Why+Now?

//“Even more than High Theory, what anarchism needs is what might be called Low Theory: a way of grappling with those real, immediate questions that emerge from a transformative project. Mainstream social science actually isn’t much help here, because normally in mainstream social science this sort of this is generally classified as ‘policy issues’ and no self-respecting anarchist would have anything to do with these.”// –David Graeber //Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology// P. 9

In the late 70s to early 90s two large social sciences, Sociology and Anthropology, experienced different but distinctly parallel shifts in subject and, subsequently, method. Sociology, a discipline established by Western nation-states to surveil emerging or quickly changing urban communities, began to “study up” and study the history of the Western movie genre (Wright 1977) or corporate boardrooms (Nader 1982). Anthropology, borne out of colonialist expansion, began to turn its gaze inward and study the cultures of labs (Latour and Woolgar 1979) and entire disciplines (Haraway 1990). Today, after an equally long transitionary period, not only are the subjects of both disciplines merging (e.g. most humans now live in metropolitan regions), but the disciplinary distinctions themselves are disappearing. This second shift (the first being from outward to inward) is promulgated by calls for papers and funding opportunities that emphasize or give preference to deeply interdisciplinary projects and constellation-style working groups.

More broadly, expertise itself is in crisis. The idea that extensive, institutionally credentialed experts are capable of solving complex problems, has paradoxically reached both its institutional zenith and cultural nadir. While governments and other powerful actors increasingly rely on experts and come to understand their populations through experts’ ways of knowing (Foucault and Foucault 2003) there is also severe skepticism and cynicism over whether or not experts see the “full picture” in any given controversy (Wynne 1996; Durant 2008; Wynne 2008; Hess 2011). Indeed, the very definition of an expert is in contestation (Collins and Evans 2002; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Moore 2006). Emerging from this tumult is a resurgence of local activism meant to help citizens understand or better collaborate around problems of the built environment and environmental hazards. This movement, which is characterized by DIY, maker culture, craftivism, and independent media has a distinctly democratic flavor. They are responses to and examples of the highly contestable spaces and positions of legitimacy and expertise.

It makes little sense then, to expect social scientists’ existing methodological tool kits and institutional arrangements to be sufficient for carrying out 21st century social science. Praxis-based methods such as critical making (Ratto 2011), reflective design (Sengers et al. 2005), critical technical practice (Agre 1997) and participatory action research (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005) are promising starts for a new social science. The “knowing-by-doing” approach also requires new institutional arrangements that value different deliverables, (re)organize knowledge work, and reconsider basic pedagogical assumptions. For those scientists seeking to patent services and products, or aid the military-industrial apparatus, the recent changes in academic institutions have been good (Slaughter and Rhoades 2009). For those academics interested in social justice and critiques of capitalism, the radical reorganization of the western academy has not been nearly as productive. This dissertation gestures toward an equally radical shift in the opposite direction of “mode 2” (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000) university arrangements.


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