Epistemic+Cultures

Annotation Epistemic Cultures

1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?

“Magnifying this aspect of science – not its production of knowledge but its epistemic machinery – reveals the fragmentation of contemporary science; it displays different architectures of empirical approaches, specific constructions of the referent, particular ontologies of instruments, and different social machines. In other words, it brings out the //diversity// of epistemic cultures.” (3)

“In a knowledge society, exclusive definitions of expert settings and social settings – and their respective cultures – are theoretically no longer adequate; this is why the study of knowledge settings becomes a goal in the attempts to understand not only science and expertise but also the type of society that runs on knowledge and expertise. Epistemic cultures are the cultures of knowledge settings, and these appear to be a structural feature of knowledge societies.” (8)

“What this boils down to, I think, is the creation of alternate object worlds within which one can reapply laboratory principles and continue substantive work. One creates, and works with, a proliferation of object levels that stand in relation to one another, not with a proliferation of levels of social authority through hierarchy or other means. This sort of structure is a sort of unfolding applied to object worlds and to some degree to reality levels rather than to the objects themselves.
 * R:** Are you suggesting that this also characterizes knowledge societies?
 * KK:** It might, might it not? The point is that the alternate worlds of working don’t reduce to one level, they do not swallow each other up; you have a form of expansion or supplementation that unsticks whole systems by taking detours into other systems, which one creates and uses.” (244-245)

2. What is the main argument of the text?

“This book is about epistemic cultures: those amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms – bonded through affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence – which, in a given field, make up //how we know what we know.// Epistemic cultures are cultures that create and warrant knowledge, and the premier knowledge institution throughout the world is, still, science.” (1)

“**P:** It’s like saying the collider produces the big Z mass which of course it doesn’t. The Z mass is what it is.
 * KK:** Right. Mhm.” (271n1)

//Epistemic Cultures// is Karin Knorr-Cetina’s attempt to establish a new vocabulary for speaking about knowledge, knowledge making practices, and the machineries making knowledge making practices, based on the principles of the social constructivist programme. The main concept she introduces is that of “epistemic cultures.” This is a way of speaking about what have traditionally been referred to as ‘disciplines’ or ‘scientific specialties.’ Epistemic cultures have technical, social, and symbolic dimensions which are mutually constitutive and tightly intertwined. KKC argues that looking at science as a landscape of different epistemic cultures reveals the great diversity and disunity that exists. The concept of epistemic cultures is meant to be able to deal with the changing nature of knowledge production in the transition of society to a ‘knowledge society’. In a knowledge society, knowledge becomes a productive force, similar to capital, labor, or natural resource, rather than a product of one. Epistemic cultures, because they require looking at the ways in which knowledge itself is created, are suited to understanding science through this change in modern society. //Epistemic Cultures// focuses on microsociological interactions between scientists, their theories, and their instrumentation to explain how large experiments, organizations, and social norms arise. For the most part, her discussion remains internal to laboratories, bringing in the outside only as a broad structure of constraints and occasional inputs. This is shown most clearly in her description of epistemic cultures as ‘epistemic monopolies’ operating within the landscape or market of science.

3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.

