6.

Theoretical critique
The theory chapter was focused on affirmative theoretical and methodological statements. This chapter, however, addresses the question why I have abstained from adopting wholesale either of the two well-known STS frameworks, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Construction Of Technology (SCOT). The core of the argument is simple: I find both of these frameworks to be lacking in many aspects, including philosophy, metatheory, substantive theory and methodology. The chapter proceeds as follows: first, I will present a logical device for reading theories which help to make the expectations of the reader more explicit and the critique more nuanced. Then eight different readings of ANT and four different readings of SCOT will be presented. Both of the frameworks will then be briefly related to philosophical, metatheoretical, theoretical and methodological discussion presented in chapters one and two. Finally I will sketch out a hypothetical model of development of (social) theories and argue why I dislike the path ANT and SCOT seem to have taken in this regard. Making theoretical critique more rigorous While there are extensive guidelines about conducting empirical work, this is not so for the analysis of theory. Usually even the best analyses in best journals employ 'read-and-interpret' approach: the texts are subjected to a close reading from various angles with their inconsistencies and gaps being pointed out. However, it remains unspecified how the leap from original text to critique was made. While this in itself does not undermine the substance and quality of these analyses I hereby propose a bit more structured approach, a preliminary rough guide to a little-travelled terrain of theoretical analysis. Essentially, this proposed structuring device consists of two questions: 1) does one define the body of thought as X? 2) are the claims taken to be self-sufficient? This opens up four possibilities of interpretation (see figure 6.1). In principle, the 'X' in the first question can refer to anything. In standard practice of sociological critique, however, a framework can be usually treated as a philosophy, a metatheory, a specific substantive theory, a methodology or a method. To recall: I take the first three to be mainly distinguished by the level of abstraction on which they operate. Thus philosophy is understood as a discipline dealing with the fundamental categories of thought, establishing structured frameworks of Being and Knowing on the highest level of generalization (e.g. Bhaskar's critical realism (1975)). Metatheory is understood as a general theory aiming to establish the common vocabulary for a certain knowledge domain (e.g. Luhmann's theory of social systems (1995) as a special case of systems theory but abstract enough to be applicable to a range of widely differing social subsystems). Specific substantive theory is understood as a set of interrelated concepts aiming to describe, explain and/or predict some natural and/or social phenomena (e.g. Geels's Multi-level Perspective on socio-technical transitions (2005)). While the domain of applicability decreases as one moves from philosophy to metatheory to specific substantive theory, the number of specifications and distinctions made increase at the same time. By methodology I understand a collection of general principles and techniques that guide the collection and/or analysis of data, whereas method refers to a single technique (e.g quantitative methodology vs. factor analysis). The axis of self-sufficiency is taken to indicate a position adopted by the reader: it is a difference between internal and external analysis. In the first case one would focus only on the claims made by a certain framework (or a researcher or even a single work) to assess its coherency; external analysis, on the other hand, attempts to find the gaps in the framework and counter or complement 1

them with knowledge imported from other fields. Figure 6.1. Approaching theoretical analysis

TYPE X?

Yes

No

SELF-SUFFICIENT? Yes

No

Of course, these strategies might be intermingled in practice a reader might attempt to judge the framework on its own terms first, only to seek additional arguments from other works later; one could also revise one's judgement about the nature of the framework as the work progresses. Nevertheless, this device points to four ideal types of reading strategies, three of which are of interest here: 1) reader being certain about the nature of the framework and attempting to judge it on its own terms (e.g. Bimber's (1994) reading of Marx as substantive theorist to decide whether he could be characterized as technological determinist); 2) reader being certain about the nature of the framework but seeking to go beyond the terms offered by the analyst (e.g. Stalder's (2006) analysis of Castells's network society trilogy (1996-1998) which not only detects its gaps but also points out other works that would help to make the initial theory better; 3) reader being uncertain about the nature of the framework but judging the argument on its own terms here one could define the framework in various ways and see how the claims of the framework match every particular definition1. What is the potential use of this analytical tool? The answer stems from the observation that a social theoretical text can provoke a wide variety of criticisms, some of which may be contradictory (e.g. depending on the viewpoint, the same theory can be seen as too simplistic or too complex). While all these criticisms if based on meticulous research can be grounded in the original text, each critic highlights different aspects of the theory, takes something about it as given and discards the rest as random error, not necessarily part of the essence of the theory. As such, each reading actualizes certain problems specific to the interpretation and thus contradictory criticisms might
1 I leave aside the possibility of being uncertain about the nature of the framework while also seeking complementary claims elsewhere. While it may be interesting in researching the transfer of theory from one domain to another it serves no direct analytical purpose here.

reveal the role ascribed to the text by the critic, i.e. what is taken to be true about its claims. The proposed tool allows the researcher to gain awareness about one's expectations and the conditionality of critique, to consider possible alternative interpretations, compare and classify them, judge their aims and quality, and thereby arrive at a more nuanced argument as an end result. In the following I will employ the third type of approach (various types but self-sufficiency) for ANT and SCOT. Both are good cases for such an exercise in theoretical analysis because, as I attempt to show below, fundamental ambiguities regarding their nature can be detected. And for me, this considerably reduces their attraction as theories of choice. Actor-Network Theory: a brief overview ANT is a provocative framework which originally sprung from Science and Technology Studies but since then has been applied in variety of disciplines (e.g. management studies, media and communication studies, geography, archaeology, sociology etc.). It has been mainly developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law (e.g. Bijker, Hughes & Pinch 1987; Bijker & Law 1992, Law & Hassard 1999, Law 2004, Latour 2005). ANT can be termed relational materialism (Sismondo 2010: 81): relational because the properties and even the identities of entities are determined by their locations in a network, not their inherent or essential properties (e.g. depending on a situation, a human can exert a choice or exhibit an automatic machine-like behaviour); materialist because it takes the contribution of the material to the shape of the network seriously (indeed, it does not only stop with the material but can also include entities like fairies or Santa Claus as long as they make a difference to the functioning of the network). The relations in an actornetwork need to be worked and re-worked constantly in order to keep the former going and the analyst is required to trace these associations in minute detail. As such ANT 1) extends the domain of analysis including both, human and non-human elements as integral parts of any social process; 2) focuses one's attention on how the actor-network comes to be stabilized in the first place including the slightest changes, i.e. is a detailed process-centred approach, and; 3) abstains from making most of the conventional distinctions found in philosophy and sociological theory (e.g. natural and social, micro and macro, structure and agency, see below). ANT has developed a specific vocabulary to meet the challenge (see table 6.1). Briefly, it conceptualizes change as a formation and consolidation/disintegration of an actor-network, composed of human and non-human actants both of whom can take a role of intermediaries or mediators. Through series of translations the roles and identities of actants are assigned and brought together, e.g. by delegating a function of slowing down the car to a road bumper and thus making necessary inscriptions so others would conform to the required behaviour (Latour 1992). In a process of interdefinition of roles and assignment of tasks some actants might attempt to become the representatives of others and establish themselves as an obligatory point of passage for example, in Callon's case study on scallops (1986) three researchers defined advancing knowledge on repopulating scallops as a way to unite the common 'interests' of scientific community (increasing knowledge), fishermen (assuring long-term profit) and scallops (surviving). This ongoing process of alignment, however, can be subverted by acts of betrayal when one or another actant refuses to fulfil the role assigned to it, e.g. fishermen going out to the sea to catch endangered scallops. It has to be stressed that all these concepts are applicable to actants of any kind, e.g. in Callon's study scallops did not repopulate the way scientists initially claimed/expected they would thereby betraying the network of alliances into which they were attempted to be integrated; a reliable machine can suddenly break down shifting its state from an intermediary to a mediator, a task of closing the door can be delegated to a doorkeeper etc.

