Review of: Jenkins, Virginia Scott, The Lawn, A History of an American Obsession, Smithsonian, Washington, 1994.
Readers of Harper’s magazine, the American monthly, are familiar with its provocative and sometimes blackly humorous ‘Index’, in which factoids are artfully juxtaposed to make a series of damning statistical statements, often about the American culture of consumption. To illustrate the pride of place assumed by the green, velvety outdoor carpet in American society, the following index, much in the spirit of Harper’s, has been culled from the pages of The Lawn1:
Estimated number of lawns in the U.S. in 1989, in millions: 45
Estimated amount of space covered by lawns in the U.S. in 1989, in millions of acres: 30
Estimated annual revenue of U.S. lawncare industry in 1987, in billions of dollars: 2.8
Estimated amount of money spent tending American lawns in 1989, in billions of dollars: 5.3
Recommended amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied to an American lawn in 1940, in pounds: 1
Recommended amount in 1970: 8
Approximate number of golf coures in the U.S., in 1902: 1,000
Number of golf courses built in the U.S. in 1964 and 1965: 1,000
Estimated amount of chemicals applied to American lawns in 1989, in millions of pounds: 70
Maximum estimated annual increase in amount of chemicals applied to American lawns since 1989, in percent: 8
Estimated amount of water required in summertime to maintain a 25-by-40 foot lawn, in thousands of gallons: 10
Estimated annual water consumption on lawns in some western U.S. states in 1990, as a percentage of total water consumption: 67
Maximum estimated percentage of American landfills consumed by yard waste, in 19892: 50
Number of states having or considering laws restricting the dumping of yard waste, in 1991: 34
Number of electric-powered mowers produced in the U.S. in 1989, in millions: 5
Number of American companies producing manually-operated (push) mowers, in 1987: 1
Number of people treated in American hospital emergency rooms for lawn-mower related injuries, in 1989: 60,000
Average annual number of mower-related deaths in the U.S., in the 1980s: 100
Over the past century, the phenomenal growth in the number and expanse of lawns in the United States is attributed to the technoscientific capacity to grow and maintain green swards as well as to the potency and endurance of the aesthetic symbolism of the perfect lawn. A well-kept front lawn is the outdoor symbol of indoor stability, an indication of domestic tranquility. All over the country, even in the most arid states, residents of homes with untidy lawns or no lawn at all are considered lazy, morally derelict, even unamerican. As many foreign residents of the U.S.A. have learned, not only is good neighborly peer presure high to tend the grass, but many local communities have statutes on the books punishing offenders for unkempt yards. Especially first-time American homeowners are well aware of appearances, so the first step in making a home is making a lawn, and that’s dad’s job. Putting in and regularly tending a lawn keeps dad fit, raises the value of the property and signals civic pride, especially on Flag Day and other patriotic holidays, when the Stars and Stripes is appropriately framed by a picture-perfect home and lawn. The front lawn is a showpiece to be admired by the neighbors, before they’re invited over for a glass of tonic and sandwich wedges without the crusts. Once inside, the neighbors are ushered into the indoor equivalent of the front lawn, the immaculate, rarely trespassed living room, which shouldn’t be confused with the family room or the den. That’s the indoor extension of the backyard, where children may play by day and parents watch TV in the evening. The backyard, like the family room, is there to be used — for 4th of July barbecues, wiffle ball games, dad’s attempt at a hardy vegetable garden and such like. The toolshed, the swimming pool, the birdbath and the weeping willow tree are to be located in the backyard or, just maybe, a recessed side yard. Only the neatest and firmest accoutrements belong in the front yard, as cigar store indian shrubbery, the flagstone walkway and the mailbox, ideally with the red signal flag raised. The paperboy’s been and the mailman’s on his way. That’s a veritable American home, p.c. disclaimers and Tom Waits not included.
