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In this response to Ribeiro and Lima’s paper on interactional expertise, we argue that, by not incorporating the insights of constructivist social science, their analysis goes backwards rather than advancing the debate. We show that much of the evidence they present does not lead to the conclusions they draw. We also critically examine the idea of physical contiguity, which forms a central part of Ribeiro and Lima’s position. We show that its meaning is ambiguous. We conclude by suggesting that more research on the nature and influence of physical contiguity would be interesting in its own right but that it would not bear on the notion of interactional expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the evidence for the claim of an ‘ontological turn’ in science and technology studies (STS). Despite an increase in references to ‘ontology’ in STS since 1989, we show that there has not so much been an ontological turn as multiple discussions deploying the language of ontology, consisting of many small movements that have changed the landscape within STS and beyond. These movements do not point to a shared STS-wide understanding of ontology, although it can be seen that they do open up STS to neighbouring disciplines. Three main thematic complexes are identified in this literature: constructivism and realism; instruments and classification; and the social sciences and the humanities. The introduction of ontology into the long-running constructivism-realism debate can be considered as an acknowledgement on both sides that objects are real (i.e. pre-existing the situation) and constructed at the same time. The second thematic complex focuses on the role of instruments and classification in establishing not only relations of heterogeneity, but also of stability. The third thematic complex broadens the debate and actively seeks to promote an STS-driven ontological turn for research concerned with the humanities and the social sciences more generally. This study is based on both quantitative and qualitative interpretations of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to encourage an ethos of care in the study of science and technology. It starts with a reading of Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘matters of concern’ as favouring an awareness of the ethico-political effects of constructivist accounts in STS. Introducing attention to concern brings us closer to a notion of care. However, there is a ‘critical’ edge to care that Latour’s politics of things tends to disregard. Drawing upon feminist knowledge politics, I propose to treat matters of fact and sociotechnical assemblages as ‘matters of care’ and argue that engaging with care requires a speculative commitment to neglected things. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Constructivism's founding assumptions are being questioned by its proponents and opponents in a quest for alternatives to, or refined forms of, that theoretical approach. This paper suggests that such questioning may indicate that science and technology studies (S&TS) is ready to reconsider another approach based on Heideggerian phenomenology. Some innovators and innovation scholars appear ready to move on to this alternative approach to knowledge. They seem to have opened to the Heideggerian alternative by confronting the practical inadequacies of orthodox science and engineering. This paper suggests that S&TS is facing a similar confrontation with the inadequacies of constructivism's founding assumptions. The alternative approach explored involves a partnership with 'Being' that decentres the subject, but without resorting to heterogeneous agency or to realism. This partnership is based on understanding the implications of the interplay between 'Being' granting and withholding knowledge. This paper suggests that S&TS may now be ready to look at this interplay as an alternative to people constructing knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author comments on the article "Science As Culture: A View From the Petri Dish," by Jay A. Labinger, published in this issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science." The author discusses on the scientific and cultural aspects of collaboration and scandal. According to the author, Labinger's views are well intended and well-documented discussion of social studies of science which invites intellectuals to reconsider their treatments of science and scientists. He objects to how earlier studies often place scientists in the role of specimens. The author thinks that Labinger, through no fault of his own, fails to recognize the extent to which the collaboration he advocates between practitioners and analysts already is a substantial part of the science studies field. The problem is that it has been buried under the polemics of the realist-constructivist debate. Collaborations of the sort that Labinger seems to have in mind are well underway, although less in science studies than in the related field of technology studies.

In the article, the author presents a response to Peter Taylor's article commenting on the author's article "Some Social Constructions," published in the August 1993 issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science." According to the author, Taylor questions the value of the author's disambiguation of the multiple uses of the "construction" metaphor. The author distinguished the construction of social objects through widespread acceptance of them, the construction of knowledge from fixed conceptual, material, and cultural points, the material construction of artifacts, and the neo-Kantian construction of properties and other worldly features. He assessed that Taylor would counter his analysis with two things. First, he might adopt an approach one might call "heterogeneous constructivism," a category that includes thinking about actor-networks, ecologies of knowledge, intersecting social worlds, and the like. Second, Taylor wants to add the idea of co-construction, whereby science helps to make material reality, social reality and knowledge match. through processes of mutual adjustment and reinforcement.