Table 6.1. ANT's vocabulary (Russell & Williams 2002, Sarker et al. 2006, edited and expanded by the author)
Concept Actant Actor-network Definition Whatever acts or shifts actions, action being defined by a list of performances through trials (Akrich & Latour 1992: 259) An actor, sociotechnical entity or technology, conceptualised as an emerging and increasingly stabilised network of associations between diverse material and non-material elements artifacts, humans, texts, symbols, concepts, etc. (Russell & Williams 2002: 112) A situation where actors do not abide by the agreements arising from the enrolment of their representatives (Sarker et al. 2006: 56, Callon 1986) Strategy, process or act of allocating a social control function to a material artifact (Russell & Williams 2002: 113) Practice or process in which engineers and other technical workers grapple with a variety of social relations and actors as well as technical artifacts in producing technological change (Russell & Williams 2002: 114) What transports meaning or force without transformation (inputs explain outputs)/what modifies the meaning or force in course of transformation (input is not a predictor of outputs) (Latour 2005: 39) Degree to which a translation has excluded alternatives and shapes subsequent translations (Callon 1991: 150)

Betrayal Delegation Heterogeneous engineering Intermediary/ mediator Irreversibility

Obligatory point A situation that has to occur for all the actors to be able to achieve their of passage interests as defined by the focal actor (Sarker et al. 2006: 56, Callon 1986) Representative Script/ inscription An actor that speaks behalf of (or stands in for) other actors (Sarker et al. 2006: 56, Callon 1986) Set of rules or meanings embedded in an artifact, procedure or representation which attempts to prescribe the behaviours of users and conditions of use so as to enable the realisation at a distance of the function of the entity as intended by the developer or controller (Russell & Williams 2002: 115) The process of the alignment of the interests of a diverse set of actors with the interests of the focal actors. Consists of four phases: 1) problematization during which the focal actor defines the identities and interests of other actors and establishes itself as an obligatory point of passage; 2) interessement where the definitions of the allies are negotiated; 3) enrolment, where the interestes defined by the focal actor are accepted by allies; 4) mobilization, processes by which the representativity of allies is being ensured so they would not betray the focal actor's definitions (Sarker et al. 2006: 56, Callon 1986)

Translation

In this process of heterogeneous engineering various domains are crossed and seamlessly woven together: social, cultural, political issues all become a part of an actor-network. For example, Callon's study of the creation of an electric car in France (1987) describes how the engineers not only decided to build the prototype but at the same time imagined a type of world where the car would fit and assigned expected behaviour to other involved actants (cooperative Renault, efficient fuel cells, urban post-industrial users etc.). Finally, as more elements become enrolled the actornetwork might become increasingly irreversible and stable (e.g. a start-up company producing 4

software for personal computers might become a Microsoft). 1st reading: lack of fundamental distinctions The first reading starts from Elder-Vass's critique of ANT from the perspective of critical realism (2008). It is essentially a close analysis of what he calls 'three provocations' of ANT, and a comparison of the latter to the positions of critical realism. These provocations are the claims that: 1) science is involved not only with describing but creating realities; 2) one should do away with a concept of social structure and focus on the interactions of actants; 3) one should treat humans and non-humans on the same grounds, that is symmetrically. It is the first claim that concerns the most fundamental distinctions of critical realism, ones between empirical, actual and real. But when ANT claims that it is not possible to separate out (a) the making of particular realities, (b) the making of particular statements about those realities, and (c) the creation of instrumental, technical, and human configurations and practices, the inscription devices that produce these realities and statements. Instead, all are produced together (Law 2004: 31, quoted in Elder-Vass 2008: 457) it is blurring the line between the real (existing causal mechanisms) and the actual (observed events). ANT remains quite elusive about the extent to which 'out-there-ness' of the external world can be constructed. Elder-Vass argues that science only makes sense when the underlying mechanism is not created by the experimenter otherwise we could create any law of nature any time we wish but that also means that while science can indeed actualize some mechanisms (in the shape of entities or (potentially fallible) theories) it does not produce them. Although we may be able to create a flying rat as a result of a genetic experiment we have thus not created the mechanism itself that allows this endeavour to succeed in the first place. Thus ANT fails to make a clear distinction between the existence of real mechanisms and their manifestation in events and entities. But ANT's elusiveness does not stop there. At times it makes statements that seem to indicate a lack of another kind of distinction: between the actual and the empirical. When Latour claims that Galileo may have constructed the phases of Venus, but once that construction was complete her phases appeared to have been always already present (Latour 1996: 23, quoted in Elder-Vass 2008: 460) it can be read as a claim that things do not exist before our observations and the phases of Venus come to being once being observed and described. Law goes on to generalize that the world is not simply epistemologically complex. It is ontologically multiple too (2008: 637). When taken to a logical conclusion the implications of such statements quickly lead to absurdities, e.g. the hazard presented by a hole in ozone layer could be avoided if we were to stop discoursing about it (Radder 1992: 156-157). But this would imply exactly what critical realism denies the ability to call any causal mechanisms into being at will. Similar problems plague ANT's take on structure and symmetry: by refusing to allow the concept of 'social structure' enter the explanatory vocabulary, crucial differences are erased, e.g. between individuals acting on their own and individuals acting on behalf of the organization. Also, while it may be metaphorically stimulating to talk about non-human entities 'negotiating' with human entities or having 'interests' of some kind, it eventually ascribes human-like agentic capabilities to entities which simply do not possess it (thus curiously falling prey to Sibeon's (2004) accusation in reification). The reverse can happen when these qualities are stripped from entities that actually possess them: for example, when people are treated on the same level with machines the difference between interactive and indifferent kind (Hacking 1999: 104-105) becomes erased. That is why Elder-Vass emphasizes: We achieve symmetry in the treatment of human and non-human actors, not by treating them all in the same terms, but by treating each in the terms that are appropriate to its own particular structure and properties (2008: 469). 5

The crux of such critique is simple enough: ANT just fails to make sufficiently rigorous and clear theoretical distinctions between certain categories (the distinction between empirical, actual and real being the most fundamental one). However, this critique also remains open to a curious defence: nothing can actually stop one from choosing the level of generality of one's framework where such differences would disappear. In fact, Latour explicitly notes that with ANT, we push theory one step further into abstraction Since it's never substantive, it never possesses the power of the other types of accounts (2005: 221) and the ridiculous poverty of the ANT vocabulary was a clear signal that none of these words could replace the rich vocabulary of the actor's practice. The weakness on our part does not mean, however, that our vocabulary was too poor, but that, on the contrary, it was not poor enough (1999: 20). Thus one could defend ANT on the grounds that the differences singled out as crucial by Elder-Vass do not even enter the picture yet as ANT's level of generality is simply higher than that of any sociological metatheory and even critical realist philosophy. But one can question the use of such a high-level framework. Because if forced to make an affirmative claim ANT would have little to say beyond the fact that actor-networks emerge through various translations between actants. Unfortunately, save for the use of unorthodox terms this statement is otherwise entirely trivial and offers no novel insights whatsoever. Adding more nuances and distinctions would require stepping down on the ladder of abstraction and further specification of concepts (e.g. kinds of actants, their respective properties, similarities and differences between different kinds of actants, kinds of processes, kinds of shapes of actor-networks, kinds of characteristic pathways of actor-network development etc. etc.). ANT cannot have the cake and eat it too: if it wants to remain most abstract it should then also dispense with anthropocentric metaphors and resort to less controversial terms like 'shaping' etc.; if it wants to come closer to the level of abstraction of other theories it immediately needs to start making various distinctions, eventually ending up with ascribing different capabilities to different entities, e.g. ones that capable of negotiating or betraying, and ones that are not. So raising the level of abstraction extremely high has the downside of not being able to say much at all. In this light it is not surprising that despite its insistence on human/non-human symmetry ANT's empirical accounts have been criticized for focusing more on human actors whose strategies of representation and evasion are wider (Miettinen 1998: 453, Sismondo 2010: 89-90). Given a certain high level of abstraction this choice seems to be (likely unacknowledged) way to make the accounts more 'interesting'. Because while Harman means it as a compliment when he deems Latourian physics 'conceivable' (2009: 154) physicists themselves would probably not be impressed if, say, a photoelectric effect is being described merely as a series of translations between photon-actants and electron-actants. On the other hand, as Elder-Vass himself is quick to point out, that ANT proponents themselves do not hold strictly to ANT as the most abstract framework imaginable where differences of any kind become erased. He points to instances of explicit denial of philosophical idealism (our constructions constituting the very fabric of reality) or deployment of social structures in empirical practice (2008: 457, 467). In fact, elsewhere Callon and Latour have claimed explicitly that it is not our intention to say that scallops have voting power and will exercise it, or that door-closers are entitled to social benefits and burial rites, but that a common vocabulary and a common ontology should be created (1992: 359). Thus it seems that ANT is actually capable of admitting various distinctions mentioned above. The question why it nevertheless refrains from doing so leads to the second possible interpretation.

