you probably shouldn’t mention bruno latour to ezra, definitely not

I  noticed an issue flare up over the last two months – the hatred of science and technology studies (STS). This first popped up when Nick Rowland was guest blogging. He wrote a post about technology as a sort of field of action rather than a specific object, a new idea is STS. Ezra responded with this comment:

Hmm… with all due respect, seems to me that I should be able to understand this post. But I cannot. Then again, I confess not to understand the prior “waves” of STS either. In general, it seems to me that one should evaluate a theory (if that is what STS practitioners produce) based on whether it can it account for more facts with as minimal a conceptual apparatus as possible, where such an apparatus obviously needs to be coherent. But STS seems to be more trouble than it is worth on all three of these scores– (a) not clear how it does in accounting for facts (in part because practitioners generally seem allergic to establishing facts independent of theory [of course, facts are theory-laden but there must be some establishment of facts independent of theory if the theorist wants to convince us to accept her theory rather than some other); (b) proliferation of concepts [often with an obvious attempt at sexy labels; e.g, ‘agora’; ‘mangle of practice’]; and (c) [consequently] very hard to understand. I confess though that I do not read much STS because it long ago seemed to fail miserably, at least by criterion (c). Though I’m open to the suggestion that I’m just not smart enough to understand STS theory or that there is better work that I’m not aware of. (I’m not particularly open to the possibility that my criteria are inappropriate). FWIW.

Later, in a discussion of performativity, Ezra also played the skeptic:

But I did not hear why the emerging research you described does any better. Is there something that it can explain that existing theory cannot?

So what is it about STS that is so infuriating? I think it’s this: Most STS folks openly reject the normal science model where you stick with a variable or issue and then work on it. The normal science model allows you to clarify, simplify and then expand. Think “human capital” or “structural holes.” It’s easy for outsiders to quickly grasp the concept and for newcomers to use it.

STS works with a continental model of knowledge – thick description and, as Ezra points out, proliferation of concepts. Rather than hammer a variable home, they jump from interesting case to case. They revel in new phenomena. It’s very ecological – new empirical observations suggest new ways of combining concepts, creating a mangled web of theory. Of course, this is very anti-normal science. You end up with a cabinet of curiosities than a deep and precise knowledge of a specific issue.

I’ve always been tolerant of STS, I was on Nick’s dissertation committee after all. There’s something deceptive about technology and science. When it works, it looks simple and it’s easy to take it for granted. This has often been true of academics who study science, especially in the pre-Kuhn/Latour era. The odd concepts of STS shake me out of my complacency and see things in a new light.