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4. Social Studies of Knowledge
- NYU Press
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4 Social Studies of Knowledge The Sociology ifScientific Knowledge The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK, sometimes also called social studies of knowledge or the new sociology of science) focuses on the content of science. "Content" refers to theories, methods, design choices, and other technical aspects of science and technology, in contrast with institutional or contextual aspects such as those reviewed in the previous chapter. Karin Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay use the term "methodological internalism" to describe the focus on content or the study of how "the 'internal' practices of the scientific enterprise constitute the focus of inquiry" (1983: 6). Their choice of terminology, however, may be confused with the internalismlexternalism debate in the history ofscience, and it has not been widely used. Sometimes the study of content is described as "opening the black box" (Whitley 1972). In science a black box is any device for which the input and output are specified but the internal mechanisms are not. SSK advocates have accused the institutional sociology of science of leaving the black box of content unopened and examining only the exogenous, institutional aspects of science and technology. Opening the black box and studying the content of science sociologically has been very controversial. From a philosophical perspective, some SSK analyses are philosophically incoherent and mired in epistemological relativism. From a critical science and technology studies perspective, the content ofthe sociology ofscientific knowledge is itself a black box that needs to be examined. For example, in the essay "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty" (1993), Langdon Winner argues that the sociology ofscientific knowledge failed to explore the political content inside the black box. This issue is taken up better by the feminist and critical wings of STS, which, I argue, open red, pink, purple, brown, and other kinds of boxes. Those studies will be considered in the next chapter. One way of characterizing the social study of the content of science and 81 82 Social Studies ofKnowledge technology is with the rubric "constructivism." In a very wide sense, the term can designate any social studies approach that attempts to trace the way in which social interests, values, history, actions, institutions, networks, and so on shape, influence, structure, cause, explain, inform, characterize, or coconstitute the content of science and technology. Note that this very general definition of constructivism does not necessarily imply any of the relativisms discussed in chapter 2. One can analyze the social factors that influence the content of scientific knowledge or technological design and yet also conclude that the constraints of observations or efficacy (the real world) play an equal or greater shaping role in what eventually becomes the consensus. As I have argued in chapter 2, it is possible to distinguish conservative, moderate, and radical forms of constructivism in the context ofphilosophical debates over relativism. In the context of social studies of science and technology, however, I will suggest another set of distinguishing terms: social constructivism, heterogeneous constructivism, and cultural constructivism . The terms represent three analytical frameworks for empirical social studies of the relationship between the social world and the content of science and technology. The two axes of constructivism-philosophical and social studies-do not map onto each other in a simple way. Instead one might think of the three types of philosophical constructivism and the three types of social studies constructivism as an x and a y axis, with a variety of combinations possible. For those who are more attuned to the sociology of scientific knowledge , the term "social constructivism" is sometimes restricted to the laboratory studies and perhaps a few other branches of SSK. This definition implies that some branches of SSK, such as the Edinburgh school interests analyses, are excluded from the term "social constructivism." However, because the Edinburgh school studies attempted to delineate lines ofcausality from class and professional interests to the content ofscience understood as sides of a controversy, they were concerned with the social construction of knowledge. I therefore use the term "social constructivism" more broadly to refer to studies that treat the social world as an exogenous, independent variable that shapes or causes some aspects of the content of science and technology. A variety of SSK frameworks therefore would fall under the banner of "social constructivism." Social constructivism, particularly some of the laboratory studies, is sometimes associated with epistemological and ontological relativism. Nevertheless, it would be possi- [18.234.165.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:50 GMT) Sodal Studies ofKnowledge 83 ble to adopt a social...