell’s Peter Dear and Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff about regulatory science

Abstract

The boundaries between the history of science and science and technology studies (STS) can be misleadingly drawn, to the detriment of both fields. This essay stresses their commonalities and potential for valuable synergy. The evolution of the two fields has been characterized by lively interchange and boundary crossing, with leading scholars functioning easily on both sides of the past/present divide. Disciplines, it is argued, are best regarded as training grounds for asking particular kinds of questions, using particular clusters of methods. Viewed in this way, history of science and STS are notable for their shared approaches to disciplining. The essay concludes with a concrete example–regulatory science–showing how a topic such as this can be productively studied with methods that contradict any alleged disciplinary divide between historical and contemporary studies of science.

I recently reviewed a book for International Sociology Review of Books about “social innovation.” The book was Non-technological and non-economic innovations edited by Roth Steffen whom also authors the first chapter. The book’s contributors, some of whom wrote mainly conceptual pieces, others of which wrote more empirical works, were mostly European with the exception of a scholar from India and another from Russia.

The book opens with a hidden-in-plain-sight insight: overwhelmingly, studies of innovation tend to emphasize the story of technology going to the market to spread widely among buyers/adopters. What is missing, they say, which is also necessary for a more robust theory of innovation, is a deeper understanding of what these studies necessarily omit — that is, non-technological innovations which do not compete in the market (in the tradition sense of the word).

… a somewhat compelling position as it defines new research and sets an agenda for multiple scholars to advance the field. Still, this may not be something new. After all, social innovations include advanced social networking techniques, trends in outsourcing or downsizing, shifts in organizational form or work processes, advertising and branding techniques, etc. However, this is really now what worries me about this approach.

Here is an excerpt from the forthcoming review, which makes my point:

… The introduction ominously asks: “if innovations also have a social dimension, then is there a social dimension of social innovations, too?” (10) The question reveals a couple of things. First, the adoption of innovations such as advanced networking strategies or intensive outsourcing, for example, are conceptualized as definitively “social” things that spread (82,84). Second, innovations also have a “social” dimension, which might include harnessing symbolic systems in order to evoke a certain set of emotions in advertising or through branding (164). This social dimension might also include promotional events, auctions, or the establishment of auxiliary organizations such as museums or historical societies (246). Third, innovations are embedded in extant social relations, hence, innovations shape and are shaped by the circumstances of their social context (161). If social innovations, which are conceptualized as having one or more social dimensions, shape and are shaped by social contextual factors, within which they are embedded, then it appears there is nothing more social and, therefore, nothing more obviously under the jurisdiction of the social scientist to study than social innovations from this perspective. However, there is a deep theoretical issue to be considered regarding these multiple uses of the term “social,” a term taken to mean, in the context of this book, a thing, a dimension of that thing, and its context. I am thinking foremost about how this book’s raison d’être squares with Bruno Latour’s (2005) recent book Reassembling the social. I cite a forthcoming review of Latour’s book to make my point (Rowland, Passoth, and Kinney):

“Latour’s bottom line: As it happens, much of contemporary sociology is misdirected bunk; (…) Latour’s admittedly self-serving historical portrayal of sociology delivered in this book is perhaps forgivable because, in exchange, we get to see how performativity works among sociologists (rather than just economists). Sociologists give artificial strength to ideas that were only meant to be conceptual. (…) Sociologists are guilty of this sort of performativity, but also something much more grave. The “social” is used at times to explain what binds people together or tears them apart, but sociologists simultaneously demand that the social can also be a backdrop shaping interactions that bring people together or tears them apart. Sociologists get to have their cake and eat it too … ”

With the “social” taking-on so many meanings in this edited book (i.e., a thing, a dimension, and a context), we wonder if scholars of social innovation are also asking to “have their cake and eat it too” much the way Latour suggests sociologists have over the last century.

