Dominant social sciences approaches to complexity suggest that awareness of complexity in late-modern society comes from various recent scientific insights. By examining today’s plant and human genomics sciences, I question this from both ends: first suggesting that typical public culture was already aware of particular salient forms of complexity, such as limits to predictive knowledge ; second, showing how up-to-date genomics science expresses both complexity and its opposites, predictive determinism and reductionism, as coexistent representations of nature and scientific knowledge. I (...) suggest we can understand this self-authored epistemic confusion in modern science by avoiding ‘the usual suspects’ – fading simpler discourses left over from previous scientific times; media oversimplifications; or the need to ‘simplify’ to essentials, for ignorant publics – and looking instead at the silent imaginations of extra-scientific reference groups reflected and projectively performed in scientific discourses-practices themselves. Thus contradictions of complex scientific understandings are systematically created by science’s own embodiment of epistemic commitments influenced by commercial cultures, and by imagined publics who are important new constructed objects of institutional scientific concerns – over authority and trust. New dimensions of complexity thus come alive through paying attention to neglected tacit dimensions of science–society interrelations. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to understand the increasing profile of complexity theory as a geography of dissemination. In the first part I suggest that complexity theory, itself a rhetorical hybrid, takes on new meanings as it circulates in and through a number of actor-networks and, specifically, global science, global business and global New Age. As complexity theory circulates in these networks, so it encounters new conditions, which generate new hybrid theoretical forms. In the second part of the article, I (...) consider how complexity theory might be interpreted as the emergence of a new structure of feeling in Euro-American societies, which frames the future as open and full of productivity. The conclusion offers some words of warning. (shrink)

The article presents a social phenomenology of naturalism. Starting from Stefan Bargheer’s Moral entanglements (2018), it argues that to understand the transformations of naturalist practices, we have to focus both on the shifting typifications of activity and their organizational moorings, but also on the experiential affordances of practice. Drawing on the work of Schutz and Merleau-Ponty, I focus on the transformation of animals from background into figure, the peculiar province of meaning that naturalist practice entails, as well as the experience (...) of “play” that Bargheer highlights. Doing so, I argue that the affordances of experience are a constitutive aspect of any historical account of practice: that a phenomenological approach is crucial not only for the micro-sociology of interaction and experience, but for understanding larger historical processes and transformations. (shrink)

In this topical section, we highlight the next step of research on modeling aiming to contribute to the emerging literature that radically refrains from approaching modeling as a scientific endeavor. Modeling surpasses “doing science” because it is frequently incorporated into decision-making processes in politics and management, i.e., areas which are not solely epistemically oriented. We do not refer to the production of models in academia for abstract or imaginary applications in practical fields, but instead highlight the real entwinement of science (...) and policy and the real erosion of their boundaries. Models in decision making – due to their strong entwinement with policy and management – are utilized differently than models in science; they are employed for different purposes and with different constraints. We claim that “being a part of decision-making” implies that models are elements of a very particular situation, in which knowledge about the present and the future is limited but dependence of decisions on the future is distinct. Emphasis on the future indicates that decisions are made about actions that have severe and lasting consequences. In these specific situations, models enable not only the acquisition of knowledge (the primary goal of science) but also enable deciding upon actions that change the course of events. As a result, there are specific ways to construct effective models and justify their results. Although some studies have explored this topic, our understanding of how models contribute to decision making outside of science remains fragmentary. This topical section aims to fill this gap in research and formulate an agenda for additional and more systematic investigations in the field. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers of science have begun to realize that the clear separation of the creation of models in academia and the application of models outside science is not possible. When these philosophers address hybrid contexts in which science is entwined with policy, business, and other realms of society, these often practically oriented realms no longer represent ‘the surroundings’ of science but rather are considered an essential part of it. I argue—and demonstrate empirically—that the judgement of a theory or (...) model conducted by scientists in such hybrid contexts may contain two parts: one is truth supportive and the other is utility oriented. In relation to the debate on science and values, the article seeks to reinforce the argument in modern philosophy of science that the boundaries between epistemic and non-epistemic values are blurred. The article stresses that non-epistemic values may be also understood as values that contribute to the instrumental success of a theory or model and—in this way—influence scientific practice in the hybrid contexts. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that the proposition of 'double contingency' introduced by Parsons and defended by Luhmann and Habermas is insufficient under the conditions of contemporary communication societies. In the latter context, the increasing differentiation and organization of communication processes eventuated in the recognition of the epistemic authority of the public, which in turn compels us to conceptualize a new level of contingency. A first step is therefore taken to capture the role of the public in communication societies theoretically (...) by what may be called 'triple contingency'. Since the process of the definition of reality and its outcome, to which the response of the public is central, is best seen in constructivist terms, attention is also paid to relevant methodological and epistemological questions. Key Words: cognitive turn • communication • constructivism • double contingency • Habermas • Luhmann • observation • Parsons • situationalism • the third point of view. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between visual culture and the fight for visibility and attention in contemporary society. It draws on a concept of visual culture which not only sees the rising significance of the visual and the proliferation of images as its defining traits, but also the fact that, today, people are—to a much higher degree—both consumers as well as producers of images. Based on this definition, it is argued that in visually oriented communication and media societies, the anthropologically (...) fundamental need for attention manifests itself as a fight for visibility which takes on the form of ever more extreme forms of public self-display. Furthermore, a portrait of two social figures—the star and the voyeur—will serve as further analysis and description of the social trends which can be tied to the emergence of today's visual culture. The article will close by discussing attention and visibility in terms of inclusion and exclusion and by proposing an analytical model for differentiating four modes of existence in a visual culture. (shrink)