The chapters of this book explain KKC’s theoretical framework while tracing the differences between the epistemic cultures of high-energy physics and molecular biology. In Chapter 2, KKC challenges the conventional notion of the laboratory as physical space where experiments take place. Instead, she argues that we should think of the laboratory as constituted by a set of social, technological, and epistemic objects which are configured differently in different sciences. Laboratories reconfigure both natural and social orders. They discipline natural phenomena to make them more amenable to social order, and simultaneously discipline the ‘social’ order to fit the ‘natural’. In one of her examples, she discusses how the objects of investigation in astronomy changed from a ‘field’ science to a ‘benchtop’ science through the introduction of imaging technologies (photographic film and CCDs). Her other example, from Foucault, shows how the shift from medical practice from the home visit to the clinic changed the relationship between doctors and patients. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss how HEP focuses on negative and reflexive epistemics, while MB uses an object-oriented epistemic. In KKC’s usage, ‘epistemics’ are strategies and practices assumed to promote the ‘truth-like’ character of results. In HEP, signs derived from detectors and experimental instrumentation are gradually made into truth by allying with the limits of knowledge. Correction factors derived from intimate knowledge of the limits of the detector are applied to results to increase their accuracy. Knowledge of limits reinforces positive knowledge. The reflexive epistemic is presented via Foucault’s ‘care of the self’, where the ‘self’ refers to the detector collaboration as a whole. Self-understanding refers to an deep understanding of how the detector behaves. Self-observation is the constant monitoring and surveillance of the detector and its condition in all aspects. Self-description is the care for the recording of the history of the detector, such as logbooks, printouts, and calibration files, making knowledge available to be re-integrated into experimental work. Object-oriented epistemics in MB focus on “maximizing contact with the empirical world.” (79) There is a continuous engagement with ‘real’ phenomena. Compared to the sign-oriented work in HEP, MB is concerned with natural and quasi-natural objects which exist in the lab. The difference between them is clearly seen in how the two cultures deal with problems. When an issue arises with experiments in HEP, physicists obsessively pursue the causes of the error and try to understand it. In MB, they operate under what KKC calls ‘blind variation and natural selection.’ That is, when a problem arises, they experiment, changing their technique or work process seemingly at random but actually informed by the unconscious bodily knowledge of the researcher, until the ‘right’ answer comes out. Chapters 5 and 6 compare HEP and MB in the way they see their objects of investigation. KKC argues that HEP turns machines into organisms, while MB tends to think of organisms as machines. The chapters begin with a critique of Durkheimian explanations for primitive classification. They show instead that the classifications in each science are due to the material and social orders present in each laboratory setting, mediated by symbols. Subject and object, social order and natural order, and the parts in relation to the whole, rearrange each other. In the HEP case, she describes how physics working on detector experiments describe their detectors in human terms. They can ‘suffer from diseases’, ‘alive’ or ‘dead’, and ‘aging.’ They can also ‘co-operate’ and ‘consult’ with each other, or ‘behave’ or ‘act up’. The physicists treat their detector as a complex organism that has a life of its own. Other parts of their experiment are similarly treated as alive. Errors and background need to be ‘killed’. They act mischievously fooling the physicists and ‘mimicking’ interesting phenomena. Sometimes, the physicists simply need to learn to ‘live with’ the background, to co-exist with the enemy. (126) In MB, she shows how molecular biologists laboratory practices, biological materiality, and epistemic machinery fold into each other and are expressed through primitive classifications that recast biological organisms and machines. Organisms are reduced to DNA, and the process of work bears similarities to industrial modes of work. KKC’s main aim in these chapters is to demonstrate their flexibility and their mobility. “Primitive classifications exhibit the work accomplished in refashioning original entities into new orders of self-other-things.” (136) At the same time, as these classifications move into other orders, they take with them the traces of the past. These classifications are constructed into new contexts from the materials available, blurring the boundaries between different epistemic entities. In chapters 7, 8, and 9, she moves into the macrosociological realm. KKC discusses the differences in the organizations of MB and HEP. She calls the organization of detector work ‘post-traditional communitarian’, in that it promotes horizontal cross-connection between groups instead of depending on social authority and hierarchical decision making, and works on one level to erase individual difference. On another level, especially in the ‘birth’ stages of a new project, individual difference reappears although it draws upon the communal structures forged in the previous generation of experiments, while creating new ones through networks of trust, which also hold the ‘superorganism’ of HEP experimentation together. In MB, individual difference is of a level of importance not found in HEP. Social organization in labs emphasizes the individuality of scientists, and the individuality of labs headed by lab leaders. Molecular biologists become legitimated as biologists by heading their own labs, which emphasizes their individuality while erasing that of the people working within the labs. Throughout all of these chapters, KKC refers back to the basic epistemic machinery brought up in her initial chapters. In HEP, negative and reflexive epistemics (liminal knowledge and care of the self), recur in explanations of primitive categorizations and social organization, as do object-oriented epistemics and the individual embodied knowledge of researchers in the MB case. 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.

