Steve Woolgar

• University of Oxford

This paper reflects on the origins and subsequent reception of the paper “Ontological Gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations”, published in 1985. It describes the circumstances of my turning up at McGill University as a Visiting Professor in Sociology and meeting Dorothy, then a graduate student and the TA assigned to an underg...

The figure of the brain has continued to rise in prominence for at least 30 years. This development continues to raise important questions: in particular, to what extent and in what ways does the brain supplant the person as the presumed origin of human behaviour? Whereas it has previously been discussed in general terms, here we address this quest...

Over the past decades commercial and academic market(ing) researchers have studied consumers through a range of different methods including surveys, focus groups, or interviews. More recently, some have turned to the growing field of neuroscience to understand consumers. Neuromarketing employs brain imaging, scanning, or other brain measurement tec...

Is science and technology studies (STS) a luxury that our society cannot afford anymore? In this interview, Koichi Mikami tries to learn lessons from Steve Woolgar’s distinguished career on how the kind of sensibilities treasured within the field of STS and the type of critical engagement that its researchers aspire to might be best exercised in a...

This research note proposes that it is instructive to ask what happens when evaluative practices go wrong. It shows how a close study of mistakes and mishaps in evaluation - both in the process of their disclosure and subsequent management - provides important insights into ways in which evaluation practices contribute to performing and sustaining...

As the neurosciences make their way beyond the laboratory, they become influential in a wide range of domains. How to understand this process? What are the prospects for, and dynamics of, influence, uptake and rejection? This article reports our attempts to track the emergence of neurosciences with particular reference to the emergence of the field...

Our introductory essay in this journal's 2013 special issue on the " turn to ontology " examined the shift from epistemology to ontology in science and technology studies (STS), and explored the implications of the notion of enactment. Three responses to that special issue argue that: 1) there is no fundamental qualitative difference between the on...

Digitalization and computerization are now pervasive in science. This has deep consequences for our understanding of scientific knowledge and of the scientific process, and challenges longstanding assumptions and traditional frameworks of thinking of scientific knowledge. Digital media and computational processes challenge our conception of the way...

This introductory chapter sets out the theme of representation in scientific practice, and addresses why it remains such a vibrant topic for research in and beyond science and technology studies. The chapter draws particular attention to shifts in the content, context and concepts of inquiry that have occurred since the first volume to bear the nam...

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited, the long-awaited sequel to the influential volume, Representation in Scientific Practice, unites original editors Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar with colleagues Catelijne Coopmans and Janet Vertesi to present a new series of essays that sets the bar for the study of representation in science in the...

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing one...

There is in science and technology studies a perceptible new interest in matters of ‘ontology’. Until recently, the term ‘ontology’ had been sparingly used in the field. Now it appears to have acquired a new theoretical significance and lies at the centre of many programmes of empirical investigation. The special issue to which this essay is a cont...

Neuroscience is increasingly considered a possible basis for new business and management practices. A prominent example of this trend is neuromarketing – a relatively new form of market and consumer research that applies neuroscience to marketing by employing brain imaging or measurement technology to anticipate consumers’ response to, for instance...

Some problems in our understanding of innovation can be addressed by thinking of innovation as a social process. This can be done by using the idea of technology as applied social science. To explore this idea, an approach called 'technography' is introduced. Sources of resistance to innovation are considered and the question whether new technologi...

Despite a substantial unfolding investment in Grid technologies (for the development of cyberinfrastructures or e-science), little is known about how, why and by whom these new technologies are being adopted or will be taken up. This chapter argues for the importance of addressing these questions from an STS (science and technology studies) perspec...

This paper has been prepared under Work Package 3 of ResIST, "Researching Inequality through Science and Technology," (www.resist-research.net) a strategic targeted research project funded by the European Commission (contract 029052 under Priority 7 of the 6 th Framework Programme: Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-Based Society). Steve Woolga...

Despite a substantial unfolding investment in Grid technologies (for the development of cyberinfrastructures or e-science), little is known about how, why and by whom these new technologies are being adopted or will be taken up. This chapter argues for the importance of addressing these questions from an STS (science and technology studies) perspec...

Science and technology studies (STS) is an important and often controversial interdisciplinary field which has proved to be provocative and influential. But has its institutionalization and influence occurred at the expense of some of its provocative power? This paper considers the fate of provocative ideas associated with STS as they become approp...

There is a pressing need better to understand the relative merits of emerging ideas and their contexts of generation. However, it is important to point out that the enterprise is needlessly disadvantaged if we unthinkingly adopt certain implicit assumptions about the nature of ideas. This short paper aims to clarify the consequences of our reliance...

The increasing prevalence of audit in university settings has raised concerns about the potentially adverse effects of invasive measures of performance upon the conduct of research and generation of knowledge. What sustains the current commitment to audit? It is argued that in order to address this question we need to understand how and to what ext...

Résumé On ne soulignera jamais assez l’importance des recherches minutieuses qui ont été faites sur l’impact des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (tic). Répondre aux interrogations concernant les effets prGécis des Tic sur les relations interper sonnelles, la communication, l’Intégration et l’exclusion, la confiance et...

The importance of rigorous research into the actual impact of the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS) on society in general cannot be overemphasised. The answer to questions concerning the precise effect of ICTS on interpersonal relations, communication, social inclusion and exclusion, trust and identity are now central to discuss...

There is a need to develop an analytic framework that can help decision making about the nature and style of interactive research activity in social science. Substantial intellectual resources for doing this can be found in science and technology studies which offer insight into the social basis for interactive social science (ISS). The analytic fr...

It is a routine teaching day. The advanced level course in science and technology studies (S&TS) is holding its fourth weekly class of the semester. The students dutifully indulge the professor in his incantation of one of the iconic case studies of the field: Langdon Winner’s well-known analysis of Moses’ bridges. Winner claims that the bridges bui...