Globally active companies are involved in the discursive construction of moral legitimacy. Establishing normative conformance is problematic given the plurality of norms and values worldwide, and is particularly difficult for companies operating in morally controversial industries. In this paper, we investigate how organizations publicly legitimize the trade of human tissue for private profit when this practice runs counter to deep-seated and widespread moral beliefs. To do so, we use inductive, qualitative methods to analyze the website discourse of three types of (...) organizations that trade in human tissue and are associated with different degrees of moral controversy with respect to tissue procurement and use. Our analysis reveals an object-oriented approach to moral legitimizing centered on the human tissue as a morally disputed good. We find that the website discourse translates human tissue into technology, constructs normative meaning around a dominant instrumental value associated with human-tissue-as-technology, and reproduces and stabilizes this meaning by six discursive mechanisms that amplify and anchor it. Moreover, the use of amplifying and anchoring discourse was greater in organizations associated with greater controversy. The results are consistent with an object-oriented sociality. (shrink)

What are social objects and what makes them different from other realms of scientifically studied reality? How can sociology theoretically account for the relationship between objects of social reality such as norms and social structures, and their existence as objects of experience for living human actors? Contemporary sociology is characterized by a fundamental dissensus with regard to this question. Ironically, this is the very problem Alfred Schutz tackled in his phenomenological critique of Max Weber’s sociological theory. As Schutz demonstrated nearly (...) a century ago, phenomenology’s egological method is indispensable to a non-reductionist theory of intersubjectivity, namely, one that does full justice to embodied conscious life while demonstrating the relative independence of the intersubjective (social) sphere. In the process, Schutz’s mundane phenomenology results not only in a thorough rejection of all kinds of philosophical solipsism but also warns of the dangers, one that Husserl himself succumbed to, of granting collective structures transcendental status. Through a critical reading of Schutz’s early theory in the Phenomenology of the Social World, alongside key texts by Husserl, this paper shows the continued relevance of Schutz’s phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity to serve both as ontological grounding of “the social” and a method for investigating and describing concrete social objects in their transformation into theoretico-analytical objects amenable to empirical observation. (shrink)

The contemporary info-proliferation is taking the ideal of a solid technological rationalism to its extreme point: the depletion of all bodies into 'informational cuts’, orderable bits and pieces of data fabric. The present contribution will discuss this process of datafication, trying to avoid any polarization along the ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ dualism, and any consequent excess of enthusiasm or critique. For this purpose, the essay will take the form of a stroll across post-digital culture, alternatively under the effects of a ‘red (...) and a blue pill’ as the two main points of view already exemplified, in 1999, by Morpheus in the famous sci-fi movie The Matrix. To these two points of view, respectively identifiable as digital critique, or digital potential, a yellow one will be added, which can be recognized as that of ‘hacker culture’, at the same time suggesting that, instead of a dialectical contraposition between two different perceptual and cognitive modalities, post-digital culture can be more easily discussed through a multiplication of possible perspectives. (shrink)

