2011-12-13
In this paper I sketch an attempt to address the interconnectedness of the social aspect of human reality with the materiality of the external world and vice versa. With the help of four articles [1] taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) I will try to exemplify these influences. There was no special screen process why I selected just these four articles; I merely deemed them to be good examples to illustrate the case I am trying to sketch. Clearly other articles could have been selected, but the social and the material sphere are vast subjects and highly ambiguous, forests of paper have been spent to just define the one or the other, let alone to combine the two. So let this be my humble attempt to do just this.
Defining Social
The theme of imprecise concepts continues right to our first definition. The concept of social is very ambiguous. A Marxist usually defines the social as being the sum of class interest and belonging into a political sphere. This rather narrow definition has been challenged to include group actions, community actions, and collective knowledge and believes. In total all these are referring to some sort of human to human interaction (excluding other animals) [2]. For the moment let’s be content with this and move on to the next definition.
Material Things
Material things as the name implies are made up of materials, matter so to speak. To not complicate it further lets avoid the traditional distinction between natural and cultural things [3] and be content that things made up of matter are things. Also that both living and dead can both occupy the category of things. This implies that humans have no special status and can be regarded as things as well, even if humans are indeed strange things. Furthermore all things occupy space, are visible and touchable [4]. Each thing has a monopoly on the space it is occupying, where one thing exist no other thing can be [5]. According to Hägerstrand [6] the physical world is characterized by having no gaps, he calls this concept:”bredvidvarandhet [7]” meaning that next to each thing there is another thing occupying that space, reality is continuous without gaps. In this epistemology, space becomes the sum of everything that is entailed within in it [8]. To summarize, things are everything that is touchable, visible and will occupy space, while space is just the sum of all things. Next let’s turn to how the material things are interacting with the social in two distinct cases.
Things influencing the Social
Collins [9] gives an account (1) of the propagation of the TEA laser (Transversely Excited Atmospheric Pressure CO2 laser) technology from America to Britain. His main point in the article is that this propagation requires more than just written sources. He invokes the notion of tacit knowledge, necessary to be able to recreate the technology on a different location. He states that he is not aware of anyone producing a working TEA laser using written sources only [10]. But it is not for this purpose I introduced this article, I want to call attention to the interviews that get mentioned during the article. Collins quotes employs at smaller laboratories saying that they have to be careful in what knowledge they share and what not, in order to avoiding loss of expertise. The reason given is a lack of resources or inability to compete with larger laboratories [11] working on the same problem. Such tactics included answering truthful to questions, but not volunteering information, that is not explicitly asked for. In this fashion they retain their air of openness, while still not revealing vital information [12]. Even if this particular case involved technical expertise, Collins is quite confident that one could generalize his finding to scientific community, since they operate within the same principles [13].
This seems in stark contrast to the ideal of Communism, introduced by Merton, which states that scientific knowledge should be a public good. Accessible to everyone and not kept secret from the public or other researchers [14]. So the question arises why this wide gap to the Mertonian ideal? The next article (2) may seem closer to this Mertonian ideal. It deals with the introduction of Drosophila as a standard organism for the study of genetic differences [15]. These ideals exemplified themselves in sharing of instrumentation in the parent laboratory as well as ideas. Furthermore the initial group would send cultures of Drosophila to anyone that asked for them and was deemed qualified enough, free of charge [16]. The only thing that was expected was to report back how the experiments were progressing, by this extending the community [17]. Credit was giving to the person first materialising the result, not for the person who had the initial idea [18], making it an almost perfect Mertonian case. This built a network of trust that allowed information to freely flow between the different practitioners, violations were held in check by social convention, and no negative sanction ever had to be utilized [19].
So what was the difference between the TEA laser and the Drosophila case? The head director Morgan is quoted by saying:”that we can claim no special virtue here, for Drosophila is like the air we breathe - there is enough for all [20]" So it seems to be the physical property of the material they were studying that allowed for this generous interaction with colleagues. Several times throughout the Drosophila article it is mentioned what sheer abundance of data was produced by breeding Drosophila [21]. In the face of this one has to ask oneself, is it conceivably to make the argument that the physical properties of the surroundings in some way determined the social outcome of the group interaction? I think with further research just such an argument could be made.
Social impact on the Material
The studied article (3) is about Sweden’s neutrality during the cold war and how this neutrality exemplified itself materially [22]. The author sketches the argument that by looking at the material account of Sweden’s military defence, the sincerity of this neutrality can be put to question. He argues that the Cold War set the tone for the time and in this climate Sweden had to choose [23], which officially it took the stance of neutrality but in reality it allied itself with the west and the material account shows this. He starts to explain that the initial position to Sweden’s neutrality by the US and Britain was looked down upon, but this changed over time, because: “ord också måste omvandlades till handling, politiken måste implementeras [24]” so the actions Sweden chose signalled to the western powers that Sweden was willing to at least unofficially allay itself with this west. This led to a closer cooperation between the Sweden and the NATO powers. This exemplified itself by Sweden building airfields large enough to accommodate NATO bombers, standardizing fuelling stations to NATO standard tank pressures, implementing NATO radio and radar standards and the establishment of a telephone line directly to the US-headquarter in Wiesbaden [25]. This again led to an even tighter cooperation between Sweden and NATO, were Sweden could buy military technology and weapons from the US and Britain [26].