Of the greatest importance to her project is her expansion of the definition of ‘culture’ to better address differences how knowledge is created and validated in different settings. She uses the valences that the traditional notion of culture has (culture as practice, a rich ‘thick growth’ of ‘variegated patterns’, and ‘symbols and meanings’, 10) together, so that diverse aspects of each science can be explicated comprehensively.

In the second chapter, she critiques limited notions of the ‘laboratory’ that have been used in studies of science as simply a physical setting where scientific work takes place. Her notion of a laboratory is relational and focuses on how natural objects are reconfigured and disciplined to better conform to demands of the social. The social order is simultaneously responds to changes in the ‘natural’. In her example, she borrows from Foucault’s //The Birth of the Clinic//, to show how the objects of investigation (lesions, noises in the stethoscope), and the relationship between the doctor and the patient changed along with the location of medical practice. The laboratory is defined by the particular way that it reconfigures the objects, and the natural and social orders. The way that a laboratory configures and is configured is specific to the epistemic culture.

In chapters 5 and 6, KKC critiques Durkheimian explanations for primitive classification, through Mary Douglas who argued that social arrangements depend on a stabilizing principle derived from analogy and metaphor with natural categories. For KKC, this is inadequate for modern organizations, which are dependent on an array of complementary social and political institutions. Instead, such classifications are the result of interactions between the natural and social orders mediated by symbolic regimes. “Symbols describe who, independent of external definitions, is alive or not alive, who are the organisms and who are the machines, who are the agents with powers and dispositions to react, and who are the passive tools and media in an interaction.” One point of similarity between KKC and actor-network theory can be noted here in the agency that is ascribed to non-human actors to influence the configuration of the epistemic culture.

KKC borrows ideas from many important theorists, most prominently Michel Foucault. KKC uses Foucault’s ‘care of the self’ as a way of speaking about the practices of self understanding, self knowledge, and self description that characterize the ‘internally referential system’ of HEP. She also subscribes to the Foucauldian notion of power as distributed in social practices and structures, rather than concentrated in individuals. (cf. the ‘superorganism’ in HEP. p.297 n.3) KKC also refers extensively to literature in the sociology of work, such as Fujimura, especially when describing the benchtop science of molecular biology.

Her ideas about epistemic cultures also seem to be strongly influenced by Bourdieu’s //habitus.// They are, in many ways, concepts which answer the same types of questions, and have been used in similar contexts. They both attempt to form a connection between the microsociological and macrosociological, and account for the reproduction of social structure.

The influence of anthropological ways of thinking can be seen at several locations, particularly Levi-Strauss, although she cites George Marcus and Clifford Geertz when discussing culture. Her notion of epistemic culture and reconfiguration of social and natural orders echoes a similar argument made by Levi-Strauss in //The Savage Mind//. Although she would probably not classify herself as a structuralist, her description of reconfiguration has some resonance with Levi-Strauss. (“KK: In my terminology, we are in a different but equally fundamental epistemic culture.” (274n3) “Yet there exists, in addition to the technical language, imaginative terminological repertoires that reclassify technical distinctions and components. These constitute a //symbolic universe superimposed upon// the technical universe; a repertoire of categories and distinctions from the everyday world that are extended into the scientific world, where they reformulate, elaborate, and at times fill in for technical categories and distinctions.” (//Epistemic Cultures,// 112)  “The elements which the ‘bricoleur’ collects and uses are ‘pre-constrained’ like the constitutive units of myth, the possible combinations of which are restricted by the fact that they are drawn from the language where they already possess a sense which sets a limit on their freedom of manoeuvre. And the decision as to what to put in each place also depends on the possibility of putting a different element there instead, so that each choice, which is made will involve a complete reorganization of the structure, which will never be the same as one vaguely imagined nor as some other which might have been preferred to it.” (//The Savage Mind,// 19))

