{"id":437,"date":"2010-07-02T06:53:19","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T10:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/?p=437"},"modified":"2011-07-29T22:56:51","modified_gmt":"2011-07-30T02:56:51","slug":"technology-studies-needs-both-priests-and-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/archives\/437","title":{"rendered":"Technology Studies Needs Both Priests and Missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

(or: Your technology may be political, but who cares?<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n

I am a longtime admirer and participant in the intellectual crossroads known as Science and Technology Studies (STS). I first read\u00a0Langdon Winner<\/a>‘s “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” and he changed my life<\/strong>. \u00a0In my first job I had the chance to organize a conference around my own research interests, and my choice for the keynote was Steve Woolgar<\/a> (“Laboratory Life,” “The Machine at Work,” “Science, The Very Idea,” “Virtual Society?”).<\/p>\n

My intellectual links to STS were formed in \u00a0graduate school<\/a> but I continue my involvement in an STS program<\/a> now as a faculty member. \u00a0I really enjoyed the last 4S conference<\/a>, where I presented some of my recent work, and I’d like to think it was well received. \u00a0I say all this to introduce this post because I want to emphasize that I feel like an STS insider.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the last few weeks I’ve had a conversation like the one I’ll describe below with three other STS insiders<\/strong>, so I thought I’d share it. \u00a0Tell me if I’m crazy.<\/p>\n

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[Click to enlarge — original photo by <\/em>lawprier on flickr<\/em><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’ve read any STS, you know by now that STS scholars typically make arguments of the form: “What you thought was technical is actually political!” <\/strong>Lately I’ve noticed that the few STS graduate programs and some of the other PhDs that can be easily STS-inflected (sociology, communication\/media, information science, …) seem to be training people to think that<\/strong> this is their big contribution<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

People are quite obvious and upfront about it. \u00a0They’re proud. If you ask someone: What is the major contribution of your work? \u00a0The answer is, “I show that X technology is political!” \u00a0(or sometimes, social). Is this really their money shot?<\/strong> That depends.<\/p>\n

I might be able to buy this as a big contribution, but only if it is news to the audience for the work<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0That is, saying that (for instance) some aspect of computing “is really political!”<\/em> is only a research finding to those who haven’t encountered this idea before. \u00a0Maybe traditionally trained computer engineers would be this audience?<\/p>\n

After a few STS books under their belt, the STS reader of even medium sophistication is always <\/em>already convinced that technical things are actually political<\/strong> (and social). \u00a0Revealing this can\u2019t <\/em>be the big contribution of a research project because it is already gospel to the STS reader. \u00a0Let me reiterate: There must be some nuance or other analytical structure beyond \u201cit\u2019s political\u201d because everything always is.<\/p>\n

This is so clear that in a recent STS-inflected meeting in Barcelona<\/a>, a big joke depended on it. \u00a0During the discussion, a speaker during the Q&A ended a speech by saying (facetiously) “or I guess I could just say that technology is politically neutral.<\/strong>” \u00a0[BIG LAUGH!] <\/strong>Yes, in STS this is what counts as a joke that gets a big laugh.\u00a0The audience rightly recognized the joke because technology is never politically neutral. \u00a0They were already well trained.(*)<\/p>\n

So why, then, do a certain breed of STS scholars keep making arguments of the form, “What you thought was technical is actually political!” and then insist on writing and presenting them for STS insiders<\/strong>. \u00a0They lard their work with social scientific jargon and references, restricting the readership so that practitioners (or any outsider) will never appreciate it. \u00a0This guarantees that they will be preaching to the converted. \u00a0Do we, the converted, enjoy the ritual of a chorus so much that we imagine chanting to be our profession?<\/p>\n

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[Click to enlarge — original photo by lorenzemlicka on flickr<\/a><\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n

I say, “No!”<\/strong> The big challenge for our work is instead to make a theoretical contribution with a new technological instance. \u00a0Otherwise, why bother? Ideally I can show that technology is political (shocking the STS outsider) without foregrounding it–while also making some new stab at conceptual thinking about technology for the insider. \u00a0This is my goal. \u00a0It somewhat unfair of me to raise this concern to you because I’ll readily admit it’s a hard problem. \u00a0I struggle with it. <\/strong> I know I don’t like to face this complaint about my own work. \u00a0But it is my duty.<\/p>\n

Alternately, although this isn’t my own approach, it is OK to keep making the “it’s political!” argument if you explicitly target your work to outsiders. \u00a0But if you do that, uh oh… It’s time to bring on the clear writing, suppress the references to endnotes, and re-think your presentation and publication venues, folks.<\/strong> Again, it’s a challenge. \u00a0But this is our challenge. \u00a0We need missionaries as well as priests. \u00a0But don’t confuse the two.<\/p>\n

A sad footnote \u00a0is that we’ve been here before. \u00a0Early enthusiasm about social constructivism in sociology and in science studies produced a very similar kind of useless repetition. “It’s socially constructed!” People wrote. Aha! So there! <\/strong>A response was Ian Hacking’s excellent book, “The Social Construction of What?<\/a>” (2000), recommended to everyone. It’s not clear to me that the problem I’m describing is at all different. Hopefully we can take this situation in hand and “The Political Construction of What?” doesn’t need to be written to save us.<\/p>\n

—
\n(*) Actually many of them were neo-Marxist political economists. \u00a0They are well trained in this assumption as well, and don’ t need to be convinced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(or: Your technology may be political, but who cares?) I am a longtime admirer and participant in the intellectual crossroads known as Science and Technology Studies (STS). I first read\u00a0Langdon Winner‘s “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” and he changed my life. \u00a0In my first job I had the chance to organize a conference around my own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1321],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4M7Bm-73","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}