sociology of infrastructure blog
Guest blogger emeritus Nick Rowland has joined a new group blog, Installing (Social) Order, run by Antonia Langhof, Jan-Hendrik Passoth, and Hendrik Vollmer. The purpose is to explore emerging themes in social studies of technology and science. Ezra, please sit down.
orgtheory.net 
Although my trajectory has strongly been toward Ezra’s current position, I still get quite a bit out of STS.
What I cannot tolerate, however, is the practice, common in STS, of peppering paper, talk (now blog!) titles with Entirely Unnecessary (Ridiculous) Parenthetical Asides.
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Benjamin Mako Hill
March 16, 2011 at 2:52 am
As someone who occasionally “peppers,” perhaps as a matter of style in small and unassuming world of STS, I wonder: when did that start in STS?
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Nicholas
March 16, 2011 at 11:15 am
I wonder if the style, which is treated as all too common in STS, according to the first comment, finds its explanation in STS being interdisciplinary. The carefulness with terminology could be interpreted to reflect the fact that we have cultural critiques, literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, political scientists, economists, psychologists, engineers, scientists, etc. all writing together, often in the same space (i.e., journal space, conference papers, even titles, etc.).
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Still, I think it is because we are somewhat playful in STS regarding these issues as a matter of our everyday reflexivity with science, although it is possible too that we revel, perhaps too much, in trying to be clever, and these “(” and “)” are just artifacts of this.
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Nicholas
March 16, 2011 at 11:25 am
Maybe for every single paranthesis we use, we have good reasons. The title of the blog for example is chosen due to the fact that we are not careless about terms, but in general quite carefull. What other sociological term could be more problematic that “social”? And once we start to ask how order in contemporary societies (again, a concept to be careful with) gets installed rather than “just” institutionalized, shouldn´t we be especially careful about calling it social order, then?
But in sum it is true: STS texts are written in a certain style, a jargon maybe. Should we try to avoid it? Or does it serve a purpose (other than just demonstrating cleverness)
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Jan-H. Passoth
March 16, 2011 at 11:31 am
I’m resolved to write my next paper title in the form of a LISP function.
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Kieran
March 17, 2011 at 12:53 am
[…] in Bloomington back in 2005, but I don´t think he will remember) for letting the readers of orgtheory know about our little blog. We just started, they have tons of experience, so that is […]
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A Question of (STS) Style? | Installing (Social) Order
March 21, 2013 at 2:27 pm