Fittingly, George Washington had America’s first publicized lawn. Modelled after an English country estate’s rolling (and bowling) green, the lawn in front of Mount Vernon, at least as portrayed in a famous eighteenth century lithograph, was characteristically traversed by grazing sheep, dogs and other natural ornaments. By the 1970s most every American suburban homeowner, and many urban dwellers besides, were coveting and attempting to cultivate the perfect lawn, the widely accepted definition of which was a green, velvety carpet — perfectly trimmed, edged and weed-free. Sheep had been replaced by riding power mowers and dogs by artificial pink flamingos. Perhaps the crowning achievement of the perfect lawn has been its 70’s-style simulation: a even bed of set concrete painted lawn green (p131). Since the rise of the synthetics industry, Americans have dignified their front yards with green indoor-outdoor carpeting, Neo-turf (green vinyl), Perma-grass (green plastic fibers), Polyloom II (‘grasslike surfacing’), TailorMade lawn (cellulose), Astroturf and other ‘hassle-free’ real grass substitutes (pp143-145). Just as naturally unnatural was the great horticultural event outside of Detroit at soccer’s World Cup ‘94, when special ‘natural’ turf was laid inside the enclosed Silverdome for the opening game. While the 1980s and early 1990s have witnessed the emergence of the chemical-free ‘natural lawn movement’, an apt oxymoron (for there is nothing natural about a lawn) (p180), the “vital aesthetic component” of the American landscape seems to be as difficult to dislodge as the automobile, Middletown’s measure of man.
How, then, have proverbial white, middle-class suburban Americans become so ‘obsessed’ with increasingly unnatural home lawn aesthetics between the days of George Washington and the natural lawn movement? The answer, roughly speaking, lies in the cultural confluence of lawncare equipment industrial advertising, home and garden magazines, golf, garden clubs, government-leisure industry research alliances, golfing presidents and ‘consumption communities’. All have had a hand in manufacturing the ‘ability and desire to grown and tend lawn grasses’ (p183), which incidentally are not indigenous to North America. The constitution of a lawn, both technoscientifically and aesthetically, has been progressively perfected over the years. Akin to rising standards of household cleanliness and family and personal health and hygiene,3 notions of the perfect lawn have undergone transformations from rolling greens well before of the turn-of-the-century to velvety fairway turfs and seasonal lawns to year-round green swards and artificial turfs and grasses. Apart from especially World War I but also World War II, when, much to the chagrin of what we now call lawncare specialists, many Americans mangled the aesthetic by growing vegetables in the front lawn cum ‘victory garden’, perfectionism has increased, as have the amount of money spent, grass seeds imported and scientifically manipulated, equipment manufactured and procured, chemicals invented and applied, refuse produced and discarded and water, gas and electricity consumed. One of the main players in the historical growth of the lawn aesthetic, the United States Golf Association (USGA), founded in 1894, now has on display the pice de rsistance at its headquarters. The USGA building in New Jersey is surrounded by perfection itself: “acres of weed-free, insect-free, disease-free grass of a uniform color and height, made possible by eight decades of research” (p15).
Manufacturing consumer demand through power politics has been a subject of the social study of science and technology for some time. Eventual success in the marketplace is sometimes a product of prior political alliance-building between developers, producers and distributors of the components of a technological system, who themselves are supposedly reacting to consumer demand — a virtuously circular argument to vindicate vested interest.4 Especially in gendered STS, we also read about the concommitant project of imbuing technology with powerful symbolism through advertising, industry-sponsored community programs and other industrial outreach. Here, it seems, something similar is at work.
Gardening and lawncare advice was available for the well-to-do in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as naturalesque urban park designers as Olmsted and the more formalist stylists of the fledging City Beautiful Movement lent credence to the beauty and necessity of lawncare for residents of the old estates, already accustomed to the English aesthetic, and the new late nineteenth century suburban communities, themselves dubbed “Parks”, as West Orange, New Jersey’s Llewellyn Park of Thomas Edison fame.5 The aesthetic caught on, not necessarily owing to an Eliasian civilizing process of imitation by the would-be bourgeoisie, but also, in part, by design. City beautification projects of the first decade of the twentieth century encouraged civic participation. The general public was urged to pitch in for the good cause, and public lawn projects and contests were organized by progressive clubs, affluent women’s groups and large companies, which promoted “welfare work” as an alternative to labor unrest. Beginning in the 1910s, the United States Department of Agriculture, who had been applying their fruits to federal lawns, and the USGA forged alliances for scientific research on new grasses and hybrids. Funded in whole or in part by the Golf Association, Government Agriculture Experiment stations, beginning in the 1920s, produced new hearty seeds and turfs for immediate application on the links of America, many of which were now public or municipal and thus open to motoring Americans with weekends free for leisure activity. A cash crop, grass was big business as was its biggest customer, the golf industry, which according to a 1926 magazine article, was valued at a billion dollars (p59).