This paper provides fieldwork evidence, which solidifies an emerging view in literature, regarding the limitations of the panoptical metaphor in informing meaningfully and productively the analysis of contemporary surveillance and control. Our thesis is that the panopticon metaphor, which conceives of the organization as a bounded enclosure made up of divisible, observable and calculable spaces, is becoming less and less relevant in the age of contemporary surveillance technologies. Through a longitudinal socio-ethnographic study of the ramifications of surveillance ensuing from the implementation of a computerized knowledge management system (KMS) in a Parisian tax/law firm, our analysis points to the proliferation of lateral networks of surveillance having developed in the aftermath of implementation. In this complex and unstable constellation of rhizomatical controls, peers are involved in scrutinizing the validity of one another’s work, irrespective of the office’s hierarchies and official lines of specialization. As a result, games of visibility (exhibitionism), observation (voyeurism) and secrecy (hiding one’s work from the KMS) abound in the office. One of our main conclusions is to emphasize the pertinence of apprehending control and surveillance from angles that take into account the ambiguities, complexities and unpredictability of human institutions, especially in digitalized environments.

Sounds like a keeper. Although I am looking at this journal regularly, this one escaped my intention until I got the respective e-mail alert yesterday (another infrastructural topic, I guess). Anyway, the full paper can be accessed here.

This weekend I discovered a nice post on Daniel Little´s Blog UnderstandingSociety dealing with an old (nearly classic) topic of sociology. Daniel reviewed a new book by Peter Martin and Alex Dennis that (2010) that promisses to remodel the old problem of structure and agency – I just ordered it to review it myself. From the TOC it seems to me that the impression I had when I first read the title “HUMAN agency and SOCIAL structure” seems true: There is Habermas, there is Bourdieu, there is Giddens, there is Foucualt. A classic collection of protagonists of the 1990s structure/agency debate (the one about conflations, remember?). 

Here is a piece of Daniel Little´s review: 

This group of researchers addresses the contrast between agency and structure; but really their goal is to help to dissolve the distinction.  They want to show that “structures” do not exist in any strong sense (including the senses associated with critical realism), and that a proper understanding of “agency” involves both subjective and objective features of the individual’s actions, thoughts, and situation.  Social relationships are densely intertwined with reasons, emotion, commitments, beliefs, and attitudes — the aspects of consciousness that make up agency and action.

Here is a representative statement about social structures:

The collective concepts (such as family, state, organisation, class and so on) — which have often been seen as fundamental to sociological analysis — have often encouraged ‘the temptation to reify collective aspects of human life’ (Jenkins 2002a:4); that is, to treat them as if they were real entities, independent of the human beings who constiTute them. (7)

Their affirmative theory of agency — now stripped of the notion that it is a polar opposite to structure — has much in common with the traditions of micro-sociology — Goffman, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, and phenomenological sociology.  The idea here is to emphasize the very concrete ways in which each of these traditions succeeds in identifying the agent, the social actor, as both subjective and objective.  He/she is a subject, in the sense that the agent possesses thoughts, emotions, desires, aversions, allegiances, and the like, which in turn contribute to the actions and lives they live.  But the agent is objective, in the sense that he/she is embedded and developed within a concrete set of social relationships and institutions.

Thus each of these approaches develops in its own way the idea that human social life is carried out through processes of interaction among real people in specific situations, and each seeks to avoid the reification of collective concepts — there are no such ‘things’ as social ‘structures,’ ‘classes’, or indeed ‘societies’, yet terms such as these are indispensable, not only for sociologists but for the purposes of everyday communication. (14)

Your very own Nicholas Rowland was just added to the Full Editorial Board for the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

This young journal’s aims is to:

Mission Statement

The Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) seeks high-quality manuscripts on the challenges and opportunities presented by information technology in politics and government.  The primary objectives of the journal are to:

promote a better understanding of how evolving information technologies interact with political and governmental processes and outcomes at many levels encourage the development of governmental and political processes that employ IT in novel and interesting ways, and foster the development of new information technology tools and theories that can capture, analyze, and report on these developments.

They have also recently published interesting paper about Wikipedia-use and how it variously frames NGOs and now there is a CFP (call for papers) for a forthcoming special issue on the future of computational social science.