In the article, the author comments on Sergio Sismondo's comment article, titled, "Some Social Constructions," published in the August 1993 issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science." Many of us are interested in the processes of science in the making, in which scientific theories, materials, tools, language, institutions and wider social relations are being co-constructed, and are trying to analyze the diverse "resources" drawn upon by agents in such co-construction processes. Sismondo's classification makes little space for that strand of social studies of science, focusing as it does on the type of thing being produced, not the processes of their production. This response, however, does not criticize Sismondo just for the omission of a major category of constructivism, but argues that, from the perspective of what is omitted, his classification scheme breaks down. The distinctions do not hold in practice, and Sismondo's conclusions about reconciling social studies of science with philosophy and about politics are not justified.

The article focuses on the response given by the author to an article on constructivism, written by Karin Knorr Cetina. Cetina rightly points out that constructivism studies of science have an ambivalent relation to philosophy of science, on one hand they "take the question and run," leaving philosophical methods behind and on the other hand constructivist authors attempt to compare their work to, and justify it with respect to, those same methods and presupposition. Cetina agrees that scientific knowledge is sometimes pragmatically successful, that it seems to account for what one sees, at least in the laboratory. Cetina asks about the author's motivations for engaging in this type of philosophical discussion of constructivism, for apparently trying to reconcile social studies of science philosophy. Cetina points out that the author is not alone constructivist. When trying to understand what is right about constructivism, the author prefers pluralism to nominalism or idealism.

The article focuses on sociologist Sergio Sismondo's paper on constructivism. Sismondo's paper puts into focus disagreements and differences in understanding between those who have been associated with constructivism and those who are not. In defining ontology as part of historical experience, constructivism makes a characteristic shift, it takes a philosophical question or concept and reconstructs it within the domain of empirical analysis and theory. Constructivism owns many questions to philosophy, a fact picked up very well in Sismomdo's paper. What is often less understood is that, for constructivist studies, what is important and what is not just the question, it is the shift. In other words, these studies display mentality towards philosophical concepts, and it is where they run to and how they reformulated the issue that account for their own interest. Sismondo misconstrues the thesis that the world is a consequence, rather than merely a precondition, of scientific accounts. This is the sense in which he makes it appear as if the material world were an automatic consequence of scientific knowledge.

It is usually assumed that the 'social construction' metaphor has one key meaning that is well understood across social studies of science. But a look at some of the texts that were, and are, central to introducing and defining 'social construction' in science studies shows that there are widely varying uses of the metaphor: processes of construction differ with the types of objects that can be constructed. This paper identifies four prominent interpretations that have led to interesting insights and discussions. Though these different social constructions have generally been fused together in science studies, they are easily separable, and should be separated, since they are not equally tenable. In particular, 'neo-Kantian' or 'idealist' constructivism has weak arguments supporting it and, contrary to the standard rhetoric, is the leas important of these different constructivisms to most of the actual work done in social studies of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses normative reflexions on constructivist approaches to science and technology. Systematic and fundamental thinking on normative, or normatively relevant, questions is virtually absent in the highly influential constructivist studies of science and technology. The article after reviewing and assessing the role of normativity and reflexivity, in so far as it has been acknowledged within constructivism, presents a number of normative reflexions. Three general approaches--social constructivism, ethnography and actor-network theory--are analyzed in detail. The main themes of these analytical and critical reflexions are: missing issues, locality, relativism, the winner's perspective, and technoscientific success. It turns out that constructivist views concerning these themes have a number of normatively questionable consequences. These consequences can be avoided if certain constructivist assumptions, which are empirically unwarranted or unnecessary anyway, are rejected. Instead, some constructive alternatives are proposed for a social study of science and technology that is both empirically adequate and normatively satisfactory. These alternatives concern the significance of non-local patterns. They do not imply a return to the often simplistic, universal schemes that have been put forward so many times by philosophers of science and technology.

The article focuses on the role of shared knowledge in science. A new, self-conscious trend in the sociology of science has recently arisen which holds that everything in science, from would-be observational statements to the most recondite and abstract theories as human and social, are subsumable under sociological explanations. Two approaches can be distinguished within the relativist sociology of science. One focuses on the process of negotiation on the macro level and studies the formation of scientific consensus through publications. A second, more recent tendency has shifted its interest to the micro level and studies the formation of scientific knowledge in the laboratory. Philosophers and sociologists of science have traditionally underscored the role of scientific consensus in guiding scientific research. Sociologist Karin D. Knorr-Cetina argues that a scientist is always in a situation of indeterminacy. According to constructivist thesis, the itinerary from the initial situation to the final scientific product is plastered with a series of selections or choices which the scientist is constantly required to make.