Putting greens and fairways, of course, require management: fertilizer, grass seed, lawn equipment, mowers and tenders. In their advertising, Toro and Scott, then profiting from the interest in golf and large lawncare equipment manufacturers to this day, compared the golf course to the suburban lawn. The same held for the great catalogue merchanisers, as Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, and golfers returning from their 18 holes, together with their catalogue-consumer families, began rethinking their landscape design. Gradually, “the image of a velvety carpet became ubiquitous in twentieth-century advertising” (p80), as lawncare company publications, mail order catalogues and home and garden, women’s and general interest magazines promised the lawn-tending homeowners and families that they’d be the envy of every neighbor. While lawncare advertising took many forms, generally speaking wives were invited to purchase lawn beauty supplies, such as fertilizer, to improve appearances, while their husbands were tempted by the newest power technologies, such as gas and electric mowers. Women were encouraged to prod their husbands to do the real work. Women could then take pride in the beautiful landscape aesthetic, and men would be reminded of the long fairway of a par 5 hole. Even in power mower advertising directed at both men and women, the assumption remained that dad would mow the lawn. If he couldn’t get around to it one weekend, the power mowers were supposedly easy enough for mom to use. Jenkins suggests that this sort of phraseology discouraged women from even trying (p128), thereby reinforcing their role as decorator of the interior as well as the exterior of the house. Mom pictures the perfect arrangements, and dad moves the furniture and pushes the lawnmower. Only much later would the lawncare service industry partially liberate dad from yardwork. American lawns and the lawncare industry also suffered from the war, even though the Department of Agriculture urged Americans to restrain from “spading up front lawns (…) to grow vegetables. Too much of this (…) was done in the last war, and most of it paid pretty poor dividends” (p95). The lawncare industry, according to one advertiser, was “standing by” and waiting for “V Day”. As the lawn aesthetic returned gracefully after the war, frustration set in, owing to dad’s inability to root out weeds and pests and achieve the called-for standard of the velvety, green carpet, now of a single type of grass. Enter the chemical industry, which had been experimenting with inorganic fertilizers in the 1930s, and entire lawncare regiments advertised by industry, as Scott’s “whole lawn program”, which included power mowers, equipment, seed, food, and chemicals to feed and care for the lawn (p103). By the mid-fifties, the power mower had become a fixture on the American lawn, and “war” was raging between the male homeowner and any number of new pests as Japanese beetles, ants, animals, insects, worms, diseases, weeds and so forth, now residing in the novel grasses. If dad lost a battle, there were chemicals recommended and at his disposal to kill every living thing in the front yard and start afresh. Tested by Government Agricultural Stations during the war and injected in weed guns, weed bombs, and similarly belligerent lawncare supplies from the end of the war until it was banned 1972, the ‘killer of killers’, DDT, not to mention other herbicides and pesticides, made their ignominious presence felt across the lawns and homes of America (p153). This is a capsule pre- and proto-history of Silent Spring, which for all its impetus to the environmental movement has not impeded Chemlawn from posting sign after sign indicating “Another Satisfied Customer” as well as “Please Stay Off the Grass Until Dry”.
Attempts have been made to persuade the now former President George Bush, another in a long line of golfing presidents beginning with Woodrow Wilson, to rip out the White House lawn and landscape the tone-setting terrain in the style of a meadow, wetland, vegetable garden or fruit orchard (p181). Rejoinders from lawncare advocates revolve around the environmental and psychological benefits of the front lawn; it reduces noise and air pollution, absorbs heat and glare, processes carbon dioxide, beautifies the surroundings and affords peace and serenity. Jenkins concludes with the aforementioned natural lawn movement, members of which are said to be considered “organic cultists” (p180), and what I take to be an invitation to social scientists: “A new landscape aesthetic is a cultural creation, and it remains to be seen whether the environmental movement in this country can enlist as potent a group of supporters and teachers for the twenty-first century as the lawn industry, the Garden Club of America, the U.S. Golf Association, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture did during the twentieth century.” (p187) Initiatives are afoot to study and challenge the automobilismus and birthright mobility of Americans, but what of strategies to “imperfect” the lawn?
NOTES
The page numbers of the statistics are 187, 187; 168, 181; 142, 142; 31, 60; 186, 186; 186, 172; 173, 173; 112, 179; and 114,115, respectively.
A team of garbologists has determined this figure to be around 7%. See Rathje, W. and C. Murphy, Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage, HarperPerennial, New York, 1992. Cited in Rheingold, H. (ed.), The Millenium Whole Earth Catalog, HarperCollins, New York, 1994, p. 111.
Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother, Basic Books, New York, 1983.