2nd reading: insufficiency of explanatory concepts This reading would grant ANT the ability and willingness to admit the distinctions made by mainstream sociology. It simply denies them any explanatory value. This is formulated most clearly by Michel Callon: The observer must abandon all a priori distinctions between natural and social events. He must reject the hypothesis of a definite boundary which separates the two. These divisions are considered to be conflictual, for they are the result of analysis rather than its point of departure (1986: 200). And the application of this idea to micro-macro distinction: We cannot distinguish between macro-actors (institutions, organizations, social classes, parties, states) and micro-actors (individuals, groups, families) on the basis of their dimensions, since they are all, we might say, the 'same size', or rather since size is what is primarily at stake in their struggles it is also, therefore, their most important result (Callon & Latour 1981: 279). In other words, what is taken to be granted by mainstream sociologists is exactly what ANT wants to be explained. We should adopt a 'sociology of associations' (Latour 2005), focusing on how the connections between various elements are drawn, how the socio-material is performed as to produce entities capable of acting, and relations between them. This inversion of cause and consequence, however, leads one outright to an array of never-ending hurdles the problem of infinite regress. Because whenever one wants to start a historical narrative something, some background conditions, some assumptions have to be taken for given. This context includes various technologies, actors of varying sizes, stabilized rules, some knowledge about the state of affairs etc. However, every time one can be immediately confronted with a question: Well, but how did these starting conditions come to be in the first place? One then needs to go back to a previous point of time in order to explain the emergence of the micro-macro distinction, constitution of a socio-technical structure and the difference between human and non-human elements. But of course then the same question can be asked again, and in the end the researcher is forced to go back and back in time to trace the associations that brought about differences in various points of time. The trouble is that one is always forced to go back and can never move forward as initially planned. Instead of a case study we will then end up with historical explanations of historical explanations of historical explanations and so forth. This also goes for ontological depth. One can always question the causal power of a certain system by demanding that it should be described in, let us say, terms of individual actions. But since every entity with some emergent properties is yet again something to be explained be it a state, a party, an individual, a cell, a molecule, or an atom it can always be problematized from ANT perspective because the reason for the existence of such distinctions should be sought for in the first place. So bringing everything down to individual actions is also not enough because it means that human agency still remains unexplained. It would seem then that every truly consistent ANT theorist should sooner or later end up researching the Big Bang. However, as the community of physicists has not lately suffered/benefited from a wealth of ANT researchers, one must presume that maybe actor-network theorists are not that rigorous in empirical practice after all and do narrow down the scope of empirical enquiry in one way or another. Indeed Elder-Vass (2008: 470-471) has argued that curiously ANT never seems to explain the emergence of human agency, taking it as selfevident, which is a good indicator where that dividing line might lie. Thus it is no surprise that the question of when to 'cut the network' continues to be one of ANT's most troublesome weaknesses (McLean & Hassard 2004). When the current reading of ANT is accepted it is not hard to see why this is the case: never-ending search for the cause of the cause has been programmed into ANT thereby making it most difficult to justify any drawing of boundaries. There can be no forward, only a long-long way back.

3rd reading: possible gains from initial theoretical modesty But this problem might be overcome with another reading: one should only temporarily abstain from the categories of analysts as to allow the complexity of actors' own accounts fully emerge. We have to resist pretending that actors have only a language while the analyst possesses the meta-language in which the first is 'embedded' . analysts are allowed to possess only some infralanguage whose role is simply to help them become attentive to the actors' own fully developed meta-language, a reflexive account of what they are saying (Latour 2005: 49). Only after actors' accounts have been thoroughly explored can one begin to re-insert social theoretical categories. At the first glance it seems an excellent suggestion how to arrive at substantive middle-range theories strongly grounded in data while avoiding the constraints posed by oversimplified social theoretical concepts. And it also allows for admitting and employing traditional distinctions if need be. From a pragmatic point of view the question is: exactly how long does one have to wait? Has this productive fusion actually taken place? I would say that the answer to the latter question is largely no. One often notices that what is passed as an ANT case study consists of a very detailed description of events couched in ANT's very general theoretical vocabulary. Once again the very generality of ANT's 'common ontology' undermines its usefulness as soon as one gets closer to empirical data. For example, when describing the emergence of a technological innovation system one probably finds little value in characterizing widely differing activities such as obtaining finances, building a functional prototype or successful lobbying for looser regulations as 'enrolling'. In ANT terms, however, this is perfectly feasible as allies (money, machine, politicians, laws) have been gained by each activity. In other words, ANT is characterized by a gap between relatively simple, sensitizing conceptual schemes and detailed, complex case descriptions with some empirical generalizations (Geels 2007: 633). However, the following interpretation suggests why the lack of emergence of ANT middle-range might not be a matter of overcoming a temporary bottleneck (whether 30 years can be called temporary is another question) but one of prolonging it infinitely. 4th reading: substantive theoretical categories are not needed This reading stems from ANT's occasional hints that once the analyst has recorded every relevant actant and process and thereby 'saturated the description' it becomes an explanation by itself. Thus Latour proposes: Every time we deal with a new topic, with a new field, with a new object, the explanation should be wholly different. Instead of explaining everything with the same cause and framework, and instead of abstaining from explanation in fear of breaking the reflexive game, we shall provide a one-off explanation, using a tailor-made cause. I am all for throw-away causes and for one-off explanations (1988: 174). The distinction between description and explanation is claimed to be a 'false dichotomy': Either the networks that make possible a state of affairs are fully deployed and then adding an explanation will be superfluous or we 'add an explanation' stating that some other actor or factor should be taken into account, so that it is the description that should be extended one step further. If a description remains in need of an explanation, it means that it is a bad description (Latour 2005: 137). The problems with this kind of approach are many. The first is a simple and well-known critique of inductivism: observation is always theory-laden and thus every description already involves an interpretative choice, whether implicit or explicit. As an example, let us take an instance where Callon and Latour, writing about Renault's involvement in developing an electric car, claim without any justification that Renault wants to remain autonomous and indivisible, itself deciding what will be the social and technical future of the industrial world (Callon & Latour, 1981: 290, quoted in Magelund Krarup & Blok 2011: 49-50). As Magelund Krarup and Blok point out this implicitly ascribes Renault a common sense role of a corporation seeking to maximize its power whereas 8

other potential, possibly complementary if not alternative explanations about its motives (e.g. environmental concerns) are pushed aside. Second, one may well wonder that if one is only required to describe carefully and thoroughly then why should one use the vocabulary of ANT in the first place? Why not employ other frameworks (given that 'pure description' is impossible anyway)? In fact, this is the thrust of Buchanan's critique (1991) who advocates critical narrative approach to the history of technology instead. As Law argues quite correctly in his response (1991) this critical narrative history also depends on some assumptions... but the same is true for ANT itself. One could postulate, of course, that ANT's initial assumptions are better than the ones of other approaches but this has to be demonstrated. But it is exactly the usefulness of connecting the complex descriptions with ANT terminology in other words, making theoretical statements that has been contested here and elsewhere (e.g. Bloor 1999, Geels 2007, Elder-Vass 2008). The third problem is conflating the meaning of explanation with that of description. However, one could argue that one is said to explain anything only if the description is somehow worked upon. Some of these strategies were pointed out in chapter four: 1) elimination of certain causes, discarding (at least some) one-off and random causes to derive a stylized model; 2) generalization, reduction of the properties of involved entities; 3) modifying the time-frame of research, e.g. isolating a certain mechanism from an overall chain of events to be able to test its occurrence elsewhere; 4) counterfactual reasoning, in order not to stick to what one observes but what one should (or could) logically observe. Alternatively, one can characterize description simply as an explanation operating on a very low level of generality. Fourth, the problem of infinite regress does not go away because description can be always extended further to include new causes of causes. And fifth, the connection of description with ANT's theoretical categories indicates that it nevertheless somehow aspires to rise above the thick description of state of affairs. 5th reading: curbing ANT's applicability There is a yet another alternative to read ANT to accommodate otherwise contradictory arguments. This interpretation would grant ANT the following: 1) the ability to admit mainstream sociological distinctions; 2) (sometimes) using them as explanatory concepts but; 3) abstaining from doing so and reverting fully to actors' own accounts in uncertain, fluid and complex conditions. Argues Latour: It's true that in most situations resorting to the sociology of the social is not only reasonable but also indispensable, since it offers convenient shorthand to designate all the ingredients already accepted in the collective realm. It would be silly as well as pedantic to abstain from using notions like 'IBM' , 'France' , 'Maori culture', 'upward mobility' , 'totalitarianism' , 'socialization' , lower-middle class', 'political context' , 'social capital', 'downsizing', 'social construction' , 'individual agent' , 'unconscious drives', 'peer pressure', etc. But in situations where innovations proliferate, where group boundaries are uncertain, when the range of entities to be taken into account fluctuates, the sociology of the social is no longer able to trace actors' new associations. At this point, the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations. To the convenient shorthand of the social, one has to substitute the painful and costly longhand of its associations (2005: 11). However, with this move ANT as a 'sociology of associations' immediately becomes limited to the domain of the fluid. Herein lies the problem though: 1) at times ANT has left no doubt that it aspires to rewrite sociology in general, not just a specific domain of it. Consider the statement: ...society itself is to be rethought from top to bottom once we add to it the facts and the artifacts that make up 9