KKC also hopes to contribute to literature about the ‘knowledge society’, and (post) modernity. This book is based on the assumption that a fundamental shift in society is taking place which implicates changes in knowledge making practices and communities. She suggests at one point that the epistemic cultures she has studied might be models for thinking about possible forms of organization in society outside of the scientific community. Both of the settings she studies have or are undergoing shifts in organization and practice. Molecular biology is a fast-moving science which uses technologies in both standardized and experimental ways. Particle physics has gone from small tabletop experiments involving a few people to multi-million dollar detector and accelerator projects to which hundreds of scientists from many different countries contribute.

5. Describe at least three of the text’s themes or topics that are of general interest in STS.

Laboratory studies have been a part of STS since it began. Like Traweek’s //Beamtimes and Lifetimes//, KKC looks at a high-energy physics laboratory, hers at CERN. Where Traweek spent several years observing physicists at work alone, KKC has employed a small team of ethnographers to keep track of CERN. The CERN research collaboration’s great size, horizontal organization, and long duration made it unfeasible for one researcher to handle. KKC treats the additional perspectives as transparent, except for a few instances in the notes. As she briefly mentions in her acknowledgements, a long-term team ethnography is unconventional although it appears to have been successful in this case.

KKC is part of a strong faction within science studies that sees natural and social phenomena as socially constructed. Although she deals with the influence of the ‘natural’ or material in her accounts of molecular biology and physics, the objects of experimentation are always shaped and mediated by social and cultural processes. Her social constructivism seems to have been informed by other recent theoretical frameworks, such as actor-network theory. Sismondo associates KKC with neo-Kantian version of constructivism. He argues that in earlier work, KKC ‘glides over the distinction between social realities and material ones.’ [1] He argues that there needs to be differentiation between how social and material realities are constructed. In this book, KKC pays explicit attention to materiality, but treats them using mostly the same theoretical tools. She does not really explain the basis of the distinction she makes between the natural and social orders, although many of the new entities she proposes variously violate and reinforce these categories (for example, ‘objects of investigation.’) If, as Sismondo argues, there are even //some// interesting differences in the ways that the social and material are constructed, then KKC may need to be more explicit about how she defines her categories.

The major unanswered question that informs this text is, how is modern society changing due to science and technology? Many theorists, both inside and outside of STS have speculated, theorized, and studied the ways in which scientific knowledge and society interact, and the ways that this changing how society thinks. In the first and last chapters, KKC briefly touches on how the notion of epistemic cultures fits into changes in society write large. Although she is careful to limit her conclusions about epistemic cultures to the fields she studies, she allows herself to speculate about how the society may be changing in ways that are reflected in the sciences. She cites Gidden’s notion of ‘reflexive modernization’ as a promising start to ways of thinking about how scientific knowledge is changing society. KKC critiques Habermasian conclusions about the role that technology and rationalization have changed modern society, arguing instead that science and technology are not effecting a ‘disenchantment ‘ of the world, but are instead reconfiguring it.

6. Explain how this book could inform your research.

Despite its limitations, KKC does provide a very useful way to think about the sciences that brings out their diversity that has found wide acceptance in science studies. She provides many insights into what should be looked for when trying to understand how a science works as a culture.

