Introduction: Demarcation Socialized: Constructing Boundaries and Recognizing Difference
Abstract
Given what we know about the nature of knowledge and scientific work it no longer makes sense to think of scientific knowledge as demarcated from “ordinary” knowledge through its methods or the characteristics of the scientific community. As the social studies of science have shown, boundaries become ambiguous when viewed close up so that science merges with ordinary knowledge. But does this mean that distinctions between knowledge claims rest on nothing more than social conventions, powerful as these might be? The articles in this special issue address this question from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction sets out this broader framework and highlights the themes that unite the individual articles. Our central argument is that although boundary work is difficult, complex, and contingent, it is too important to be left to chance or tradition. We need to rescue expertise from the antiessentialist consensus that there is nothing but attribution.
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1. Previous quinquennial conferences were hosted by the Science Studies Centre at Bath University in 1995 (Humans Animals and Machines), 1990 (The Rediscovery of Skill), 1985 (The Uses of Experiment), and 1980 (New Directions in the History and Sociology of Science). Papers from these conferences have been published by Lynch and Collins (1998); Gooding, Pinch, and Schaffer (1989); and Collins (1981). The Demarcation Socialised conference was organized by Harry Collins and Robert Evans with funding from the European Union (grant HPCFCT *1999-00032). The support of Professor Collins in preparing this special issue is also gratefully acknowledged.
2. The first of these conferenceswas held at Cornell University in September2003underthe theme of Connecting S&TS: The Academy, the Polity, and the World.
3. As an example of this, one of Evans’s research interests is economics and, in particular, the single European currency. When discussing these projects with colleagues, it is often remarked—and not entirely in jest—that economics is not a science or not a proper science or that it is all politics. While this mayormaynotbe true, it doesshow that thereis, even amongstthe science studies community, an implicit idea that science has some discernible identity or standards that can be used to assess whether or not something is “science.”
4. The ambiguity of the word science is frequently referred to in discussions about the public understanding of science (PUS), where all three title words are vulnerable to the same kind of deconstruction:
I think that the existence of PUS itself as a field of practice for scientists, science writers and science teachers, and a field of study for STS scholars, is, as it stands, a serious impediment here. The problem is threefold: problem 1 is the P (for public); problem 2 is the U (for understanding); and problem 3 is the S (for science). Together they spell the dreaded conduit metaphor, under whose baleful influence we continue to construe the situation as comprising a thing that generates hard facts or knowledge (science), things (science communicators) that pack them into containers (words, picture, multimedia), a channel that conducts the containers (the various media), and receivers (the public) that pick up the containers and extract their juicy contents of knowledge. So, as a start, we need to resolve never again to use the abbreviation PUS, and second, to resist at all costs the institutionalization of PUS. (Chris Stokes quoted in Fuller, n.d.)
5. Falsification is important for Popper as he (mistakenly) sees it as a way of avoiding the inductive problems identified by Hume, problems that render verification untenable as a route to reliable knowledge.
6. See, for example, Duhem ([1906] 1954), Quine (1951, [1953] 1961), Collins (1992), Kuhn (1996), and Shapin and Schaffer (1985).
7. A detailed exposition of Lakatos’s views on falsification and the relationship between his own theories and those of both Popper and Kuhn can be found in Lakatos (1970).
8. “One may rationally stick to a degenerating research programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poorpublic record.... It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk” (Lakatos 1971, 104).
9. The classic example here is the discussion of witchcraft and the Azande tribe in which Bloor (1976, 123-30), following the example of Winch (1974), argues that the Azande belief in witchcraft is not explainable by their acting less rationally than their Western critics. Within the Azande culture, the institutions of witchcraft are as consistent and coherent as the alternative cosmologies held as self-evidently true within Western scientific culture.
10. The literature referred to here is clearly voluminous. Evelyn Fox-Keller, Sandra Harding, and Donna Haraway are perhaps the most well known proponents of these views, although Brian Wynne is also highly critical of the universalizing tendencies of scientific practice (see, e.g., Keller 1985; Keller and Longino 1990; Harding 1998; Haraway 1997; Wynne 2003).
11. Similarly, even within the more general science and technologiesstudies (STS) literature, it is notclear that science itself needsto change, rather, it is the expectation so fit and weight given to it by other institutions that is the problem. For a strong statement of this view, see Collins and Pinch (1993).
12. As readers of the infamous “3-Wave” paper (Collins and Evans 2002) will appreciate, we (Collins and Evans) prefer the idea of expertise to that of science ortruth in thinking about criteria for identifying participants in decisions where the veracity of technical evidence is disputed.
13. A parallel case in the United Kingdom is the public reaction to claims about a link between the MMR vaccine (vaccine for meascles, mumps, and German measles [rubella]) and autism.
References
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Collins, H. M., and R. Evans. 2002. The third wave of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience. Social Studies of Sciences 32 (2): 235-296.
Collins, H. M., and R. Evans. 2003.King Canute meets the Beach Boys: Responses to the third wave. Social Studies of Science 33 (3): 435-452.
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Wynne, B. 2003. Seasick on the third wave? Subverting the hegemony of propositionalism: Response to Collins & Evans (2002). Social Studies of Science 33 (3): 401-417.
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