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Item Science, Technology & Innovation Studies Special Issue 1, July 2006(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Meister, Martin; Schulz-Schaeffer, Ingo; Böschen, Stefan; Gläser, Jochen; Strübing, JörgItem The Situated Materiality of Scientific Practices(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Wehling, PeterFor about 20 years, a rather wide range of conceptual approaches to the social study of science and technology have emerged which have occasionally been labelled "postconstructivist". Although these conceptions differ in various respects, they have in common a twofold opposition: against traditional representationalist realism as well as "classical" social constructivism established by the "sociology of scientific knowledge" (SSK). In order to escape the pitfalls of both these views (and to overcome the familiar, yet unfruitful opposition between them), postconstructivist perspectives understand and study the sciences primarily in term of their situated material and discursive practices. The present article starts with a brief retrospect on why and how since the mid-1980s postconstructivist trends have questioned not only rationalist and realist accounts but also the conceptual foundations and background assumptions of SSK s claim to explain sociologically the content of science. Subsequently, the central features of a postconstructivist perspective in science studies are outlined, referring to the key concepts of "knowledge", "practice", and "performativity". The fruitfulness of a theoretical approach focusing on scientific practices is illustrated using the example of the increasingly important issue of scientific non-knowledge: In the same way that knowledge is not to be comprehended as simply the mental "possession" of a knower, non-knowledge is not merely the lack thereof but an (unrecognised) implication of materially and socially situated research practices. Finally, it is emphasised that postconstructivist science studies should not be misunderstood as claiming (as do realism and constructivism) to provide a meta-theoretical explanation or legitimation of science. Instead, postconstructivism should be conceived as a situated critical effort to challenge one-sided accounts of scientific knowledge and foster more self-reflective research practices.Item The Politics of "Actor-Network Theory"(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Berker, ThomasThis text discusses controversies surrounding theoretical, practical, and political implications of "actor-network theory" ("ANT"). Since its inception around 1980, "ANT" has been applied in an immense number of empirical studies, both within and outside the field of science and technology studies. But it was also rejected as radical chic without substance and/or as theoretically and politically unacceptable in perhaps as many instances as it was accepted. Implicit in both the application and critique of "ANT" is the assumption that it can be treated as a "black-boxed" set of notions and rules containing certain strengths and weaknesses. Proposing to treat black-boxed "ANT" as useful provocation, I discuss what this kind of "ANT" can and cannot do for me in my own empirical research on energy efficiency in buildings. In the second part of the text I turn from "black boxed" and well-defined "ANT" to "ANT in the making". In recent and ongoing work Bruno Latour, John Law, Annemarie Mol, Vicky Singleton, and others (in alphabetic order) answer to critiques of "ANT"s" political implications. The authors share an interest in the development of a non-essentialist foundation of politics, which neither turns into crude functionalism nor into hollow relativism. Concluding this text, two of the proposals made here, "political ecology" and "ontological politics", are compared and discussed in the context of my own research.Item Deliberative Constructivism(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Krohn, WolfgangThe paper proposes to expand the constructivist view from empirical analysis to pragmatic advice. Its main thesis is: The fact that methods and concepts in the production of knowledge and standards for justifying truth claims are culturally bound does not preclude these bonds from being observed and also controlled and adjusted. Knowledge work imports scientific methods and concepts into virtually all segments of society. Whether knowledge is well manufactured and trustworthy is no longer the sole concern of scientific communities but of clients, stakeholder groups, political bodies, and other actors. The paper begins with reconsidering the symmetry principle of the Strong Programme from a methodological point of view. It argues that excluding justified beliefs from the realm of independent variables is unwarranted. Even if it is impossible to introduce truth as a cause, it is possible to accept justifications of beliefs as causes. In a second line of analysis, this paper explores that the concept of cultural relativity of knowledge has an internal instability. Every lesson in cultural relativism is a lesson in designing cognitive strategies to transcend it. The better the social construction of scientific knowledge is understood and even causally explained, the better reflexive abstraction opens up possibilities to operate with this causality and loosen or tighten the cultural bonds. Examples demonstrate that crossing established boundaries and aiming at higher degrees of cultural independency are as meaningful as value based restrictions to smaller domains. It is in this context that constructivism has a future as a frame for deliberative forms of knowledge construction and justification.Item Three Forms of Interpretative Flexibility(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Meyer, Uli; Schulz-Schaeffer, IngoInterpretative flexibility is a central concept of social constructivism in science and technology studies. We think this concept, as it exists, can and should be elaborated. In this paper, we argue that interpretative flexibility can be traced back to three different forms of infinite regress: the regress of truth, the regress of usefulness, and the regress of relevance. Resulting from this analysis, we observe three different forms of interpretative flexibility. We will show that in controversies or debates concerning the meaning of certain scientific facts, technological artefacts or research approaches, concurrently or consecutively more than one of these different forms of interpretative flexibility may play a part. With this reconceptualisation of interpretative flexibility, we hope to contribute to a more elaborate understanding of the dynamics of the social construction of scientific facts and technological artefacts.Item The Topicality of the Difference Thesis(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Merz, MartinaWithin science and technology studies, constructivism has never existed as a single variant but under alternative interpretations. In this article it is argued that the different variants have maintained their topicality in unequal measure. It focuses on two variants of constructivism: The first emphasizes the isomorphism of scientific and other practices and insists that there are no epistemic particularities in scientific knowledge production ('analogy approach'); the second accounts for the success of contemporary science by relating it to the specifics of scientific laboratories ('difference approach'). In this paper it is argued that the second variant can provide a set of challenging research problems that have not, to date, been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The problems center on the relation between laboratories and contexts of application, as well as on the concept of the laboratory and its possible extensions. In contrast, the issues associated with the analogy approach have been well explored in previous bodies of work. This article develops a research agenda for a constructivist account of knowledge production that may be employed within other discourses in the social sciences.sItem Introduction(Technische Universität Dortmund, 2006-07) Schulz-Schaeffer, Ingo; Böschen, Stefan; Gläser, Jochen; Meister, Martin; Strübing, JörgConstructivism has become the overarching scientific paradigm in the social study of science and technology (STS). The notion that scientific facts and technological artefacts result from processes of social construction is the major scientific innovation of the preceding decades in the sociology of science and technology. With constructivism being the established paradigm in this field of research: what comes next? What comes after constructivism in science and technology studies? The contributions of this special issue of Science, Technology & Innovation Studies suggest different answers to these questions which can roughly be subsumed under the three headings 'Spelling out Constructivism', 'Adding Disregarded Aspects', and 'Going beyond Constructivism'.