: This essay addresses the difficulties that sociology as a discipline continues to experience in grasping the relations between technology, science and the social. I argue that these difficulties stem from a resolute centering of sociology on the social, which follows a generically Durkheimian blueprint. I elaborate a response to these difficulties which derives from recent lines of work in science and technology studies, and which entails a decentering of the social relative to the material and the conceptual, in terms (...) of both objects of analysis and explanatory formats. In order to display the direct sociological relevance of this approach, I move to the macro level, developing the conceptual apparatus of a decentered social theory via the discussion of a historical example of major sociological significance—the systematic gearing together of scientific research, technological innovation and industrial production that originated in the synthetic dye industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Besides the interest of the topic itself, the aim is thus to exemplify in some detail what a decentered sociology might look like, both empirically and conceptually. (shrink)

This article takes up the challenge posed by ANT's principle of radical symmetry in a different way, by developing a counterargument to the Latourian presumption that social and symbolic constructions are in themselves too fragile and weak to effectively knit together the social order which needs ballasting by a myriad of technological objects. It is argued that social orders are also maintained by self-fulfilling prophecies which are stabilized by the reality effect of what is called `everyday essentialism'. Social facts are (...) routinely enacted by circular bootstrapping operations which are often misrecognized as such in order to produce an illusion of ontological transcendence. It is this practical everyday reification of social facts which also creates fixities, nodes, and sites for the symbolic `packaging' of material objects. Over against ANT's agnostic appreciation of this reifying practice as `something we all do', Pels, like Vandenberghe, therefore retains an interest in a critical theory of reification. This critique signals the normative significance of `acting-as-if' over against all forms of ontological essentialism: if social situations are more clearly defined `as if' they are real, we are less likely to be caught out by the stark reality of their consequences. (shrink)

This article examines Bourdieu’s adoption of Husserl’s concept of ‘doxa’ and argues that Bourdieu’s reading of Husserl overpolarizes doxa and reflexivity. The article argues that there is a need for Bourdieusian sociology to adopt a more complex interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology in order to understand the potential range of states of consciousness between doxa and reflexivity. In contrast to Bourdieu’s reading of Husserl, this article argues that the philosophical underlabouring for an adequate understanding of doxa is now available within recent (...) Husserlian studies which marks a radical development from earlier readings in the ‘sociology of consciousness’. (shrink)

The ability to dominate or exercise will in social encounters is often assumed in social theory to define power, but there is another form of power that is often confused with it and rarely analyzed as distinct: logistics or the ability to mobilize the natural world for political effect. I develop this claim through a case study of seventeenthcentury France, where the power of impersonal rule, exercised through logistics, was fundamental to state formation. Logistical activity circumvented patrimonial networks, disempowering the (...) nobility and supporting a new regime of impersonal rule: the modern, territorial state. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhat kind of objects are computer programs used for simulation purposes in scientific settings? The current investigation treats a special case. It focuses on “event generators,” the program packages that particle physicists construct and use to simulate mechanisms of particle production. The paper is an attempt to bring the multiplex and unfolding character of such knowledge objects to the fore: Multiple meanings and functions are embodied in the object and can be drawn out selectively according to the requirements of (...) a work setting. The object's conceptual complexity governs its application in some contexts, while the object is considered a mere “black box,” transparent and ready-to-hand, in others. These two poles span a full spectrum of object aspects, functions, and conceptions. Event generators are ideas turned into software, testing grounds for models, just a tool to study the performance of a detector, etc. The object's multiplex nature is submitted to negotiation among different actors. (shrink)

This article explores the role of sustainable living experiments as devices of public engagement. It engages with object-centred perspectives in the sociology of science and technology, which have characterized public experiments as sites for the domestication of technology, and as effective instruments of public involvement, because, in part, of the seductive force of their use of empirical forms of display. Green living experiments, which are conducted in the intimate setting of the home and reported on blogs, complicate this understanding, insofar (...) as they seek to format socio-material practices as sites of involvement. This has implications for how we conceive of the relations between public involvement and everyday material practices. While the latter are often located outside the public sphere, green living experiments extend the publicity genre of `being intimate in public' to things. It also follows that green living experiments do not so much solve but rather articulate problems of public involvement. (shrink)