This paper reports research undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of social scientists and manufacturing engineers, into the longstanding problem of technology transfer. It particularly focuses on the problem of how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) identify and acquire new technology from universities. The research comprises an analysis...

Imagine an organisation faced with a particular problem whose solution requires a degree of technology or expertise not available in-house. Where can the organisation find help? Large companies are generally self sufficient in their R&D requirements. They frequently have large and well equipped research departments. Many also outsource their R&D or...

The practice of software development has been viewed by some as marked by anarchy and fragmentation and by others as characterized by order and universalism. How is it that two essentially opposite stereotypes of the way software technologists work have gained such prominence? The paper argues that both characterizations are valid and explores them...

Imagine an organisation faced with a particular problem whose solution requires a degree of technology or expertise not available in-house. Where can the organisation find help? Large companies are generally self sufficient in their R&D requirements. They frequently have large and well equipped research departments. Many also outsource their R&D or...

The paper is concerned with bridging the interdisciplinary divide between the technical and social aspects in the enterprise of software engineering. We do this by developing a postmodernist perspective on software engineering, disputing the notion of a grand narrative of software engineering (that is, an exclusive and embracing account of software...

O conceito de 'cognição' ocupa um lugar central em ampla literatura nas ciências sociais e na filosofia, onde um pressuposto-chave consiste na conceituação do agente cognitivo enquanto unidade central de análise. Entretanto, desdobramentos recentes nos Estudos de Ciência e Tecnologia (ECT) questionam este pressuposto e sugerem as bases para a sua m...

Director of the Research Centre: Great news that we got our essay accepted for the BSA Conference volume!

The concept of 'cognition' is central to a wide literature in social science and philosophy where a key assumption conceptualises the central unit of analysis as a cognising agent. However, recent developments in Science and Technology Studies (STS) question this assumption and suggest the basis for its modification. The paper describes and evaluat...

Whereas many constructivist and feminist approaches to the social study of technology share an antipathy to technological determinism, they offer an insufficiently radical critique of technology. Three main problems in ''anti-essentialist'' critiques of technological determinism are identified, all of which mean that such critiques remain committed...

The social and technical are commonly defined in opposition to each other. Yet technology practitioners are often quite comfortable with the idea that the technical is constitutively social. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a computerised information systems development project, this paper examines various usages of notions of ‘technical’. Attem...

An abstract is not available.

An abstract is not available.

This article examines how the special theoretical significance of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is affected by attempts to apply relativist-constructivism to technology. The article shows that the failure to confront key analytic ambivalences in the practice of SSK has compromised its original strategic significance. In particular, th...

Despite the frequent, recurrent and often damaging criticisms of citation analysis in recent years, the use of citations continues apace. In the context of contemporary anxieties about the increasing use of 'performance indicators’ this paper argues that it is important to understand the sources of resistance to criticisms of the use of citations....

Steve Fuller’s social epistemology aims to integrate the philosophy of science and sociology of science, and to enhance the ability of these disciplines to contribute to science policy. While applauding the re-vitalizing energy of the enterprise, a sociological perspective requires attention to four key aspects of the programme. First, the characte...

Computer viruses are an especially visible and dramatic manifestation of problems associated with computer software. Consequently, computer viruses offer a specific opportunity for exploring the social basis of troubles with software. One particular focus of this research is the nature and variation of the cultural images associated with software p...

What are the prospects for the integration of the psychology and the sociology of science? Leaving aside (for now) the question of whether or not such integration is desirable, this paper asks whether or not these disciplines are compatible. I suggest the answer depends critically on what we take to be the strategic value of the sociology of scienc...

If nothing else, the twelve papers assembled in this volume should lay to rest the idea that the interesting debates about the nature of science are still being conducted by "internalists" vs. "externalists,"" rationalists" vs. "arationalists, n or even "normative epistemologists" vs. "empirical sociologists of knowledge. " Although these distincti...

This paper is based on arguments recently developed for the strategic importance of treating scientific work as "practical reasoning". Although it is not appropriate to repeat these arguments in full, it is worth recalling that "practical reasoning" is intended as a generic term for a variety of social processes whereby practitioners effect connect...

Contributors to this Special Issue were asked to investigate the topic of "representational practice in science." We did not require that the studies adopt a particular theory of representation, or follow a specific methodological approach. Nor did we specify a preference for the fields of scientific practice to be investigated. Contributors were a...

1st publ Bibliogr. na konci kapitol

Recent criticisms of work in the social study of science depend upon a misconception of the strategic theoretical significance of the notion of `discourse'. This arises because the earlier continental sense of `discourse' has been `anglicized'. The constitutive epistemology of French post-structuralism, which presumes a congruence between discourse...

The ethnographic study performed by Bruno Latour engaged him in the world of the scientific laboratory to develop an understanding of scientific culture through observations of their daily interactions and processes. Latour assumed a scientific perspective in his study; observing his participants with the "same cold, unblinking eye" that they use i...

In the light of the recent growth of artificial intelligence (AI), and of its implications for understanding human behaviour, this paper evaluates the prospects for an association between sociology and artificial intelligence. Current presumptions about the distinction between human behaviour and artificial intelligence are identified through a sur...

Recent explanations of social problems have increasingly adopted the "definitional" perspective. This paper provides a critical commentary on the form of sociological explanation common to this approach. Viewed as a practical accomplishment, both theoretical statements and empirical case studies manipulate a boundary, making certain phenomena probl...

Recent explanations of social problems have increasingly adopted the “definitional” perspective. This paper provides a critical commentary on the form of sociological explanation common to this approach. Viewed as a practical accomplishment, both theoretical statements and empirical case studies manipulate a boundary, making certain phenomena probl...