large sections of our social ties (Latour 1992: 254; see also the quote from Callon and Latour 1992: 359 above). Modifying whole sociology on the face of indeterminate and unpredictable situations would likely impoverish sociology as a whole, however, as it has already developed extensive vocabulary for theorizing stability; 2) ANT has actually expressed intent and need to theorize socio-material stability but in its own terms. For example, Callon (1991) has proposed the notion of irreversibility to account for the durability of techno-economic networks; 3) in addition, despite the claims about the insufficiency of mainstream sociological vocabulary many ANT's concepts actually mirror it quite closely, e.g. distinction between local and global networks (Law and Callon 1992) or the proposition that the vocabulary of ANT can be characterized as infralanguage (Latour 2005 although he claims that it is different from meta-language, it is not so in the sense that in both cases the defining quality is an operation on a high level of abstraction). Finally, the tensions between the third and the fourth reading reappear: either 1) there is simply a profound lack of ANT middle-range theories of the fluid to date, or; 2) one should serve description for complex situations and good old-fashioned theory for stable ones. Both raise an inconvenient question how to deal with other frameworks based on different assumptions which seem to have no trouble conceptualizing change in less than highly abstract terms, whether it is the growth of innovation systems (Hekkert et al. 2007, Bergek et al. 2008), development of large-scale technological systems (Hughes 1983, 1987, 1994) or the niche-regime interplay in explaining sociotechnical transitions (Geels 2005, Geels & Schot 2010). 6th reading: ANT as a methodology/method instead But there is yet another possible twist to the story: according to one reading ANT should be treated as a methodology or a method, not a theory. Thus Latour has stated: Far from being a theory of the social or even worse and explanation of what makes society exert pressure on actors, it always was, and this from its very inception (Callon and Latour, 1981), a very crude method to learn from the actors without imposing on them an a priori definition of their world-building capacities (Latour 1999: 20) and It's a theory, and a strong one I think, but about how to study things, or rather how not to study them or rather, how to let the actors have some room to express themselves. ANT is a method, and mostly a negative one at that; it says nothing about the shape of what is being described with it (Latour 2005: 142)2. Elsewhere Latour has listed seven general principles to follow when constructing ANT accounts (see table 6.2). ANT's main research strategy 'follow the actors', whether human or non-human, has been criticized mainly from two aspects. The first is a recurrent problem of having to make decisions about extending or cutting the network, or how McLean and Hassard put it, to avoid the twin charges of symmetrical absence or symmetrical absurdity (2004: 516). The second problem is that by focusing on visible actors (actants) it might miss out silenced ones, ones with no voice, or ones whose structural location excluded them from participating in the network by the time the description of the analyst started (Russell 1986; Klein and Kleinman 2002). This, in turn, might simply lead to incomplete analysis because some of the affected actants might go unnoticed. It also means that when offering a description of some process ANT actually privileges actors' accounts over the ones of the analysts without any substantial justification. At best, this exhibits a very pessimistic attitude towards sociologists Latour often makes mocking references to 'sociologists of the social' in his introduction to ANT (2005) who, in contrast with other actors, seem to be completely unable to learn, well, anything. An impression is left as if such sociologists' conceptualizations of actors were overly narrow or simply unrealistic and the research, including
2 The claim that ANT is a 'theory of method' is consistent with the definition of methodology found above as the distinction of relevance is between making statements about principles of data collection/analysis vs. the nature of socio-material processes themselves.

10

design, data collection and analysis, completely shielded from any influence of the real world, making the whole process an endless repetition and self-validation of sociological categories. Curiously then the sociologists (of the social) are denied creativity, inventiveness and sophistication characteristic of all other actants (including scallops, chamber pots and quarks). In addition to being a highly arbitrary assumption, it is also profoundly unsymmetrical. Thus to remedy this situation Wyatt (1998) proposed a recourse to a higher-level principle where the accounts of actors and analysts could be treated symmetrically, allowing both to enter the research simultaneously. But this would, of course, contradict the demand that the deployment of theoretical categories should be postponed as long as possible. Table 6.2. Latour's methodological principles (1987: 258)
Number Rule 1 Content We study science in action and not ready made science or technology; to do so, we either arrive before the machines or facts are blackboxed or we follow the controversies that reopen them To determine the objectivity or subjectivity of a claim, the efficiency or perfection of a mechanism, we do not look for their intrinsic qualities but at all the transformations they undergo later in the hands of others Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not its consequence, we can never use this consequence, Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been settled Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Society's stability, we cannot use Society to explain how and why a controversy has been settled. We should consider symmetrically the efforts to enrol human and non-human resources We have to be as undecided as the various actors we follow as to what technoscience is made of; every time an inside/outside divide is built, we should study two sides simultaneously and make the list, no matter how long and heterogeneous, of those who do the work Confronted with the accusation of irrationality, we look neither at what rule of logic has been broken, nor at what structure of society could explain the distortion, but to the angle and direction of the observer's displacement, and to the length of the network thus being built Before attributing any special quality to the mind or the method of people, let us examine first the many ways through which inscriptions are gathered, combined, tied together and sent back. Only if there is something unexplained once the networks have been studied shall we start to speak of cognitive factors

Rule 2

Rule 3

Rule 4

Rule 5

Rule 6

Rule 7

One could also argue that beyond some very general principles ANT has little to offer for conducting actual research. It is symptomatic of ANT case studies that one finds no explanation how the leap from presentation of data to theoretical categories was made leading one to think that this is considered a mystical informalizable craft rather than something that can be taught. However, the existence of methodological handbooks for dealing with and theorizing from qualitative data constructing historical narratives (Trachtenberg 2006) and grounded theory (Charmaz 2008) to pick two random examples testify otherwise. And occasionally ANT's methodological advice is of most dubious quality. Consider, for example, Latour's following argument: ...if some X is a mere case of Y, what is more important to study: X that is the special case or Y which is the rule? I would bet on Y myself, since X will not teach you anything new. If something is simply an 'instance of some other state of affairs, go study this state of affairs instead. A case study that needs a frame 11

in addition, well, it is a case study that was badly chosen to begin with! (2005: 143). Let us take this argument at face value and presume that one wants to study the history of Soviet personal computing. One could quickly point out that this is an instance of history of personal computing which, in turn, is an instance of history of computing which, in turn, is an instance of the technological development which, in turn... This is a slightly different regress than the one discussed above a regress of generalization but nevertheless one can easily notice that eventually it leads back to the same place than the other one: the need to study Everything. Treating ANT strictly as a methodology has another downside as well: by definition, the results of the case study could only feed back into principles how to conduct other studies, not into substantial claims about the nature of socio-material processes. Hence the question: Does inquiry into socionatural networks have to start afresh each and every time? (Castree 2002: 134). If so, then there could not be any (actor-network-)theoretical accumulation whatsoever. The practice of ANT proponents seems to work against that, however: new concepts are often derived from the analysis of cases and employed elsewhere. For example, Callon's study of scallops (1986) can be interpreted as a theorization of a process of translation consisting of four phases: 1) problematization; 2) interessement; 3) enrolment; 4) mobilization. Thus once again the reading of ANT strictly as a methodology raises an array of difficult problems. 7th reading: ANT as a meta-type One could attempt a synthesis here and argue that ANT is actually a collection of methodological principles coupled with theoretical categories. By creating a meta-type out of various types it would thereby transform already described between-type tensions into within-type ones. For example, it still leaves unclear whether theoretical categories are only allowed to emerge after the description (but when one is simultaneously forced to start from blank page each time the exercise becomes rather meaningless altogether) or before that (making one wonder about the need to stick to ANT categories in the first place). However, a major novel problem can be raised: that of ANT's methodology reinforcing its ontology. Let us imagine a scholar with an honest will to do good ANT research. S/he has to follow the actors, undertake a costly and slow registering of associations (Latour 2005: 121) and pay close attention to every little unpredictability, no matter how small and insignificant it might appear stated as a criterion of good ANT study (ibid.: 61). In order the cope with the task it consequently seems natural to narrow down the empirical scope, to focus on a single case, a limited geographical location and/or a period of time. Therefore it is no wonder that a bulk of critique of ANT (sometimes treating it as a part of a wider stream of 'constructivist technology studies') has noted that the cases tend to be overly centred on local, contingent, complex, fluid and unpredictable processes, often in the initial phases of technological development where the networks are more malleable (e.g. Russell and Williams 1987, Mackay and Gillespie 1992, Winner 1993, Edgerton 1999, Bruun and Hukkinen 2003, Geels 2007). Moreover, with cases being selected from widely different times and locations, the comparison becomes extremely difficult, unless the analysis operates on a very general level. Therefore the ongoing rift between empirical complexity and theoretical generality is continuously shaped by ANT's methodological commitments. Although Latour is happy to admit that tools are never 'mere' tools ready to be applied: they always modify the goals you had in mind (2005: 143) it does not get us closer to any solutions. But here the worst offender by far would be ANT's denial of structure, if the latter is simply taken to mean 'conditions-of-action' (Sibeon 2004: 54). This definition sees social structure as an aggregate of various rules and resources in which a certain kind of behaviour is exhibited more likely (note that this in no way denies the need to analyse how the mediation actually takes place). The 12