The next studied article (4) deals with Swedish enterprise of gypsum mining on Svalbard archipelago, to be more precise on Spitsbergen. The aim of the article is to show how the extra judicial status of the island in the early 20th century as a no-man’s land exemplified itself in the physical landscape [27]. Seen by itself the gypsum mining may even be regarded as irrational, none of the mined gypsum was ever shipped back to Sweden. Because this was not the main purpose of the enterprise, the main purpose was that the mined gypsum should be visible to signal to other parties that the area was under Swedish occupation [28]. Furthermore the location chosen for gypsum mining had mothering to do with the availability of gypsum, because this was available in abundance at much easier to access location. But rather because they represented strategic points for a future coal mining endeavour [29]. One has to see these actions in a larger framework: as physical signs in the landscape to secure property ownership against competing factions for a future coal mining endeavour, than they start to make sense [30].
These two accounts are just a few samples to show how the social can and will express itself physical. Social differences will take different physical expression. In the neutrality case of Sweden, a true adherence to neutrality would have presumably looked very different. And in the Svalbard case, without considering the social or international rules regarding the island, the actions would seem irrational.
False Dichotomy
I deliberately choose to present the influences of physical on social and vice versa. Traditionally there is a standard in social research to treat the physical as trivial [31] and in the nature science to treat the social science as something of lesser quality than the nature science. Meaning that nature is truth and social is just opinion, two complete separate spheres [32]. To make it extra clear to show that one is influencing the other and vice versa, I chosen to represent it in this artificial way. But the truth of the matter is that this neat distinction is an illusion. In the articles the representations are in fact cyclic, having the social influencing the material, which in turn influences the social again and vice versa. In the case of Svalbard, one of the reasons why the Swedish influence ended is because of a large scale fire in nearby Swedish coalmine. The physical coast of repairing the damage combined with the loosing social struggle against the rival Scottish company led the Swedish company to cancel the mining operation [33]. So it is not one that is just influencing the other, it is ever changing interaction and co-action that is happening.
In a famous STS study by Michel Callon, he describes the interactions of non-human and human actors [34]. Even in the classic of Latour’s Centre of Calculation [35] the information has to physically get back from the periphery to the centre to be usable, so the physical is highly important. Hägerstrand goes one step further and builds up an epistemology, where the physical and the social together make up an ever recreating evolutionary filter for what will and can happen next [36].
So what now?
Hopefully it is clear to be able to understand these complex interwoven processes it is necessary to have a discipline that can handle trans-disciplinary character necessary to handle these processes. Hägerstrand talks about an ”all-ekologi [37 ]" to be able to understand the complex interacting processes of the world. Traditionally scientific disciplines are more focused on dissecting and specialising therefore they are not suitable for such task. To be able have a holistic understanding such a discipline must be able to encompass a holistic approach. He also admits that currently no such discipline exist [38].
I would suggest geography could be a possibility for such a discipline, since it already is addressing trans-disciplinary issues. It could serve as platform on which could be built upon to be able to encompass the different stages necessary to be able to grasp such a understanding necessary to explain these processes. One example could be the super imposing of Gieryn’s cultural cartography [39] with Hägerstrand’s “tillvaroväv [40]". To be able to have an all encompassing space in which the individual has to navigate within. This would highlight the fact that it is the combination of the social and the physical that together are constraining and enabling the actor’s actions.
Notes:
[1] (1) The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks (1974) – H. M. Collins; (2)Moral Economy, Material Culture, and Community in Drosophila Genetics (1998) – Robert E. Kohler both in: the Science Studies reader (1999) – (ed.) Mario Biagioli; (3)Neutralitetens materialitet (2003) – Hans Weinberger; (4) Aktanter i ingenmanslandet (2003) – Dag Avango both in: Industrins Avtryck(2003) – (red) Dag Avango & Brita Lundström
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/#4 taken on the 2011-12-12, last edited 2006-08-18
[3] Tillvaroväven (2009) – Torsten Hägerstrand, p. 76
[4] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 81
[5] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 84
[6] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 57
[7] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 57 ”bredvidvarandhet” is a Swedish word made up by Hägerstrand himself, to roughly translate it means something like: “next-to-each-otherness”
[8] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 81
[9] The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks (1974) – H. M. Collins
[10] Collins (1974), p. 102
[11] Collins (1974), p. 104
[12] Collins (1974), p. 104
[13] Collins (1974), p. 106
[14] The Normative Structure of Science (1942) – Robert K. Merton, pp. 273-275
[15] Moral Economy, Material Culture, and Community in Drosophila Genetics (1998) – Robert E. Kohler
[16] Kohler (1998), p. 249
[17] Kohler (1998), p. 253
[18] Kohler (1998), p. 250
[19] Kohler (1998), p. 251
[20] Kohler (1998), p. 254
[21] Kohler (1998), pp. 246, 251 & 254
[22] Neutralitetens materialitet (2003) – Hans Weinberger
[23] Weinberger (2003), pp. 252 – 253
[24] Weinberger (2003), pp. 253 – 254 a rough translation would be:”words have to be put into actions, politics have to be implemented”
[25] Weinberger (2003), pp. 256 – 259
[26] Weinberger (2003), pp. 264 – 265
[27] Aktanter i ingenmanslandet (2003) – Dag Avango
[28] Avango (2003), pp. 181 – 183
[29] Avango (2003), pp. 196 – 197
[30] Avango (2003), p. 177
[31] Hägerstrand (2009) p. 10
[32] Cultural Boundaries of Science (1999) – Thomas F. Gieryn, pp. 343 – 344
[33] Avango (2003), p. 192
[34] Domestication of Scallops and the Fisherman of St Brieuc Bay (1999) – Michel Callon
[35] Science in Action (1987) – Bruno Latour
[36] Hägerstrand (2009), pp 64 – 65
[37] Hägerstrand (2009), p. 19 once again a term introduced by Hägerstrand a direct translation would be: ”all-ecology”
[38] Hägerstrand (2009), p 24
[39] Gieryn (1999)
[40] Hägerstrand (2009)
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