Dominant forms of contemporary big-data based digital citizen science do not question the institutional divide between qualified experts and lay-persons. In our paper, we turn to the historical case of a large-scale amateur project on biogeographical birdwatching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to show that networked amateur research can operate in a more autonomous mode. This mode depends on certain cultural values, the constitution of specific knowledge objects, and the design of self-governed infrastructures. We conclude by arguing (...) that the contemporary quest for autonomous citizen science is part of a broader discourse on the autonomy of scientific research in general. Just as the actors in our historical case positioned themselves against the elitism of gentlemen scientists, avant-garde groups of the twenty first century like biohackers and civic tech enthusiasts position themselves against the system of professional science—while “digital citizen science” remains to oscillate between claims for autonomy and realities of heteronomy, constantly reaffirming the classic lay-expert divide. (shrink)

As recent studies in economic and financial sociology have underscored, calculation is central to economic practices. While some sociological accounts locate the performance of calculation within individual ability, networks of human agents or their cultural embeddedness, studies operating on the background of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge conceive of calculation as situated in the practice of the participants engaged, the technological tools used and their requirements. The article explores this point further, using a distinction which can be traced back to (...) Heidegger’s notion of Gestell (enframing): the ‘calculation of something’ and the ‘calculation with something’ are analysed taking the practices of risk management departments of big international banks as an example. It is argued that, through the use of calculation tools, the corporate clients are constituted anew and that written documents which are the outcome of this process constitute a social prosthesis for remote communication taking place between subsidiaries and the headquarters of international banks. (shrink)

Domestic eco-efficient technologies, such as recycling bins and compact florescent light bulbs, are integral to the eco-modernisation project. To date, however, little research has examined their role in the production of 'sustainable citizens'. In response, this paper explores the productivities of commonplace domestic objects. It draws on qualitative research into a Sydney-based sustainable living programme called 'GreenHome', to examine how participants' environmental ethics became articulated through objects' use. This forges a form of embodied 'techno-ethics' that permeates socio-material relations beyond the (...) immediate. Therefore, this examination of the quotidian deployment of eco-efficient technologies, whilst not denying the problematic nature of technologically-dependant futures, suggests some positive outcomes from individuals' enrolment in domestic eco-modernisation. (shrink)

The concept of the cortical column refers to vertical cell bands with similar response properties, which were initially observed by Vernon Mountcastle’s mapping of single cell recordings in the cat somatic cortex. It has subsequently guided over 50 years of neuroscientific research, in which fundamental questions about the modularity of the cortex and basic principles of sensory information processing were empirically investigated. Nevertheless, the status of the column remains controversial today, as skeptical commentators proclaim that the vertical cell bands are (...) a functionally insignificant by-product of ontogenetic development. This paper inquires how the column came to be viewed as an elementary unit of the cortex from Mountcastle’s discovery in 1955 until David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel’s reception of the Nobel Prize in 1981. I first argue that Mountcastle’s vertical electrode recordings served as criteria for applying the column concept to electrophysiological data. In contrast to previous authors, I claim that this move from electrophysiological data to the phenomenon of columnar responses was concept-laden, but not theory-laden. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Mountcastle’s criteria provided Hubel Wiesel with a conceptual outlook, i.e. it allowed them to anticipate columnar patterns in the cat and macaque visual cortex. I argue that in the late 1970s, this outlook only briefly took a form that one could call a ‘theory’ of the cerebral cortex, before new experimental techniques started to diversify column research. I end by showing how this account of early column research fits into a larger project that follows the conceptual development of the column into the present. (shrink)

The production, manipulation and exploitation of future visions are increasingly important elements in practices of visioneering socio-technical processes of innovation and transformation. This becomes obvious in new and emerging science and technologies and large-scale transformations of established socio-technical systems. A variety of science and technology studies provide evidence on correlations between expectations and anticipatory practices with the dynamics of such processes of change. Technology assessment responded to the challenges posed by the influence of visions on the processes by elaborating methodologies (...) for a “vision assessment” as a contribution to what is now increasingly known as “hermeneutical TA”. But until now, the practical functions of visions in the processes have not been explained in a way that satisfies the empirical needs of TA’s vision assessment—that is to provide future-oriented knowledge based on the analysis of ongoing changes in the present without knowing the future outcomes. Our leading hypothesis is that we can only understand the practical roles of visions in current processes if we analyse them as socio-epistemic practices which simultaneously produce new knowledge and enable new social arrangements. We elaborate this by means of two cases: the visions of In Vitro meat and of the smart grid. Here, we interpret visioneering more in its collective dimension as a contingent and open-ended process, emerging from heterogeneous socio-epistemic practices. This paper aims at improving TA’s vision assessments and related STS research on visionary practices for real-time analysis and assessments. (shrink)