causation is thus probabilistic, not deterministic. However, when ANT conducts a single case study and is moreover fine-tuned to prefer changes and unpredictabilities at the same time, it is no wonder that it finds seemingly countless instances of actors deviating from the supposedly monolithic 'structure'. It seems therefore natural to dispense with the concept completely since it offers no explanatory power whatsoever. However, one must remember that 1) for every change one can detect countless other factors that remain stable, unacknowledged, taken as granted, and not included in the case description. Indeed, the list of stable factors accompanying every case description would be mostly trivial and tedious, easily exceeding every word limit of any work (e.g. imagine one including the law of gravity to every list); 2) one cannot dismiss the general trend on the grounds that one's case study has located deviations from it. To do that, one would need a collection and comparison of a pool of case studies on similar grounds. In fact, more methodologically sophisticated approaches to case study (Gerring 2004, George and Bennett 2005, Mahoney 2010) see among the values of case study the possibility of combining variable-based approaches with process-based ones in order to demonstrate how the occurrence or non-occurrence of causal pathways is not accidental but dependent on the values of certain contextual variables. Thus ANT's methodological inclinations lead to discarding certain sociological vocabulary the uselessness of which can be taken as a justification to begin a new round of research with similar assumptions. 8th reading: embracing and celebrating one's contradictions The final reading would add some postmodern flavour: ANT does not need to be fully coherent, only useful in some respect. Therefore one does not really need to bother oneself with potentially contradictory qualities of ANT. This view is best summarized by Neyland when he ends his paper with the following words: ...if this article forms one entity in a heterogeneous flow of further ANT accounts, then this may form and perform the disputable content to which other ANT accounts can attach, dispute, and further propel. ... If the end point of this flow of ANT accounts remains ambiguous, and if it is further propelled by subsequent disputes of ANT, its content, membership, and direction, this may act as further evidence of the worthiness of ANTs salvation (2006: 46). Similarly Gad and Bruun Jensen argue that the important question for post-ANT is not how to preserve ANT with restorative custodian nostalgia, just as it is not to consolidate ANT as a theoretical perspective, method, or strong managerial tool (2010: 78). This shifts the criteria by which the quality of ANT might be judged. Thus Geels (2007: 631-632), drawing on DiMaggio's distinction between three different theoretical styles (1995), argues that ANT might be best characterized as 'theory as enlightenment', not so much as one seeking relationships between variables ('variance theory') or building theories from narratives ('process theory'). The main tenets are found in its opposition to conventional concepts, deconstruction of widely accepted assumptions, inspiration to re-think the socio-material, often through provocative paradoxes. Thus Latour has famously claimed that there are four things that do not work with actor-network theory; the word actor, the word network, the word theory and the hyphen! (1999: 15) only to apologize six years later: Whereas at the time I criticized all the elements of his horrendous expression, including the hyphen, I will now defend all of them, including the hyphen! (2005: 9). And Law's happy embrace of ANT's 'shock value', 'potential for scandal' and 'bonfire of dualisms' (1999: 3-4) easily leaves an impression as if these qualities were to be worn as badges of honour. ANT's widespread resort to allusion, comparison, analogy and sheer wit is acknowledged even by critics of the enterprise with a consequence of feeling somewhat disarmed before the task of critique begins (Mutch 2002: 479). The question remains, however, whether these criteria are widely shared or held primary by the rest of scientific community, and if so, then why/why not. Although every developing framework is 13

most likely to encounter contradictions here and there a sign of healthy intellectual interaction to be sure most scientists would probably not aim to be contradictory on purpose. On the contrary, the usual practice is to attempt to remove incoherencies whenever possible. Yes, making small and gradual adjustments to the framework by means of sharply focused studies might seem tedious for an outsider but for one working inside a certain framework it is often preferable to know one or two things for certain rather than many things vaguely, even if the results of such detailed hypothesistesting are sometimes intuitively predictable. But it seems that for the advocates of ANT, 'predictable' immediately associates with 'boring'. Implicit is the belief that science should aspire to be 'shocking', 'counter-intuitive' and 'interesting' at all costs. At this point I fully concur with Sica's simple question: What's the matter with intuitive appeal? (2004: 499). Does it not attest to the fruitfulness of a framework if it can explain a number of widely varying phenomena without altering its basic assumptions? After all, it was exactly the conclusion of Elder-Vass that ANT can sensitize one to the process of actualization of mechanisms, to the creation of associations between actors and to the inclusion of non-human elements but this does not mean replacing critical realism for ANT. And finally, there is a question of style and substance. As Latour states: The thick sauce of 'objective style' cannot hide for long the lack of meat . But if you have the meat, you may add an extra condiment or dispense with it (2005: 127). The problem with ANT is that one often has to wade through heaps of condiment unsure whether there is any meat underneath in the first place. ANT's notoriously metaphor-rich and opaque language means that its proponents can easily argue that their claims have been misinterpreted. This, I feel, is intellectually mischievous if not outright dishonest. The solutions are many: 1) being more formal (but that would also mean tackling the problems outlined above in a clear and systematic manner); 2) inventing new metaphors (for example, judging by a prevalent talk we have entered the era of 'post-ANT', although how it differs from its predecessor is difficult to tell); 3) adopting ANT's ideas superficially, using it as an eyeopener without deeper reflection on its foundational incompatibilities with mainstream sociology (or geography, archaeology, media studies, management studies etc. etc.). In fact, the latter may explain a great deal of ANT's growing popularity: only selected elements are borrowed and their meaning suitably, likely implicitly, modified to enable dialogue with other theories. The argument made so far is summarized in table 6.3. In the following a similar analysis of SCOT is performed. Social Construction Of Technology: a brief overview SCOT is an approach mainly developed by Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch (Pinch & Bijker 1984, Bijker, Hughes & Pinch 1987, Bijker & Law 1992, Bijker 1995). It seeks to extend the principles of symmetry first developed for the sociology of scientific knowledge (Bloor 1973) to the analysis of technology. An overview of the main concepts employed is provided in table 6.4. Following SCOT framework the process of technological development is analysed as relevant social groups' attributions of meanings to artifacts. The same artifact might be interpreted in various ways (interpretative flexibility) for example, young men saw high-wheeled bicycle as means of demonstrating their masculinity whereas the same artifact was perceived as unsafe by the elderly (Pinch & Bijker 1984, 1987). These groups negotiate different meanings but once they reach consensus, a closure occurs (e.g. by rhetorics or redefinition of the problem to be solved) and the artifact becomes stabilized in a dominant design. Previous controversies now become hidden from view and retrospectively it appears as if the process itself was 'natural' and 'logical' (although the closure might unravel again later on because of various reasons).

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Table 6.3. Summary of ANT interpretations

Interpretation I. ANT does not make/maintain clear distinctions between X and Y, Z and Q (e.g. social-natural, micromacro) What is ANT? Philosophy/ metatheory Problems (if the claim is accepted) ANT is too general to be of any use, crucial distinctions between entities become erased; misleading ascription of qualities to entities Infinite regress (ontological depth and temporality) Contradictions (other claims not supporting the reading) Existence and importance of these distinctions is not always denied; ANT accounts mainly focus on humans In practice cases are spatially/ temporally delimited

II. ANT is capable of making such distinctions but does Metatheory not admit them as explanatory concepts as they need to be explained themselves III. ANT is capable of making such distinctions and accepting them as explanatory concepts but refrains from doing so until the very last moment as to create enough space for actors' own accounts IV. ANT is capable of making such distinctions and accepting them as explanatory concepts but does not need them because description equals explanation Metatheory

No ANT middle-range theories (gap between high- Argument that description itself equals level abstractions and detailed descriptions) explanation

Metatheory

Impossibility of entirely atheoretical description; no justification for sticking to ANT; 'explanation' differs from 'description'; infinite regress Undecided about the need to go beyond descriptions (lack of ANT middle-range theories), existence of non-ANT theories for grappling with complexity (need for ANT categories questionable)

Ongoing connection of empirical descriptions to more general (theoretical) categories Ambitions to be generally applicable; vocabulary for theorizing stability; partial overlaps with mainstream sociological vocabulary Ongoing use of theoretical categories, including the derivation of the latter from case analyses and their usage elsewhere

V. ANT is capable of making such distinctions, accepting Substantive them as explanatory concepts and employing them but theory focuses on 'hot' situations where the traditional theoretical vocabulary is insufficient VI. ANT is a methodology/method, not a theory

Methodology/ Lack of good grounds for cutting the network; method 'follow the actors' can lead to biased, incomplete analysis; scarce and/or problematic suggestions how to conduct data collection/analysis; by definition results of case studies could only feed back to methodological principles Metatheory/ Contradictions between types I-VI remain and methodology/ become internal problems; ANT's methodology method reinforces its ontology which, in return, can be used to justify its methodology ? Counter-intuitivity and shocking quality are not usually valued over coherency; substance is sacrificed to style (vague and unclear language)

VII. ANT is a coherent mixture of methodological principles and theoretical statements

Statements explicitly defining ANT solely as X (e.g. method)

VIII. ANT is all and none of the above the same time: it needs to be useful, not coherent

Continuing efforts to refine the perspective(?)

