Trevor Pinch

Cornell University | CU · Department of Science and Technology Studies

The chapter presents the early years and the subsequent developments of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), starting from the School of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Strong Programme advanced by David Bloor, introducing its four tenets: symmetry, impartiality, causality, and reflexivity. After presenting the main works done in Laboratory Stu...

The final chapter of the book discusses Trevor Pinch’s more recent works, and addresses three main topics. The first one is the topic of selling, on which the author returns after the mid ‘80s works on market selling. The primary focus is now on the skills and knowledge involved in the practices of selling. In particular, the chapter addresses the...

The chapter addresses the popularization of the main acquisitions of social constructionist sociology in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), done by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch in the volumes of their Golem trilogy, dedicated respectively to science, technology and medicine. The polemical target of the trilogy, the "flip-flop" und...

The chapter focuses on the Social Construction of Technology approach (SCOT) by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, introducing the reader to its initial formulation (1984), and to the subsequent extensions – and sometimes reformulations – elaborated in more than 30 year of empirical research. It first clarifies how the Empirical Programme of Relativism...

Based on several rounds of academic interview and conversations with Trevor Pinch, the book introduces the reader to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and in particular to the social constructionist approach to science, technology and sound. Through the lenses of Pinch’s lifetime work, STS students, and scholars in fields dealing w...

This paper presents an ethnographic investigation of the electronic music practice of circuit-bending. It argues that circuit-benders use sonic skills in rendering desirable sounds from old, discarded and broken devices. The paper is based upon the author’s own experiences with bent and broken circuits and upon interviews with circuit-benders. The...

This paper addresses the trend towards sociomateriality in the social sciences generally and management and organization studies specifically with a critique of two main approaches: affordances and scripts. We suggest that if sociomateriality is to be more than a fashion and become an enduring lens through which to understand social phenomena, it n...

Can a dramaturgical analysis of sales encounters further our understanding of the social organization of selling and buying in contemporary markets? The main argument of this paper is that limiting economic action in markets to the formal and often stylized and abstract properties of the exchange, as economists suggest, misses the material and soci...

In this paper I examine Harry Collins's influential writing on tacit knowledge. In particular I turn my attention to his recent book, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge [Collins 2010], or TEK, which is arguably the most complete and systematic statement of what he means by the term "tacit knowledge". As well as examining tacit knowledge as elaborated in...

In this paper, which is based on secondary material as well as new and primary material, we present and analyze the visit that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein undertook to Ithaca, NY in the summer of 1949. During the visit Wittgenstein met with Norman Malcolm, his host, and also with a number of other philosophers. He also participated in the Philo...

This paper addresses the trend towards sociomateriality in the social sciences generally and management and organization studies specifically with a critique of two main approaches: affordances and scripts. We suggest that if sociomateriality is to be more than a fashion and become an enduring lens through which to understand social phenomena, it n...

This paper elaborates on the Golem metaphor as a way of understanding uncertainty in science. Its implications for the ethics of communicating science are explored. KeywordsScience and Technology Studies (S&TS)-sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK)-the Golem-two culture controversy

In this brief commentary, I suggest Selinger and Whyte are essentially correct in their criticism of the Nudge approach advocated by Thaler and Sunstein. I use some examples from road behavior and traffic planning to amplify the criticism that the simple behavioral economics approach fails to take account of the embedding of humans and technology i...

Erving Goffman is not usually thought of as sociologist of technology. In this paper I argue that Goffman's early studies are replete with materiality and technologies. By paying more attention to mundane and invisible technologies, such as merry-go-rounds, surgical instruments, and doors, I argue that Goffman's interaction order can be shown to be...

Using the author's own experiences in local politics, the paper examines several cases in which pieces of mundane infrastructure are contested. The cases include eruvs, traffic-calming technologies, and invisible dog fences. The argument is that in contra distinction to abstract philosophical approaches to technology, the social construction of tec...

This paper is intended as a contribution to the sociology of skill. Research which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. Second-order studies of skill accept that skill acqui...

This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its f...

A creature of Jewish mythology, a golem is an animated being made by man from clay and water who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his ignorance. Like science and technology, the subjects of Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's previous volumes, medicine is also a golem, and this Dr. Golem should not be blamed for its mistakes—they are...

The personal archive is not only about efficient storage and retrieval of information. This paper describes a study of forty-eight academics and the techniques and tools they use to manage their digital and material archiving of papers, emails, documents, internet bookmarks, correspondence, and other artifacts. We present two sets of results: we fi...

This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom-built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several leading ecommerce sites (primarily Amazon.com). We explore several cases in which book and CD reviews were copied in...

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Commercial Applications of the Internet, published in July 2006. This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom–built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at se...

The debate surrounding the introduction of new musical instruments is examined as a way to elicit norms underlying musical practice and culture. The paper details the introduction of three twentieth century instruments: the player piano, the "noise instruments" of the futurists and the electronic music synthesizer. The responses to these new instru...