See Braun, H.-J., “Introduction”, Symposium on ‘Failed Innovations’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 22, 1992, pp. 213-230. See also Wajcman, J., Feminism Confronts Technology, Polity, London, 1991. For the “National City Lines” alliance between General Motors, Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tyres, which was instrumental in eliminating 90% of America’s trolley networks by the early 1950s, see page 128.
See Wilson, W., The City Beautiful Movement, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, 1989.
Review of: Lars Fuglsang, Technology and New Institutions, A Comparison of Strategic Choices and Technology Studies in the United States, Denmark and Sweden, Academic Press, Copenhagen, 1993.
The initial phrases of the book point towards the potential of technology studies to influence organizations active in the development of new technology. Organizations become more open as a consequence of two developments. First, new initiatives emerge in the management of technology that are underpinned by new infrastructures and new educational initiatives. Second, new visions of technical change are promoted by new networks of financial and industrial actors that challenge existing cultural and institional structures. The focus of the book is narrowed down to put into perspecitve the development of technology studies in the United States, Denmark and Sweden. Thus the stated aim becomes to compare the institutional embeddedness of technology studies in these three countries. The initial broader question is thus reduced to a comparative understanding of the technology studies community within the wider perspective of influencing technology development. In a way the efforts made by technology studies are to be understood as a conscience way for the three societies to cope with the dilemmas of the societal steering of technology development.
The book is divided into five parts: the rationale behind the book, a section on the motivation behind technology studies, the comparision of technology studies initiatives in the three countries, an attempt to paint with a broad brush the social embedded development of technology, and a concluding section where the case studies are located in this broader picture. This construction of the book demonstrates that the approach is an ambitious attempt. And it is between the various parts that I find tensions which make the reading sometimes quite difficult. The wide ranging descriptions of technology development in society raise broader questions than can be answered through the cases studies and are not always required for an interpretation of the case studies. In part this is a consequence of neglecting some of the developments in academic and consultant organizations that also relate to the theme. I will come back to this point later.
The first part deals with an outline of the authors’ involvement in the subject, a wide (and perhaps too broad) variety of social theories are addressed that are of relevance to the subject. The main thrust is that the preferred way of dealing with technology development consists of addressing organizations as open systems. This claim is followed by a discussion of technology development in three phases: (initial) flexibility, momentum and senility. The arguments are not developed very far and do not relate to the initial point of view introduced. The three phase model is not explored and remains a fremdkrper within the book. The main point to come out of this part of the book is to look at the development of technology studies as reflecting the institutional relations of particular societies. The second part of the book does provide a clearer focus for the comparative study of the cases. Three levels of critique are distinguished, that of cultural norms, of cultural criticisms in a broader sense at the social level and those related to strategic choices. Fuglsang goes on with that last type of analysis.
The third is the most interesting part of the book. Technology studies are interpreted along two lines of comparison. The first dimension is provided by organizational choices and intentions for technology studies. These organizational choices relate technology studies to the ideas and options of its practioners vis—vis the influence of social groups. The second dimension consists of the relation between the actors of technology studies and the emergent institutional concerns and the institutionalization of collective social and cultural concerns. In the case studies empirical material is presented along these dimensions. The empirical material itself is organized through descriptions of programs and units at universities and programmatic inititatives at the societal level. In each case studies can be found which deal with university-based STS groups. Next to it societal inititiatives, such as the Office of Technology Assessment in the US, working life programs in Sweden and Ministry of Education intitiatives in Denmark are described.
In the case of the US the main elements of the development of STS are formed by the presence of strong technology cultures with supporting ideologies. Therefore, intellectual debate and cultural criticism of technology are important elements. The community has engaged in the development of methods to support the societal criticism of technology development through new methods and modes of interpretation. It is concluded that its development has been spurred by a drive towards professionalization. Because of the local differences in academic institutions, STS has not developed as a unified professional activity. For example, three versions of history of technology are distinguished. (1) Technical institutions are characterized by a drive towards public oriented explanations of technology. (2) Critical groups in universities aim at a more fundamental understanding of the role of science and technology in society. (3) Professionals in history departments are drawn towards conceptualizations of different conditions for the emergence of science and technology. In general the conclusions are that STS in the United States has moved from being based in a social movement through a combination of technical questions with societal concerns to a situation where STS is focusing more directly on strategic choices in technology development. The basis of STS is within educational institutions and because of its academic professionalism is subject to centrifugal forces.