This article focuses upon the construction of wants and the embodying of the market in the work routines of workers on the Swiss foreign exchange market. The authors are particularly concerned with the role of the computer screen within the establishment of postsocial relations around a sense of embodied lack. The screen does not provide access to the market but is the market as an exteriorized assemblage of practices brought together in one place. The screen is the market rather than (...) its representation into which traders immerse themselves. Traders engage with this market in their daily work practices through a constructed sense of lack that requires them to act passionately within the market in order to satisfy the self understood as a structure of wanting. While Knorr Cetina and Bruegger draw on a Lacanian understanding of the self as lack, rather than focus on the formation of direct human social relations around this issue, they look instead at the materiality of lack and its position within the postsocial relations constituted through trading online in the foreign exchange market. Desire is constituted and realized here through the object of the computer screen rather than with other people directly. In this way relations between persons are mediated by real objects that constitute persons virtually. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to propose a theoretical arrangement for the study of applied computer and information ethics carried out in an interdisciplinary and a democratic manner by which the information and communications technologies are seen as an ethical environment, and human-computer couplings are seen as hybrid moral agents. Design/methodology/approach New ethical issues emerge dynamically in such environment which must be interpreted according to human sentience and computer ontology. To attribute moral meaning to acts perpetrated by human-computer hybrids, a hybrid (...) of two semiotics must be likely used that bridge the gap between signs and things from opposite directions. Findings The author argues that ecosocial dynamics and material semiotics can be harnessed together as in a theoretical mashup for that purpose, and that such harnessing will allow us to engage with a posthumanist/post-social ethics here and now. Originality/value The originality of the proposal resides in bringing hybridity to the center of the picture, forcing interdisciplinary teams to engage with one unified, even if hybrid, agency regardless of conflicting ontologies and epistemologies. (shrink)

Taking up the body turn in sociology, this paper discusses scientific practices as embodied action from the perspective of Husserl’s phenomenological theory of the “Body”. Based on ethnographic data on a biology laboratory it will discuss the importance of the scientist’s Body for the performance of scientific activities. Successful researchers have to be skilled workers using their embodied knowledge for the process of tinkering towards the material transformation of their objects for data production. The researcher’s body then is an instrument (...) of measuring as well as a kind of archive of knowing. Their body becomes a disciplined instrument which has its own place and function inside the laboratory. Furthermore, the appresentational apperception of Bodies (Husserl) is being discussed as a basis for the emotional and ethical concerns towards laboratory-animals. Attitudes towards animals in the laboratory setting (as well as elsewhere) are highly emotional. Nevertheless, following the literature of the sociology of the body, those emotional reactions still follow certain cultural patterns which themselves can be understood as embodied ways of knowing “right” or “wrong”. Besides as an instrument, the scientist’s body can also be understood as a resource of emotional attachment towards animals. It is an instrument for performing transformation as well as one for caring. (shrink)

The article discusses the use of algorithmic models in finance. Algo trading is widespread but also somewhat controversial in modern financial markets. It is a form of automated trading technology, which critics claim can, among other things, lead to market manipulation. Drawing on three cases, this article shows that manipulation also can happen in the reverse way, meaning that human traders attempt to make algorithms ‘make mistakes’ by ‘misleading’ them. These attempts to manipulate are very simple and immediately transparent to (...) humans. Nevertheless, financial regulators increasingly penalize such attempts to manipulate algos. The article explains this as an institutionalization of algo trading, a trading practice which is vulnerable enough to need regulatory protection. (shrink)

This article is based on a philosophical analysis of moral language in academic journal articles that concern child death cases. The analysis shows that research of child protection is a value-committed practice, and the language use reflects this in various ways. Direct moral language is relatively rare, and moral values are often implicitly referred to. Values in social work research bear resemblance to moral philosophical stances.