A B S T R A C T Detailed examination of audio recordings of business-to-business `field-sales' encounters are used to report one way in which salespeople elicit verbal expressions of affiliation from their prospective customers — by reciprocating second assessments which affiliate with, trade off and build on prospects' own assessments. This articl...

Technology and Culture 43.2 (2002) 361-369 We welcome the opportunity offered by the editor of T&C to engage in this debate. As well as addressing specific questions raised by Nick Clayton we hope to move the discussion forward by focusing in particular upon the role of theoretical concepts in the history of technology. Clayton criticizes our accou...

This paper evaluates Hunt and Bashaw's two-dimensional classification of sales resistance into “objections” and “counterarguments.” We use data of real-life selling encounters to show that there often is an “implicit” phase of sales resistance that problematizes both the distinction and the effectiveness of Hunt and Bashaw's analysis of objections...

This paper evaluates Hunt and Bashaw's two-dimensional classification of sales resistance into “objections” and “counterarguments.” We use data of real-life selling encounters to show that there often is an “implicit” phase of sales resistance that problematizes both the distinction and the effectiveness of Hunt and Bashaw's analysis of objections...

This paper elaborates on the golem metaphor as a way of understanding uncertainty in science. Its implications for the ethics of communicating science are explored.

In the very successful and widely discussed first volume in the Golem series, The Golem: What You Should Know about Science, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch likened science to the Golem, a creature from Jewish mythology, a powerful creature which, while not evil, can be dangerous because it is clumsy. in this second volume, the authors now consider...

In this paper, we support the validity of drawing from science studies to reshape science education. While true educational reform must involve alternative curricular structures, we stress that we do not propose here either a comprehensive curricular framework or a report on a pilot classroom project, as our research perspective comes from science...

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch liken science to the Golem, a creature from Jewish mythology, powerful yet potentially dangerous, a gentle, helpful creature that may yet run amok at any moment. Through a series of intriguing case studies the authors debunk the traditional view that science is the straightforward result of competent theorisation, obs...

Continuing our occasional series of `Historic Papers', inaugurated in the February 1996 issue, we are reprinting here a paper by Trevor Pinch, originally published in the 4S Newsletter, Vol.7, No.1 (Spring 1982), 10-25. It was not widely noticed at the time, and is now difficult to locate. In the shadow of our tributes to Thomas Kuhn, we thought it...

In this paper we invesigate a common locus of consumer decision-making in buyer-seller interactions—customer non-acceptances to a proposed sale and the verbal negotiations that often ensue. The research is based on a study of recordings of real-life telephone-selling calls. In this study the prospective customers often raised their nonacceptances i...

The early stages of the cold fusion controversy are reviewed. It is shown how ideas in the sociology of scientific knowledge such as “symmetry,”; “interpretative flexibility,”; and “experimenter's regress”; are applicable to the controversy. It is argued that there is nothing exceptional about the dynamics of the debate, apart from the media attent...

This response to a recent article in ST&HV by Woolgar ("The Turn to Technology in Social Studies of Science") investigates Woolgar's concept of analytic ambivalence. The response points out how this notion originates in a formula applied to social problems research and how this formula is used as the basis for Woolgar's critique of work in the soci...

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This article explores testing as research site in the sociology of technology. A fully generalizable analysis is offered of testing in terms of a notion of projection. Prospective, current, and retrospective testing are identified The article is illustrated with examples of testing a clinical budgeting system in the United Kingdom National Health S...

This lecture traces the theme of opening black boxes in the sociology of science. It is argued that now sociologists have got inside the black box of science, they need to make more impact upon the conduct of areas of science. The issue of what makes for `heroes' and `villains' within science is considered by tracing different styles of science. Tw...

In this paper we analyze recordings of the Mock Auction sales con and describe the various rhetorical and performative strategies employed by the seller/deceiver to accomplish sales success. Two features that distinguish this con from others are that sales are obtained from a crowd of shoppers and that the victims rarely complain after they have be...

How certain are we that we understand the working of a technology? In this paper I attempt to raise some of the issues posed by technical uncertainty for social scientists in their treatment of large technical systems. Such issues are always present, but they become most salient when systems undergo failure. As a way into the discussion, I will foc...

Clinical budgeting systems are increasingly being introduced into the British National Health Service. This paper examines in some detail the testing of one particular budgeting system. It discusses the aims, execution and evaluation of the test. The paper is written as a play partly for reasons of clarity and entertainment but also and, more serio...

The paper which follows takes the form of a dialogue between a sociological voice and an unidentified, questioning voice. The two voices explore some of the tasks involved in, and difficulties generated by, the attempt to apply social science to practical issues. The discussion focuses on the area of health economics and, particularly, on recent ef...

Health economists see their practice as the application of economics to the field of human health. One of the forms that the practical application of health economics takes is the attempt to persuade professionals in health care to accept and implement economists' recommendations for changes in their practice. This paper examines one such attempt b...

One of the most striking features of the growth of "science studies" in recent years has been the separation of science from technology. Sociological studies of new knowledge in science abound, as do studies of technological innovation, but thus far there has been little attempt to bring such bodies of work together.1 It may well be the case that s...