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At the same time the attributions are not random but structured by technological frames consisting of various elements. Different groups and individuals may have different degrees of inclusion to a certain frame and may be included in various frames at the same time, e.g. it was Leo Baekeland's simultaneous inclusion to the frame of celluloid and electrochemical engineering that allowed him to become the inventor of Bakelite (Bijker 1995: 101-198). By the evolution of this seamless web where social and technical are very difficult or even impossible to distinguish, sociotechnical ensembles emerge and gradually become resistant to change. There are at least two ways for an obduracy of such an ensemble to manifest itself: a closed-in hardness refers to the fact that a user with a high degree of inclusion would attempt to solve emerging problems first in terms of an existing frame (e.g. when the mobile phone is not working one might try to fix it first rather than locating a landline phone (Bijker 2010: 70)). A closing out obduracy can occur with a low involvement when an actor sees no possibilities of modification inside the particular frame presenting him/her with a take-it-or-leave-it choice. Table 6.4. SCOT's vocabulary (Russell & Williams 2002, edited and expanded by the author)
Concept Closure Definition A process by which, or the point at which, interpretations of an artifact (or an institution or process) by different social groups conceptions of design and use, value and significance, or in particular, its 'self-evident' essential character are brought into agreement or one interpretation becomes dominant (Russell & Williams 2002: 112-113) Degree to which actor's perceptions and actions are structured by a certain technological frame Scope for the attribution by different groups of different meanings to an artifact, according to their different backgrounds, purposes and commitments (Russell & Williams 2002: 114) Refers to a fixed and taken-for-granted nature of a sociotechnical ensemble making the latter resistant to change All groups who have ascribed the artifact in focus some kind of a meaning Continually changing associations of social, technical, semiotic, etc. elements (Russell & Williams 2002: 116) Process by which a technological form becomes settled from a period of conflict, negotiation or indeterminacy, particularly as visions for the technology take social and material form (Russell & Williams 2002: 116)

Inclusion Interpretative flexibility Obduracy Relevant social groups Sociotechnical ensembles Stabilization

Technological frame Structure of rules and practices ... which enable, guide and constrain technological development in specific areas. Contains heterogeneous elements social and cognitive; includes exemplary artifacts, scientific theories, values, goals, test protocols, tacit knowledge, central problems and related strategies (Russell & Williams 2002: 116)

1st reading: philosophical implications3 Although it would be pretty difficult to consider SCOT a philosophy, one can nevertheless attempt to flesh out its philosophical foundations. Here the main problem is that SCOT framework simultaneously supports conflicting assumptions about the nature of reality.

3 Since various criticisms of SCOT overlap with those of ANT they will only be noted in passing.

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Consider the following statements: In the social constructivist approach, the key point is not that the social is given any special status behind the natural; rather, it is claimed that there is nothing but the social: socially constructed natural phenomena, socially constructed social interests, socially constructed artifacts, and so on (Bijker, Hughes & Pinch 1987: 109) and the constructivist argument is that the core of technology, that which constitutes its working, is socially constructed (Bijker 1995: 281). They instantly give an impression as if there was nothing to the world beyond our ideas (social constructions) and therefore the research should focus only on those. However, a realist would point out that there is something missing from the picture: for example, while the functionality of a technology is surely a matter of agreement to a certain extent and the machines surely assembled from parts by humans there is also a sense in which its underlying working principles are not subject to social construction of any kind (e.g. the description of a computer performing a calculation remains the same whether we find the calculation or the result useful, and hence the computer 'working' for us, or not). Kroes's (2010) distinction between structural and functional aspects of technology is one way of expressing this. The above quotes, however, do imply idealism. Note that this does not necessarily entail an accusation of voluntarism (creating the world according to one's wishes) after all, the counteracting force to this tendency could be something like 'social pressure'. But curiously material factors are removed from the equation and denied any explanatory power. But occasionally Bijker makes statements which resonate much more with realist positions. Take for instance: The technical is socially constructed, and the social is technically constructed. All stable ensembles are bound together as much by the technical as by the social (Bijker 1995: 273) and by rendering the two sides of the analysis social groups and technical artifacts into aspects of one world, technological frame will be helpful in transcending the distinction between hitherto irreconcilable opposites: the social shaping of technology and the technological impact on society, social determinism and technical determinism, society and technology (ibid.: 196-197). Presuming that by 'technical' Bijker does not mean 'ideas of technical' this is perfectly compatible with realist notions about anterior and independent reality and its impact on human perception and behaviour. Therefore SCOT's philosophical implications seem to be contradictory. It is logically impossible to be realist and idealist at the same time. However, more recently Bijker has offered a curious defence arguing that constructivist technology studies can be agnostic about this idealism-realism question: both ontological positions are compatible with constructivist sociology of technology, and the sociology of technology cannot provide empirical arguments to choose for either ontological position (2010: 64) and all forms of SCOT are agnostic with respect to the ontological status of technology and the natural world: you need not take any ontological position as a researcher to use SCOT for studying technology, nor does SCOT have any bearings on the ontological status of technology (ibid.: 73). The position of ontological agnosticism entails unwillingness to choose between realism and idealism (Bijker also adds phenomenalism). Thus we do not need to decide that some parts of technological frame really exist as independent and anterior entities or only as ideas of some sort to employ the concept itself. This detachment of philosophical principles from conceptual frameworks seems a good justification to sweep fundamental questions aside and just get one's hands dirty on the empirical research. Alas, clever as it might be, unproblematic it is not. The first problem resonates with the first critique of ANT: when realism/idealism divide cannot enter the picture at all then SCOT's level of abstraction immediately springs to cosmic heights. If one wishes to speak about social groups attributing meanings to artefacts without choosing an ontological position then logically the level of abstraction of that framework must be higher than that of realism/idealism divide. But when 17

concepts like 'relevant social group' abstain from distinguishing between anterior and independent physically existing groups and ones existing as ideas only being agnostic means that they can be both, no position is taken then the denotative domain of the term becomes extremely wide immediately leading to the problem of... relevance. SCOT becomes a sort of a archi-abstract primeval holistic language where one is all and all is one and everything may or may not be. Of course, one might not be happy with this highly generic stance but would still desire to employ the framework itself. Alas, stepping down on the ladder of abstraction involves some kind of a specifying choice about underlying ontological principles. Logically it would lead to the possibility that the number of such SCOTs would equal the number of different philosophical schools with all their commonalities and differences. As a result the possibility of theoretical cumulativity could only occur at the most abstract level (otherwise at least some of the starting points would be incommensurable). Therefore a much more important question would be: why abstain from making such a choice in the first place? Bijker (2010) correctly notes that realism entails a more optimistic attitude (making distinctions about reality and our conceptions of them is possible) while idealism is more sceptical (there is no need or possibility to go beyond our minds). For a critical realist idealism proposes an inconvenient question: why are certain ideas more durable and resistant than others? An answer to this adopting a position that there are some entities with causal powers independent of our own perceptions brings an additional burden because the ascription of external causality needs to be justified somehow. Although critical realism also admits that there is no one-way train from conceptions to reality our ascriptions may be simply wrong that itself does not resolve the issue. In fact, coupled with the acknowledgement that offering absolute proof is impossible, realist position seems quite uncomfortable. But Sokal's and Bricmont's stress the mere fact that an idea is irrefutable does not imply that there is any reason to believe it is true (2008: 176) can be usefully turned around: it is possible have a reasonable belief, say, in a fact that it was a faulty microchip with independent causal powers that caused the computer to break down, not merely our belief. Furthermore, by adopting ontological agnosticism Bijker in effect turns philosophical underpinnings immune to empirical sources of revision leaving an impression as if a rational argument on the philosophical level would be impossible being only a matter of one's eclectic preferences. I would argue that while this is true in some sense yes, we are indeed free to choose our basic assumptions it does not mean that 1) the explanatory power of all foundational assumptions would be the same (hence the reason for choosing one and not the other); 2) we should not revise our basic assumptions on the basis of our increased understanding of the world. It is not incidental that some of the ideas outlined above emerged from backwards reasoning Bhaskar (1975) analysed scientific experimentation in order to deduce the nature of reality; Kroes (2010) used engineers' descriptions of artifacts to theorize the dual nature of the latter. In fact, Brey (2010) describes the philosophy of technology as having taken two empirical turns since the 1980s. It would be difficult to see why if we exclude the possibility that in all those cases empirical observations were used to derive a more nuanced philosophy. The question was rather: what must philosophy be like for an activity/entity X to make sense in the first place? So there are good grounds for advocating the mutual informing of philosophy, metatheory and substantive theory, instead of granting them total isolation and immunity. 2nd and 3rd reading: SCOT as a metatheory/specific substantive theory But if one could leave aside philosophical issues and simply note that even with the adoption of some ontological assumptions terms like relevant social groups, closure and technological frame are 18