In contrast to the United States Danish technology studies are related to political culture. It is characterized by a fragmented institutionalization. The main thrust is a link with a broader political culture in which technology criticism is a central concern. Most STS professionals have worked together with social groups such as trade unions and the environmental movement. Their impact at the level of society is linked to the political interests and power of such groups. A central role is played by social experiments linked with technology assessment. The way in which technology assessment was performed by various social groups provides a guiding example. TA tends to be seen as an instrument of the various social groups to organize experiments and social debate. Experts do not provide the process but coach the social groups. The more active role is linked to the Danish political structure which, compared to the US and Sweden, more decentralized and experimental. The main focus in technology criticism is thus scepticism toward technical change, social innovation and institutionalization at the level of policy culture and debate. This thrust also implies the lack of university institutionalization which is described.
Sweden is more characterized by top-down approaches. Research communities that do policy relevant research are usually connected quite closely with these policy areas. Attention in this area is therefore more drawn towards professional support of policy development. Some of the subjects covered relate to social control to the effects of public policy. The direction of attention towards technology development in Swedish society accordingly is linked to attempts to modify the impacts of technology. There is not so much attention to the origins of technology development and constructive attempts to guide its creation. While there is a high level of public participation in policymaking it tends to be more orchestrated than in Denmark and critique of technology impacts is therefore fragmented in different specific programs and top-down initiatives. The state itself pulls technology studies in different directions, and coordinating efforts to institutionalize STS groups at the level of academia are relatively weak.
Finally, this book provides a useful set of three case analyses of STS communities. The development of technology studies thus provides us with an interesting meta analysis of the emergence of our own field. In a way it is argued that STS groups are as much a product of their social and instituional environments as most other scientific fields. In itself this is not surpising but it is good to remind us of this situation. It also interesting to follow Fuglsang’s argument that we need to consider the societal purposes and alliances in order to contribute to the social guidance of technology development.
However, I found this argument of the broader potential of the STS community to influence technology development in need of better tools and information than provided in the case studies. With regard to the US, for instance, it is quite clear that the thinking of numerous individuals and groups outside the STS community has provided the policy and institutional thrust of technology management and policy. In my opinion the relative lack of attention in the STS community towards organization of the main organizational drivers (industry, government and international organizations) of modern technology development suggests a rather marginal position of STS academic communities. In line with Fuglsang’s description of the Danish case the fluidity of strategic issues should warrant input in policy and management debates from a more dispersed set of experts with a greater variation in insights than the STS community can provide.
A Report on the Erasmus/EASST Workshop in Bielefeld, May 1995
Do social theories offer science studies the opportunity to analyze general trends in science and society? Or has STS taught us that we should give up attempting to construct such theories? These were the kinds of questions addressed at the May workshop in Bielefeld on ‘Social Theory and Social Studies of Science’, which was organized by the Erasmus Network of Centres in Science and Technology Studies, EASST and the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld. The various answers showed attachment as well as alienation.
In attendence at the workshop were around fifty participants from all over Europe, with a slight overrepresentation of Germans. In order to present four different social theories - microsociology, systems theory, actor-network theory and new institutionalism - lectures were held by researchers who could be considered representatives, although some of them protested, pro forma or in earnest, against the label pinned onto them. During the week there were four sessions in which the big shots tried to defend their own research lines. The questions of cooperation and integration of these various approaches were left to the younger STS generation. We have tried to address some aspects of the field and its future in the closing discussion, where we review the sessions.
Micrsociology: The Reentry of Materiality
For the first session - microsociology and the turn to practice - Karin Knorr-Cetina of the University of Bielefeld and Andrew Pickering of the University of Illinois were invited. Knorr-Cetina’s lecture explored the possibility of a framework for theoretical constructionism, or at least a basis for constructionist intuition. According to Knorr-Cetina such a constructionist intuition would be founded partly on a merging of Kantian ideas of symbols and Marxist ideas of labour, which would provide a framework for social actions, a sort of sociological bedrock. The other part of a constructionist basis would be a combination of Nietzsche’s ideas of deconstruction and non-rationality, and ideas of Berger & Luckmann, such as the objectification perspective. According to Karin Knorr-Cetina this foundation leads to the view that things do not exist except through the processes of construction, including social processes. Theoretical constructionism in this sense provides a framework for describing the construction machinery, i.e., what goes into fact construction.
