LangeMemo11

Kleinman and Vallas. (2001). 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? In recent years a subtle paradox has emerged among scholars studying knowledge work in different institutional domains. Some analysts. . . those studying scientists. . . in private industry see a trend towards increased levels of autonomy. . . while other analysts. . . concerned with the position of scientists working in university settings commonly make the opposite case (p.451). Existing literatures emphasize the conflict between academic norms and status conventions. . . and the imperatives of privately owned corporations. However, evidence suggests that there are important elements of congruence. . . (p.470). As knowledge-intensive firms come into closer contact with universities, and as university educated personnel increase in numbers, the educative component of work organizations expand in ways that spill over the traditionally narrow focus on company training (p.471).

2. What is the main argument of the text? The practices and labor regimes of academic and industrial scientists are converging; however, they are converging asymmetrically so that academic research is becoming more like industrial research than industrial research is to academic research.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. The argument is supported by a review of empirical studies of academic and industrial scientists, in logical analysis of the imperatives of economic production and knowledge production, and analysis of norms and practices in scientific research.

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. The text draws on and contributes to the new political sociology of science and laboratory studies in STS.

5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. The article illustrates one process by which economic forces change both the organizational culture and practices of scientists and engineers. I imagine comparing and contrasting this with my own findings.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing. The increasing influence of capitalism on scientific research, the importance of organizational cultures as bearers of this influence, and the reciprocal, if assymetrical, nature of this influence will all be of use to my analysis.

Bourdieu. (2004). 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? One of the central points on which I part company with all the analyses I have discussed is the concept of the field, which emphasizes the structures which orient scientific practices and whose efficacy os exerted at the micro-sociological level. . . (p.32). To summarize: the real principal of scientific practices is a system of largely unconscious, transposable, generative dispositions which tends to generalize itself (p.41). [C]onstructing a discipline may also be the objective of a collective undertaking of agents aiming to secure the economic and social means of achieving a. . . scientific project (p.68).

2. What is the main argument of the text?

Science should be conceptualized as a field of practice structured and constituted by distributions of symbolic capital, e.g. prestige, credibility among actors who compete to accumulate capital based on doxic rules and habitual dispositions. 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. Deconstruction of landmark SSK and ANT texts, examples from the history of science, and logical arguments drawing upon the philosophy of science.

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. The text draws on and contributes to critical sociological theory, philosophy of science, and STS literatures on scientific practice.

5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. The book provides a framework for understanding how social structure plays out in the micro-social areana of practice, which is part of what I hope to accomplish.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.

Ruess. (2008). 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? In assessing competing visions, opposing political desires, conflicting science, and often intangible cultural benefits and costs, public works engineers attempt to mediate the incommensurable. Their scale weighs cultural preferences, economic requirements, environmental protection, and various sociopolitical issues at all levels of government (p.533). Any analysis of engineering negotiations in the public works arena necessitates some modification of Scott’s high-modernist concept. . . successful engineering requires more than the application of scientific rationalization. Indeed, rather than pushing politics to the side, as high-modernist ideology prescribes, modern public works negotiations often place politics—meaning here the often conflicting relationships among social groups—squarely in the middle of any discussion about a project (p.444). Every engineer brings to negotiations a vision formed from experience, training, imagination, and cultural inferences. In the case of water projects, the vision usually involves transforming nature’s order into a second order that is publicly financed, serves a social need, and involves manipulation of a natural resource (p.446).

2. What is the main argument of the text? Engineers involved in water projects need to negotiate not only between governments, communities, and institutions but also between contradictor political and social values of modernity.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. The argument is supported by historical examples, critical discussion of Scott’s concept of High Modernism, and the authors own experience in the Army Corps of Engineers.

4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. The text draws on and contributes to the history of technology, STS of water, and James C. Scott’s work on high modernism. 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. The vision of water-related science and technology the article presents is very much unlike the one I foresee presenting. He sees engineers on these projects as much more committed to the public good than I find hydrologists to be in my cursory glance at the field thus far.

6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing. His example of the politics underlying the London drainage system will be a helpful comparission to data I collect.