very wide and can embrace a number of different kinds of entities and processes, one could also attempt to read SCOT as a general theory of socio-technical processes, i.e. metatheory. The problem is similar to that of ANT: SCOT spells out some of the elements and even proposes some relations between them (relevant social groups attributing meanings resulting in closure) but remains sketchy. A few examples include passing references to evolutionary theory (e.g. Pinch & Bijker 1987: 28), to possible different units of analysis operating on different levels of aggregation (Bijker 2010: 69) and detailed description of power struggles in empirical cases (Bijker 1995: 199268). However, it is one thing to use a theoretical concept once or twice or turn attention to some aspects in historical narratives, and another to integrate it systematically and explicitly as part of the theoretical framework. To take one more example: technological frame is simply said to include goals, key problems, problem-solving strategies, requirements to be met by problem solutions, current theories, tacit knowledge, testing procedures, design methods and criteria, users' practice, perceived substitution function and exemplary artifacts (Bijker 1995: 125). Lundvall's criticism of Edquist's list of activities of an innovation system (2005) also applies here: The listing reminds of the 'growth accounting' exercises where attempts were made to reduce the relative size of the 'residual'. It has in common with such efforts a certain agnostic [!] approach where all factors are treated as equally important and without systematically linking them to each other. In this sense it [is] a move toward less theory rather than one toward more theory. This is reflected in the disturbing lack of consistency in the list, i.e. the heterogeneous character of its elements (2005: 13). What one has here is a simple list without a reasoned discussion even on the most abstract level how the elements might go together and make a difference to the state of affairs. In addition to underspecification of concepts the absence of some ideas also undermines SCOT's usefulness as a general theory. Thus SCOT has been criticized for neglecting the importance of wider socio-technical context shaping the interplay between social groups (Russell 1986, Rosen 1993, Klein & Kleinman 2002). Related is the accusation that as a result SCOT is too pluralistic and consensus-oriented avoiding the issues of conflicts and power (Russell 1986, Hrd 1993) on the theoretical level. Taking an example from Bijker's own case study (1995: 42-43) one might ask who could define riding a high-wheeled bicycle as a problem of indecent exposure and (at least initially) how much women as opposed to men were able to redefine the problem. The answer to these questions would have to begin from a pre-existing social structure with certain allocation of social roles and power to exercise one's will. Inability to theorize these issues (note once again that this is different from an inability to describe them in the narratives) undermines SCOT's general applicability (equal power of social groups to effect change is likely an exceptional case rather than a general rule). Finally, there is an issue of empirical practice. Although in principle the vocabulary of SCOT is so general that it could be applied to widely differing empirical circumstances, be it an invention of a single artifact in a single locality in a few years, or large-scale socio-technical transformations with vast spatial scopes and temporal ranges, in practice the research has often focused on the early stages of technological development (e.g. Russell 1986, Winner 1993, Bruun & Hukkinen 2003). The studies of larger and more stabilized sociotechnical ensembles are relatively rare (e.g. Aibar & Bijker 1997, Bijker 2007). When reading SCOT as a metatheory, it would be natural to expect there to be a number of middlerange SCOT theories expanding and fleshing out the original framework while remaining true to its core ideas. In the worst case this theoretical progress is largely non-existent, in the best case simply unsystematic, that is, even if new concepts have been coined (e.g. Beder (1991) has proposed a number of mechanisms of closure) generally they have not been taken up, cumulatively added to the 19

framework and exploited in depth. Coupled with the above observation about SCOT's main empirical focus one could then claim instead that it does not actually aspire to be a metatheory of socio-technical development. Indeed Bijker himself has titled a case study on Bakelite 'Towards a theory of invention' (1987). In this regard he has also made some hypothesis-like propositions: 1) when no technological frame is dominant there will be a multitude of innovations; 2) when one frame is dominant, the innovations tend to be incremental; 3) in case of two competing frames criteria external to all of them (e.g. rhetoric) might help to resolve the situation and a hybridization of both solutions is possible (Bijker 1987: 182-185, Bijker 1995: 276-279). For example, the 'battle of systems' between alternating current and direct current resulted in the invention of artifacts enabling the interconnection of both (Hughes 1987). But the very generality which made it possible to read SCOT as a metatheory turns into an obstacle as soon as one attempts to interpret and employ it as a substantive one. For example, one might feel that there is a lack of distinctions regarding many aspects, e.g. different properties of social groups, types of closure mechanisms, conditions in which certain mechanisms tend to occur more often than others, pathways by which obduracy is achieved, mechanisms by which they are maintained etc. etc. Similarly to ANT then, SCOT has often immensely complex and highly interesting descriptions but only rudimentary means of making sense of them. Paradoxically this very fact might explain its continuing popularity: it is relatively easy to cast a network of highly abstract concepts over a complex story and add a minor novel remark or two to claim having not only presented the data but also 'theorized' it. That way it can serve as a convenient umbrella for sloppy theorizing4. 4th reading: methodological principles + theoretical categories The final reading attempts to read SCOT as a combination of methodological principles and theoretical statements. Starting from the former: as SCOT's research strategy also involves following the actors the problems are the same as in ANT's case. Namely, the sole focus on actors' own categories might easily lead to an incomplete and biased analysis due to inability to take into account unrecognized, silenced and structurally excluded groups. In addition Klein and Kleinman point to instances where Bijker actually shifts to analyst's categories and even admits it himself (2002: 33). It could be said that SCOT is methodologically sketchy and there are better places to look for guidance on conducting inductivist research. The general methodological position of SCOT is that of relativism. This requires the researcher to be impartial and symmetrical to machines' success/failure where working is the result, not the cause, of a machine becoming a successful artifact (Bijker 1995: 275). Thus for explaining the development of technology no special status is awarded to power (of social groups), success (of projects), truth (of propositions) or working (of machines). The associated research heuristics advises the researcher not to use the working of a machine as an explanation of its success, but to trace this success as resulting from social processes (Bijker 2010: 73-74). There is an extent to which one might easily agree with these requirements. Yes, both types of machines, successes and failures, should be researched and same types of causes (albeit in different constellations) are likely at work in both instances. However, to allow 'working' not to play any part in an explanation simply excludes materiality from the set of causal factors. Bijker expresses fear that by adopting realist ontology technological determinism would be allowed to enter from the back door (2010: 71). But there is an immense difference between involving technical and material causes as explanatory factors alongside norms, expectations, beliefs, interpretations etc., and reducing the latter completely to the former. Bijker does not seem to notice that when he denies
4 This is not directed at the exploratory phase of SCOT's development the ideas when initially presented were certainly groundbreaking and highly stimulating but rather to latter applications.

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material factors any explanatory power he is automatically forced to end up with social determinism because only those factors remain to make a difference. What Sokal and Bricmont argue about the weakness of such a move regarding the sociology of scientific knowledge is equally applicable to Bijker's take on the sociology of technology: It is not enough to study the alliances or power relationships between scientists, important though they may be. What appears to a sociologist as a pure power game may in fact be motivated by perfectly rational considerations... (2008: 216). In other words, the success of an artifact is at least partly explainable by reference to its materiality. We can modify our meanings arbitrarily in thousands of ways but if the computer breaks down in every 20 minutes then this fact can play an explanatory role why it does not become a dominant computer design (although it might constitute a successful flower stand at the same time). Bijker fails to demonstrate convincingly why the exclusion of certain causes even for methodological reasons should thereby lead to a better (as opposed to merely 'interesting') research. But that it is perfectly possible to maintain the importance of social shaping while also allowing for material and technical causes to play their role has been shown masterfully: what I have in mind here is Vincenti's modest but elegant case study of Edison's electrical lighting system (1995). The second problem arises from the fact that the meaning of 'special status' in Bijker's quote remains utterly unclear. For example, are we being told not to use differences in power as explanatory factors at all? Should we attempt to seek how they came to be in the first place? Or should we only employ them alongside with other potential causes? In the third case I would fully agree. In the first and second case I could not disagree more. Similarly to ANT there is simply no good reason not to make any use of pre-existing theory or empirical observations about the state of affairs (e.g. differences in capabilities to effect change, create and impose meanings). And if any of those differences beg explanation by definition then infinite regress once again looms large. Thus SCOT's problematic baggage can easily lead to widely differing interpretations: one could criticize it as an over-socialized account where material does not play any part in the formation of closure (Callon 1987) or a realist theory in which technological frames composed of social and material elements structure interpretations; a situation which Bijker himself openly admits (2010: 73). He deems the combination of methodological relativism and ontological agnosticism a good solution to the issue. But when translated into a more mundane language one ends up with the position where by definition one should not assume anything a priori nor does one have any beliefs about the nature of the world after the research! At this point I cannot refrain from expressing sincere amazement how a perfectly good set of practical propositions about socio-technical development can be turned into a framework of nothingness by arcane philosophical (s)wordplay. Thus SCOT's combination of certain methodological and ontological principles turns out to be an unhappy marriage indeed. If all this seems too much like a caricature then consider a more moderate proposal: it might be that as with ANT SCOT's agnosticism is only temporary. It is at the start of the enquiry where the researcher abstains from drawing strict distinctions between independently existing entities and ones existing as ideas. The distinction should only emerge after data collection and analysis. Unfortunately upon closer reflection the consequences of such an interpretation are equally absurd. I, for one, would be baffled to find a following disclaimer among the 'conclusions' section of any SCOT case study: Having studied the development of a bicycle over the course of hundred years I have reached the conclusion that both social groups and aforementioned vehicles do indeed exist independently of our perceptions. I have also inferred that the presumption as if the researcher was all alone in the world or systematically mislead by his/her perceptions are not convincing. Note that these are perfectly good assumptions when it comes to conducting an enquiry. As an end result, however, they seem more like a failure to make use of most of the case study material. Alas, an 21