The lecture by Andrew Pickering introduced the concept of the mangle - non-human agents transforming human actions, as in goal-setting. Pickering’s case was formed by the developments around the bubble chamber, an instrument to detect particle tracks. These bubble chambers mangled the career of its inventor Donald Glaser into new fields of physics. Andrew Pickering argued that the bubble chambers ‘acted by themselves’ and thus that the non-human agents cannot - and should not - be reduced to human agents. The notion of the mangle leads us from a pure social perspective to a social plus material one. This is a post-human perspective, which states that human agents and material agents differ and should not be described as one category. This perspective does not imply a demise of the social but it displaces the social, the human agency, from the centre of action. Pickering suggested that one should understand STS by writing a history of encounters between human and non-human agency. In the discussion, however, the question was raised how this can be done symmetrically, without writing a human history of the material world.
An interesting question to both Knorr-Cetina and Pickering is how their methods or frameworks influence traditional motivations in natural science such as ‘understanding nature’ or ‘searching for final truth’. Both Pickering and Knorr-Cetina reintroduced a materiality and seemed to acknowledge resistance from non-human agents or a material reality. This, however, questions the notions of construction and anti-realism with regard to scientific theories and facts, since these cannot be without constraints from the material reality. Thus one cannot construct anything solely within social constraints since theories and facts - to the extent that these describe natural phenomena - are also constrained by material reality. This would lead to the view that theories that do account for resistances from material reality must be preferred instead of those which do not.
Systems Theory: The Abstract Models
Since the ‘spectres of Luhmann’ are still very much present at Bielefeld, the workshop would be incomplete without a session on systems theory and self-organisation. The first lecture was presented by Rudolf Stichweh, the successor to Niklas Luhmann, and was much in line with his theory. Stichweh stated that science can be regarded as a closed, autopoietic system, because it operates with specific communications - scientific publications - and uses a specific binary code - true or false - to evaluate these communications. He proposed that STS could analyze the evolutionary mechanisms that steer the dynamics of this science system. Examples of the history of science show that in different periods the focus was more on retention problems (i.e., the production of encyclopedias), on inventing new variation mechanisms (the scientific paper) or on selection.
In contrast to Stichweh, Wolfgang Krohn and GŸnther KŸppers, both of the Institute of Science and Technology Studies in Bielefeld, presented a model of the science system that does not refer to communications but to actions. They made a distinction between the research group, directly involved in the production of knowledge, and the broader science system, providing the conditions for this production. The research group, the basic unit of the model, has to deal with different requirements concerning the formation of the group, resource acquisition and problem solving. It strives to find a solution that satisfies various constraints. According to Krohn and KŸppers this process can be considered a form of self-organisation.
A still more abstract model was presented by Loet Leydesdorff of the University of Amsterdam. This was not a empirical model, but a model of models, a second-order theory. In order to get a hold on the different approaches to the dynamics of science, Leydesdorff introduced a four dimensional model. Interactions, for instance, between social and cognitive aspects of scientific practice can be represented in a matrix, a two dimensional model. Adding the time axis as the third dimension, one can track trajectories or paradigms. However, since we know from STS that there are different paradigms, different histories, we can in addition reflect on these alternatives. This implies a fourth dimension. A consequence of this theoretical frame is that it is likely to find different scientific approaches, representing this fourth dimensional reality. The important question is how they still can communicate. This question also referred to the workshop and the different views presented during the week.
The discussions in this session were mainly directed at the basic assumptions of the models presented. For instance, how exclusive is the binary code if one considers science as an autopoietic system? When people in everyday life talk about the truth or falseness of the weather forecast, are they also operating in the science system? And if the research group has such a central role in the model of Krohn and KŸppers, how should such a group be defined? This, for example, is the case in molecular biology, where the researchers work highly individually, as Knorr-Cetina argued.
The Betrayal of Actor-Network Theory
Two presentations were formally subsumed under the title ‘Actor-Network Theory’ (ANT) - perhaps the most influential approach in the field of STS in recent years. The first one acting for ANT was John Law of the University of Keele, who provided us with a highly sophisticated but also rather idiosyncratic overview of recent developments of ANT. Law showed how ANT, originated from its Parisian fathers Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, spread in the 80s, became modified, and finally somehow also disappeared as a distinctive theoretical approach - by being successfully applied. Law confronted us with adaptations of ANT in four different case studies, conveying them in the vocabulary of ANT itself, i.e., as the “translation” of the original, which to some extent also has betrayed it. This led Law to the conclusion that ANT has turned itself ‘from signal into noise’, and that ANT is in dissolution.
