The social construction of nature

1. The social construction of nature D. Gruber Ch. 6 - Sismondo

2. What does “construction” mean here? • In an STS context, social construction refers to “scientists and engineers constructing accounts, models, and theories on a basis of data into representations.” • Science makes patterns appear given the “fixed” points of data. p. 63, sismondo

3. Social construction means… • “The world corresponds to agreement, not the other way around…” “When engineers create agreement on what the most efficient solution to a problem is, they literally make the solution the most efficient one.” p. 68, Sismondo

4. Consider some stories from your Golem book. • How did the theory of relativity become real? • How did the chemical transfer of memory become not real?

5. So what’s “real”??? • Does saying nature is “constructed” mean nature is not “real”?

6. On becoming “real” • To say that these objects [methods, facts, etc.] are socially constructed in this [STS] sense is to say that they are real social objects, though contingently real. • Claims, facts, knowledge do not just spring into existence. Scientists are not passive and neither are reviewers and editors.

7. On becoming “real” *But there is a world out there, right?! Yes, scientists are testing something and working with material in the world, but SCOST is pointing out that they are building from prior beliefs and from constructed representations and from interpretations subject to negotiation and argument even as no single data set has no single “natural-kind” interpretation and even while data is always underdetermined. This is why STS takes, to some extent, a “construction” view.

8. Q: So… how do things transform into (social) “realities” • One answer: Things become real as they are “apprehended” as objectivated reality and as people respond to those things and on-goingly produce the reality. • Berger and Luckman (1966) argue that X becomes independent of a particular social actor or becomes “real” when there is a transmission of X and people heed X such that it “cannot be wished away.”

9. So… how do things transform into (social) “realities” • Bruno Latour understands the process a bit differently. He argues that scientists and technologists need to “combine raw materials, skills, knowledge, and capital, and to do this they must enroll any number of actors” (p. 65). By constructing “networks” of “actors” scientists (everybody/thing!) gets work done and orders and re-orders the world.

10. The world as heterogeneous collections of actors (Actor-Networks) • Actors need other actors to do things. • For example, what other actors did you use to construct the literature review?