7. Using this text, draft a partial response to the weekly discussion question. Exemplarity

//Epistemic Cultures// is a rich ethnographic account of two areas of science, which prove to be very diverse in their organization, methods, and epistemic machinery. More importantly, it offers a useful and innovative theoretical framework for identifying and understanding the construction of ‘the machineries of knowledge production’, and finding the features or parameters that exemplify a field of knowledge and experimentation. The structure of the text is also unconventional, reflecting the empirical and theoretical findings of KKC’s research, while also presenting a reflexive display of the discussions and thought processes that went into the construction of this book. In some ways, the exemplarity of this book is already apparent. KKC is one of the main figures in the social constructivist programme in science studies, and the concept of epistemic cultures has gained fairly wide acceptance. The question to begin with might be, why has this book had the impact that it has? What need or void did //Epistemic Cultures// fill within science studies? Part of this question is answered by KKC herself. I think all of us have felt the inadequacy of words like ‘field’ and ‘discipline’ when we describe the sciences, and STS itself. It is not clear what exactly we are referring to when we speak this way. Are we talking about a common subject matter, or a common methodology? Are the words historical artifacts, or do they say something important about what kind of work is being done, and what kind of knowledge is being dealt with by people in that field? //Epistemic Cultures// gives us a basis for speaking about these fields rooted in an understanding of their knowledge-making machineries. Using this idea, she is able to bring out salient features of HEP and MB, showing the extreme differences between them, while simultaneously displaying the mechanisms that give them coherence internally. The notion of epistemic machinery and epistemic cultures also are a way for speaking about how social conditions shape the possible questions that may be asked, practices and protocols that can be formulated, organizational structures that can be created, and artifacts that can be constructed. This is similar to Bourdieu’s habitus, but her use of the valences of the concept of ‘culture’ enriches her theoretical construct, and makes it appealing to both sociologists and anthropologists. Her use of ‘culture’ might also be taken as a result of the synergy between the fields of sociology and anthropology, drawing from and enriching both. The theory of this book is firmly rooted in the sociological tradition, particular social constructivism, but draws lessons from work in history of science, and anthropology. But as stated above, it has contributed a useful way of thinking about the sciences which has been taken up in sociology and anthropology, and if KKC is right about the knowledge society, will eventually be of use in other areas of social science as well. The concept, because it is rooted in empirical work and emphasizes the disunity of the sciences, also embodies a critique of the philosophy of science. As mentioned earlier, she locates the idea of a unified science with the Vienna School, but finds traces of it in more recent studies of science as well. In her exchange with Sismondo in //Social Studies of Science// in 1993, she argues that studies of science has contributed to our understanding of science in ways that philosophy has not, and that it is resists. [2] KKC writes that constructivism and its focus on situation and practice raise questions that philosophy of science should be thinking about, and expresses annoyance at the paternalizing attitude that philosophers (or maybe just Sismondo) express in trying to rein in constructivism. These philosophical implications emphasize the cross-disciplinary impact of this work. For reasons such as these, I would argue that this book is exemplary for its theoretical contribution. Another component of her theory and method that would be of use in both sociology, anthropology, and any other field that depends on ethnography is her notion of ‘comparative optics.’ She does not develop it very much in the text, but her brief description shows that it might be a way to circumvent the problems of reflexivity in the ‘view from nowhere’ while also demonstrating the value of comparative research. KKC’s empirical work is also interesting for the methodology it used, and for how it informs her theory. HB and HEP are both sciences that have been explored fairly well in STS, but KKC revisits them, showing simultaneously that there is much left to learn from these sciences, and that previous studies have missed or glossed over important phenomena. Her theory fits disturbingly well with her empirical research, showing MB and HEP to be almost polar opposites in every respect. One focuses on the collective as the significant epistemic subject while the other tends toward the individual. One turns machines into organisms while the other does the reverse. Her cases seem almost handpicked to prove the disunity of the sciences. Her work in high-energy physics comes from a long-term field study conducted at CERN in Switzerland by her and a team of ethnographers, in co-operation with a number of physicists working at accelerator experiments. She shows the feasibility and effectiveness of long-term team ethnographic studies.

[1] Sergio Sismondo, “Some Social Constructions,” //Social Studies of Science// 23:3 (August 1993), 531. [2] Karin Knorr Cetina, “Strong Constructivism – from a Sociologist’s Point of View: A Personal Addendum to Sismondo’s Paper,” //Social Studies of Science//, 23:3 (August 1993), 555-563. Type in the content of your new page here.