Unlike Law’s proclamation of the demise of ANT, Johannes Weyer from Bielefeld presented a ‘still going strong’ conception of it. In the light of Law’s presentation one seemed to be confronted with a true betrayal of Parisian ANT. In Weyer’s reconceptualization classical features of social theory were predominant, like institutions, human actors, interests and expectations. The “natural” somehow was excluded again in his framework, which is intended to fit for other domains than science and technology as well. After Law’s lecture there was the question whether this was not an all too moderate presentation of the strengths of ANT, a presentation with too much artificial understatement. Weyer was confronted with questions with regard to the demise of the “natural” or the “technical” in his conceptualizations, in contrast to the possible demise of the social in the micro-sociological approaches.
New Institutionalism: The Interplay with the Environment
The last session of the workshop was reserved for a recent trend in Social Theory, New Institutionalism. Adding the ‘new’ prefix distinguishes it from the older approach of Parsons and Merton. The German hosts, Sheila Jasanoff of Cornell University, and Aant Elzinga of the University of Gothenburg presented some of their recent work relating to this. Aant Elzinga presented a case on global climate change research. He described the multiple and complex interplay between several organisations on a local, governmental and international level in a scientific and political context and explained how institutionalized programmes deal with the orchestration of these various actors. In the research on the ozone layer and on the greenhouse effect, there is a process of world-wide consensus formation, with consequences for the demarcations between science and politics. One of the conclusions Elzinga put forward was that we could not speak of an interaction between ‘pure science’ and ‘pure politics’. Globalised earth science gives us a model of the world that can be regarded as a ‘real map’ of the world for both political and scientific organisations, that is, as heuristics for their future actions.
Sheila Jasanoff’s case study theme was about the reliability of DNA fingerprinting used as a ‘scientific witness’ in US legal disputes. She illustrated the question of reliability of this scientific proof in the O.J. Simpson trial. A representation of the relationship between the legal system and science in view of the law’s dependence on scientific expertise followed, and aspects of its credibility, validity and actual value in legal disputes were discussed. Like Elzinga, Jasanoff stressed that there is no clear boundary around science. Between science and law there is a constant process of ‘hybridisation’. Therefore we cannot just analyze scientific practice. “To understand an American expertise and the role it plays, we must understand American economy, American law, in short, American society.”
The common trait of both works is that they emphasize the mutual interplay between expectations, credibility, social and scientific values and the actions of individuals and organisations. They shape each other in an ongoing process. The main ideas of this New Institutionalism were presented by Peter Weingart, Georg KrŸcken and Raimund Hasse and illustrated by case studies on high temperature superconductivity, cold fusion and bio-technology. They focussed on the relationships between the resource dependency of science and expectations of its utility and suitability. They stressed the mutual shaping of an action system like science and its social environment. The former depends on the latter by conforming to the expectations of the environment. This forms the basis for the legitimation of science, which is a basic requirement for access to material resources. On the other hand, Weingart stated that “the active shaping of the social environment by the action system results in changing conditions of legitimacy and possibilities of access to material resources.” The multiple and eventually contradictory expectations of the environment comprise “rules of appropiateness” that restrict the pool of social practices, and influence the internal dynamics of science.
Mapping the differences
A question that cut through all the presentations and which also came up in the final discussion was the tension between empirically illustrated theories and theoretically inspired (and inspiring) case studies. Indeed, what was presented in the theoretical May days in Bielefeld ranged from approaches, in which the “empirical” was hardly to be seen, to case studies, in which some theoretical insights of STS were just guiding principles for the analysis. With regard to the national academic styles one could see a certain inclination towards theorizing among the German hosts, whereas the Anglo-American style of some visitors seemed to be more oriented to case studies. For example the system theorists focus on general concepts as self-organisation and evolutionary mechanisms, whereas their critics in microsociology stress peculiarities found in their case studies. The question of course was unresolved whether there was a German overestimation of theory or an Anglo-American underestimation - “ein klassisches Problem fŸr second order Beobachtung”, the theoreticians would perhaps argue. “Please don’t”, the others certainly would counter. But it seemed that this different role of the “theoretical” did not only correlate with the national or cultural academic style but also with the relation to sociology. The more theoretical approaches were preferred by those who were stronger connected to the sociological tradition. The differences between theoretical developments in social theory and STS were and are not bound by their “cognitive” differences. In fact, some STS approaches clearly seem to be conceptualized as a challenge to institutionally established sociological traditions.1 Hereby we should not forget that the institutionalization of STS as a “transdiscipline” largely differs from country to country, and thus the tensions between sociology and STS have different backgrounds.