advertent reader has probably noticed that above I have quoted Bijker arguing that the sociology of technology cannot provide empirical arguments to choose for either ontological position (2010: 64). Therefore even a more moderate interpretation note that I use the word only in comparison to what was discussed above is explicitly denied. ANT and SCOT: assessment of usefulness In a sympathetic philosophical analysis of Latour's work Garham Harman quotes a saying that there are two kinds of critics: those who want us to succeed, and those who want us to fail (2009: 119). And for some whose research career has been intimately tied with ANT and SCOT the preceding critique would firmly land me in the latter category. However, I would ask in return: how many chances would one be usually willing to give to a scientific framework enabling wildly different interpretations, moreover when one is not fully convinced of its usefulness? Because the introduction of the interpretive device found on figure 6.1 was not meant to imply that as a text is never protected from the multiplicity of interpretations every act of critique is completely arbitrary. On the contrary, it was shown that each reading was indeed grounded in the claims of ANT and SCOT proponents themselves. And the possibility of various interpretation co-depends on the framework in focus. The critic is never innocent but neither is the author. But the very complexification makes an assessment of these frameworks an arduous task. Why this is so is well captured by DiMaggio: ...not only is theory created by its readers as well as its writers it is then recreated by the authors who employ it (1995: 394). Thus a meta-criterion of ambiguity arises and the question becomes: which version to choose? As demonstrated above even the adoption of a framework as a representation of a certain type (e.g. metatheory) still leaves room for conflicting sub-interpretations. Facing such a situation a charitable (or superifical) reader often sweeps some contradictions under the rug and saves what s/he can while explicitly or implicitly modifying the meaning of concepts, or selectively highlighting certain aspects. Although in the end I cannot avoid some simplification myself I have not been that charitable. The reason is simple: namely, I find that the practical sensitizing tenets of ANT and SCOT can easily be accommodated by the framework presented in chapter one, which, at the same time, is analytically more nuanced. First, although in principle philosophical assumptions can be taken as non-negotiable axioms I have attempted to show that the value of critical realism seems to be exactly about making some useful (alas, not very shocking) assumptions. In this comparison ANT and SCOT do not fare so well: extreme abstractness, contradictory claims, infinite regress and strict separation of philosophy from other issues are troubling companions. The metatheoretical section of chapter one outlined and elaborated a set of principles which I believe to be generally applicable to socio-material processes. Table 6.5 demonstrates how ANT and SCOT measure up to the theorization of these issues (but note the selection from interpretations presented above). It is seen that in many respects ANT and SCOT do not or even refuse to make certain analytical distinctions, or simply undertheorize them. In addition, it is often difficult to be certain which positions the proponents actually support (e.g. whether the lack of structure is a priori demand or simply an uninteresting issue to theorize for ANT or whether SCOT allows the material to enter as explanatory factor or not). The general nature of both approaches leaves much to be desired. Virtually the same can be said about methodological presumptions: either their problems have not been satisfactorily solved or the advice remains far too general, being of little help in making sense of the data.

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Table 6.5. ANT and SCOT in the light of metatheory of chapter 1

Postulate Causal force Causal force relations ANT Actants only Yes (mutual translations between actants) SCOT Some distinctions are made but remain mostly undertheorized Yes, but can be taken to be biased towards the 'actor > technology' shaping Yes, possible in principle but underdeveloped Yes, but biased towards the local in empirical practice Yes

Systemicity Micro-macro System-system interaction Structure Basic interaction mechanism

Yes, but too simplistic (theoretical vocabulary underdeveloped) No (the distinction is to be explained itself) No (the distinction is to be explained itself)

Yes, possible in principle

Finally, there is a question of employing ANT and SCOT as specific substantive theories. In this regard I find Geels's analysis (2007) quite apt. He employs Weick's (1999) proposition that every theory makes trade-offs between generality/scope, simplicity/parsimony and accuracy/specificity. Thus both ANT and SCOT are general (abstract concepts potentially applicable to a wide range of cases) and simple (few interrelated concepts) but not very specific. There is much room for complexity in case descriptions though. In other words, there is a relatively large gap between general concepts and complex descriptions. Whereas this can be an excuse for a metatheory it considerably reduces the attractiveness of both as substantive theories. Apart from specific propositions one can also ask: what are the sensitizing qualities of ANT and SCOT? At least six can be singled out 1) attention to both, successful and failed technologies; 2) importance of the material is taken seriously; 3) focus on events and processes; 4) acknowledgement of power struggles and conflicts as fundamental features of socio-technical development; 5) acknowledgement that actors' preferences, values and even identities can change over time; 6) focus on both, intended and unintended consequences of action. However, neither the critical realist position nor the socio-technical metatheory nor the specific substantive theories presented in the first chapter exclude any of these issues by definition. It is perfectly possible to turn attention to and include all of them in case descriptions. In the current state of STS a far more serious challenge is to theorize them make them part and parcel of stylized models with more general applicability. For all these reasons I would argue that once one's eyes have been opened with these sensitizing qualities otherwise the wholesale adoption of ANT or SCOT would not be analytically very useful. Trap of generalization Although SCOT's and ANT's rift between the general and the specific has been pointed repeatedly one issue remains to be addressed in this regard. This is the question of maintaining and reinforcing the gap itself which I call a trap of generalization. The idealization of how a theory might develop is presented on figure 6.2. The trap of generalization itself is defined by two characteristics: 1) climbing the ladder of abstraction when faced with increasing empirical complexity while; 2) arguing against the necessity of making more

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distinctions, often by introducing additional sophisticated additional justifications5. Figure 6.2. Two ways of developing a theory

LADDER OF ABSTRACTION

3a. ...either raises the generality of its concepts becoming more simplistic, or...

1. A new theory emerges and...

2. ...is criticized for not taking into account various empirical phenomena, and...

3b. ...makes additional analytical distinctions and becomes more complex

T0

T1

T2

TIME

For example, SCOT's early use of closure initially referred to two mechanisms (rhetorical closure, closure by redefinition of the problem). It was then criticized for turning insufficient attention to the importance of the material in forming or obstructing closure (Callon 1987, Law 1987). Bijker's subsequent unification of technological frame structuring the interpretations of social groups (1995) can be seen as an attempt to deal with the issue. As a result of this strategy, however, the gap between the complexity of empirical data and applied theoretical models increased because the concept of closure extended to more situations (instead of social closure there was now sociomaterial closure). Thereby the original model of analysis developed concepts could be sustained but the tension between realism and idealism, already found in earlier case studies (Pinch & Bijker 1987, Bijker 1987) remained threatening to compromise the social in social constructivism. The solution? Refusal to make even the most fundamental distinctions. Consider Bijker's comment to his article: By describing this work as 'studying the interaction between technical and social factors', one of the anonymous reviewers suggesteded [sic] that this trend be interpreted as a convergence of realist and constructionist positions. I do not want to do that. Such a characterisation dilutes the clear constructivist unit of analysis and methodology by unnecessarily assuming a realist position on the existence of technical and social entities (2010: 71). What this readily translates into is: I do not wish to alter my initial concepts and relations between them in any fundamental way. Where all this eventually leads SCOT extremely high levels of abstraction and insulation of philosophy from empirical observations has been
5 Note that choice 3b on the figure does not automatically denote a more desirable outcome. It is perfectly possible that a mindless addition of additional complicating factors without much theoretical reflection might lead to abandoning the initial framework as too simplistic substituting it for a collection of unsystemic observations instead of a well-defined and coherent middle-range theory. On the other hand, the development towards path 3a might lead to a good metatheory where more general tendencies are being gradually drawn out from a collection of seemingly disparate empirical and theoretical findings.

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sufficiently demonstrated. Matters seem a bit different with ANT which has been developing a high-level vocabulary from the start. But the main aim still seems to be self-preservation without any large-scale substantial specifications. The different readings found above demonstrated how one could deal with the rift: claims that ANT is not a substantive theory at all and that in this regard its vocabulary has not even been poor enough (implicit is the call to increase the generality of concepts), rejecting the need to theorize downwards at the same time (because description = explanation), changing ANT's domain of applicability (fluid atheoretical vs. stable theoretical situations) or redefining its nature and thus the criteria by which it might be judged (method vs. theory). But the end result is pretty much the same deliberately impoverished vocabulary coupled with thick descriptions of highly complex interactions in empirical case studies and a lack of overall theoretical cumulativity to bridge the chasm between the two. In addition we also have an elaborated set of arguments for the maintenance of status quo.

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