‘SCANT’ advice

“There is a complicated mouse here, uhm, Wiebe, Wiebe!” This opening remark by Trevor Pinch was both an introduction to his new field of Sound Studies and fittingly underlined the main theme of a three-day long workshop on Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) in Trondheim (June, 2014) namely:

1. We live in a technological culture

2. Friendship is important for research communities (and powerpoint-presentations)

I might as well say that my reflections on the workshop in Trondheim is not an effort to summarise the numerous discussions and case studies presented, but to quite recklessly cherry pick what might be learned from the emergence of SCOT and STS so as to better understand what the Environmental Humanities is going about.

Why does technological culture matter to the study of environment? Pinch’ Sound Studies exemplified how one particular study is connected to a larger picture of technological culture and motivates students from various fields to engage in interdisciplinary work on other forms technological practices.

This I think partially answers why Science and Technology Studies (STS) is growing as a field of study, whereas we the Humanities find ourselves in a crisis regarding student populations. The Humanities interpret the same old books; STS case study different new technology. Albeit crude, and I would offer several caveats if the discussion had been more critical, I find this explanation striking.For one thing, the ‘environmental turn’ may be an effort precisely to till some new ground, both for theory and subject matter, to expand upon.

So what could Environmental Humanities learn from STS and in particular the development of SCOT? 

SCOT followed on the seminal paper “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts” by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker in 1984. The argument was that bridge-building between studies of science and technology was possible, and necessary. From the discussions and criticism following on this paper, there emerged a more cohesive area of study; STS. Although it still remains unclear whether it is a ‘field’, it attracts many students and scholars around some common methodologies.

To be sure, SCOT of the 1980s provoked many heated discussions regarding adequate approaches. Some claimed it had gone too far towards relativism (Hacking, 2001), or it had not gone too far enough in its power-critique (Russel 1986). The power-dimension was missing (Russell), the results were banal (Hacking) or were too programmatic (Winner, 1993), to the point of ignoring the subject matter of science and technology themselves (Edgerton). To this end, constructivism touches a similar nerve as the 1990s ‘Science Wars’ between scientists and historians of science as it seeks to explain what it means to live in a technological culture.

Wiebe also began explaining how he and Trevor responded to criticism of SCOT: “Langdon Winner’s critique hit me most. If he were right I had poor understanding of myself.” Apart from writing an article (1984) and a book on SCOT (1987),with both a condensed and expanded version of the argument, the critique against constructivism could be addressed in short and at length. Robin Williams from University of Edinburgh suggested that this continued response to criticism means that SCOT and STS at present still finds itself not in a different place, since tensions remain, but that practitioners are differently placed to better understand them. For one thing, the ‘black box’ of technology now more looks like a black blob. This blob, according to Ulrik Jørgensen of Aalborg University Copenhagen, also has an ecology, which calls for studying the materiality of (social) constructions. The most pressing example here are infrastructures, which are becoming increasingly apparent as they refuse to work the way makers and users anticipated.

A similarity between STS and the Environmental Humanities is the mobilisation of different strands of study in order to address a common issue, in the case of science and technology studies it is due to the assumption that we today live in a technological culture. How to formulate the common goal for the Environmental Humanities might be subject to even more debate, though I would suggest it involves a recognition of humans being busy making environment while doing other things, and hence practices other than those being strictly ‘environmental’ need be studied to understanding our changing environment and human condition.

The making of SCOT and STS in the 1980s showed the possibility of conversation between science studies and technology studies, exemplified through the collaboration of a science scholar and a technology scholar, namely Trevor Pinch and a Wiebe Bijker. Similar collaborations are right now being developed among scholars from a variety of disciplines of the Humanities for the study of environment.

Hybrid story-telling

Being interested in ecologies of technology, particularly those influenced by satellites, it became interested in texts on social construction of technology (SCOT) and actor-network theory (ANT).  Upon participating in the workshop at Trondheim I found these to be quite conflated, as suggested by the workshop-host Knut H. Sørensen these had now formed the hybrid acronym of ‘SCANT’. The fable of this approach is that of the animal population of STS, who in the morning are ANTS, only to turn SCOTish by the afternoon, and end the evening being symbolic interactions [unsure if he referred to the late-night discussions down by the bay-side].

Sørensen gives a play-on-words to paraphrase Marx’ “worker in the morning, intellectual in the evening”, but I think the main point is that STS is about story-telling. This makes it useful for teaching. Wiebe’s main lesson in SCOT is the ambition to tell stories rather than theories, which makes it useful for teaching as well as a research tool and vocabulary with which users themselves may interact.

This resonates with the interest of Environmental Humanities to explain what it means to live in, rather than just fixing, periods of rapid environmental changes. This I believe is our effort of developing response mechanism through the story of the human condition. And it is for this reason that a pedagogy of the Environmental Humanities is becoming all the more relevant for both sense making and further development of the field (author, forthcoming 2014). In STS, education has allowed practitioners to return to continually return to the initial question of constructivism: “How might it have been otherwise?”

So if the Environmental Humanities seeks to be a similar community of various researchers engaged in environment, what is our initial question?

References

Bijker, Wiebe, E., Hughes, Thomas P., Pinch, Trevor. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology Published by The MIT Press. The MIT Press, 1987.

Edgerton, David. “‘”The Linear Model” Did Not Exist: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Science and Research in Industry in the Twentieth Century.’” In The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications. Stockholm, 2012.

Pinch, Trevor J, and Wiebe E Bijker. “‘The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.’” Social Studies of Science 14:3., 1984.

Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Russel, Steward. ‘The Social Construction of Artefacts: A Response to Pinch and Bijker,’ Social Studies of Science, Vol 16:2, 1986. pp. 331-346.

Winner, Langdon. ‘Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology’. In Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 18:3, 1993.