The complicated relation between social theory and social studies of science also became obvious in the discussions about the very notion of science at stake and how material or non-human agency is integrated in the various theoretical approaches.2 Here a strange paradox could be observed. On the one hand, the more sociologically oriented presentations (i.e., systems theory and neo-institutionalism) seemed to claim that there is a specific institution or system of science - but nothing very specific about the technical contents of science. It is just as specific as other social institutions like economics, politics or law. On the other hand, more STS-oriented presentations were arguing that science has to be conceived as part of a seamless web. At the same time these approaches claim a specific relation between the “natural” and the “social”, which should be in the centre of attention for science studies.
But perhaps observations like these also tend to dramatize the cleavage between social theory and social studies of science and technology. For us it seems clear that they should benefit from each other and not denunciate their respective blind spots - be it the “natural” or the “social”, the “empirical” or the “theoretical”, “micro” or “macro”. Seen in this light, the boundaries between social theory and social studies of science became visible during the workshop, and we think that this was one of the important tasks of the conference. It became clear that there are some important issues at stake - for instance a better integration of the social and the natural aspects of science, and the balancing of theoretical generalizations and empirical work. But, in view of the rather scattered field of STS, there is also the task to rethink our audiences and the political commitments of our research. What does STS have to say to the natural sciences and to the social sciences? Which approaches do account for the link with science policy? What can STS offer in terms of education and career opportunities, inside and outside the academia?
Finally, a word about the format of the Erasmus/EASST workshop. As youngish graduate and Ph.D. students, we were a little bit sorry that at the workshop there was a lack of integration of the younger generation. Perhaps one could envision less frontal presentations, smaller groups and so on. Nevertheless the social programme was very well organized and helped to integrate us on a more personal level. We met old friends and made quite a few new ones - what more could be expected from a workshop on social theory and social studies on science?
NOTES
For a challenging comparison cf. John Law (1991): “Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations”, in: Law, J. (ed.), The Sociology of Monsters. Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination, Routledge, London, pp. 1-23.
For an interesting overview, which also would have clarified the differences in the presentations in Bielefeld, see Michel Callon (1994): “Four Models for the Dynamics of Science”, in: Jasanoff, Sheila, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen & Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Sage, London, pp. 29-63.
To my surprise, the “stars” at the ERASMUS/EASST workshop - those who laid the foundations of STS and are still shaping it - looked as young as the field. Watching them as an outsider, I soon perceived a tacit mutual understanding, often due to taken-for-granted goals, shared experience and a familiarity with the ideas. When I finally came to feel like an insider, I discerned an encounter of at least three profoundly different currents, both in methodological commitments and in approaches to the analysis of science. A polar disparity split the foundational axiom concerning the “proper nature” of science - the outright denial of the latter vs. the assumption that the nature of science is elusive and indefinable in spatial terms, in “boundaries”, and insoluble within the “social”. The constructivist paradigm cannot cross swords with its weaker rival, the systems approach, until it manages to find persuasive terms and explanations for the specific, now still axiomatically conjectured. Both schools are nurtured at the Bielefeld University - the hospitable place of this meeting - but their initial departures are rooted in non-intersecting grounds. The hosts did their best in preparing the starting point of the theoretical discussion, targeted at the basic axiom - a “demise of the social” - by publishing a provocative standpoint in the EASST Newsletter last year (vol. 13, 3).
At the workshop, they still insisted on the “internal dynamics” of science, penetrated by external orientation (P. Weingart et al.). A. Pickering’s answer to the challenge seemingly went astray, as the discussion drifted along the track of familiar formulations, conceptual attitudes, practised vocabulary. One gets the impression that after a cannonade of tentative, inventive conceptual “turns”, STS is now cruising - defending its achievements so far, but still not venturing to plunge into the axiomatic depths of its foundations, which a next theoretical turn would probably re-construct.
The unanswered questions, formulated by the “new generation” of post-graduate students who had the floor at the Panel session, hit the soft underbelly of STS - its meta-cognitive purpose and the “what problem”. The question “What is Science?” is still a concern, but it’s gone undercover and, thereby, has been eliminated. A still inexperienced response on new larger grounds surely requires a reconsideration of the bundle of axioms, now taken-for-granted, together with a stronger methodological rearming, for which one is still not ready. What would the new generation venture doing?