A Turn to Ontology in STS? 1.2. Some notes by way of a preliminary provocation

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1 A Turn to Ontology in STS? 1.2 Some notes by way of a preliminary provocation Steve Woolgar, Tarek Cheniti, Javier Lezaun, Daniel Neyland, Chris Sugden and Christian Toennesen Introduction 1. We observe a discernible increase in recent years of the use of the term ontology in STS literatures. What if anything does this signal? Can this be construed as a turn to ontology and what does this mean? 2. Does an increasing use of the term ontology simply reflect a change in vocabulary? Is it different from radical constructivist perspectives? For example, did Woolgar s (1991) injunction to find out how the reality of the technology [is] itself created, described and sustained foreshadow Mol s (2002) focus on how ontologies are brought into being, sustained or allowed to wither away without actually mentioning the term? Is saying that processes and practices enact phenomena the same as saying they are constitutively social? Are STSers by and large still pursuing the same agenda or does the emergence of ontology reflect a significant change of emphasis? 3. Ashmore (2005) suggests that Annemarie Mol s (2002) articulation of the ontological is very similar to STS concerns about how knowledge is created, maintained and destroyed. He suggests the difference between knowledge and ontologies is not clear, and asks if ontic practices can take place independently of epistemic practices. Is the original ontic/epistemic distinction, inherited from Anglophone philosophy, now in need of rethinking? 4. Some authors (eg Law, 1996) have made explicit the distinction between analysing science and technology at the level of ontology as opposed to (mere) epistemology. The argument being that STS approaches targeted on epistemology leave unchallenged certain base assumptions about the existence of phenomena. But in what ways and to what extent is ontology different from epistemology? 5. What are the various ways in which ontology is being used by STSers and others? Is the use of the term now a normative feature of our disciplinary practice ie do we risk exclusion if we do not pepper our analyses with terms such as ontology the material and so on? 6. At this point, can we all just pause a minute to reflect on the delightful irony in asking whether or not surface mentions of ontology actually relate to a real (underlying?) concerns about ontology? 7. Is the use of ontology (just) a way of laying claim to a more radical, thoroughgoing, sceptical perspective? Is this the sense in which the adjective is used when promoting ideas such as ontological gerrymandering (Woolgar and Pawluch, 1985) and ontological disobedience (Woolgar, 2005)? What s in a turn?

2 8. What s in a turn? Much of the history of STS could be construed as a history of turns eg through the pursuit of successive versions of symmetry; the turn to the material. Is the turn to ontology another such turn? 9. Javier wonders about the political economy of turns in STS. What is driving these turns? What is it that makes STS go through successive upheavals and changes of direction, such that what previously seemed radical now becomes tame (cf Pollner, 1991)? Is there some kind of prevailing ideology of innovation which forces the turn? Are we all just basically in love with some Kuhnian notion of progress? 10. Are people like Woolgar (2004) merely feeding this ideology of lost radicalism when they complain about the lack of provocation in (current) STS? 11. Can you imagine how awful it would be, say two years after this meeting, still to be stuck in the turn to ontology? What sort of entities are candidates for ontological inquiry? 12. Recent work on mundane terror shows how ordinary objects in eg airport settings become transformed into objects requiring various apparatuses of regulation, monitoring and control (Woolgar and Neyland, forthcoming). Ordinary objects acquire an insecure ontology. A water bottle is transformed into a potential object of terror. The ontologies of ordinary objects turn out to be subject to a precise local choreography (cf Thompson, 2005). For example, when Dan and Steve travelled from Heathrow recently, they started by getting security cleared (and having various liquids confiscated in the process). Steve then purchased a terror free bottle of water in the departures lounge. But they managed to misread the signs (in the chaos of terminal 1) when walking to the departure gate and found themselves again the wrong ( dirty ) side of another security check. At this point the terror free bottle was transformed into an object of potential terror and promptly confiscated. Does this suggest that ontologies can become insecure in virtue of a particular local history of passage and spatial alignment? 13. Much of the focus of recent attention is upon the ontology of technical things and objects. But why wouldn t we also want to include other entities: for example nature and natural things? Biodiversity is one of those interesting areas where nature has come to prominence. The existence of this nature needs to be preserved through the elaborate use of numbers and registers. Christian is looking at how Pacific Gray Whales come to life in a vast jungle of standards, policies and political struggles, yet they do not speak for themselves (or maybe they do) and very few people have ever seen one. An ontology thus develops whereby whales, along with Indigeous Peoples, Steller s sea eagle, and rare salmon, exist only in relation to extractive operations and not much else. It is said that that hearing damage could occur if a whale is exposed to sounds louder than 180 db re 1 µpa, that ships over 80m in length, especially if travelling at knots or more, cause most severe or lethal injuries in case of a collision, and so on, and so on. ( Of course, all this information is heavily contested, so please do not take my word for it. )

3 14. Jasanoff (2005) argues that policy choices are based on two main ontologies: biotechnology as a certain and manageable technology on the one hand, and biotechnology as an unknown and risky technology on the other. She demonstrates that those two ontologies are expressed differently according to the political culture of each country, thus informing different policy responses. But what is gained by describing these different perspectives and interpretations of biotechnology as ontologies? 15. Things, objects, people, arguments, disciplines, nature, these are all some of the vast legion of entities whose ontology might fruitfully be understood as implying various courses of action, policy and governance. What is the relative strength of these entities? Are objects more robust, more effective than, for example, STS accounts? (Marres, 2008). 16. As is well known, actor network approaches challenge the idea that humans and non humans are distinct entities with specific properties. For our purposes is this the same as saying that ontologies are relational? Latour (2004) argues, for example, that the very existence of a gap between subjects and objects is an erroneous assumption which is deeply political. The very distinction is a politically constituted ontology. Law (2004) talks of ontological interference : realities are [not only] being done, but are also complex, non-coherent, uncertain and in interference with one another. 17. As these examples suggest, changes in ontology are both consequential for, and expressive of, changes in accountability relations. What does this mean for the age old problem of the relation between is and ought? Despite David Hume s misgivings, the enactment of a particular ontology does seem to have consequences for action, behaviour and policy. Is this always the case? Does ontological enactment inevitably have implications for more or less preferred courses of action? Philosophical and STS versions of ontology 18. Chris reports his (initially perplexing) experience of moving from the philosophical notion of ontology as an analytic object, or field of study, to the STSish idea that people, things and other entities can have ontologies. It seemed odd that persons or things might be said to have ontologies, in the same counterintuitive sense that it might be possible for there to be a people s physics. What then are the key differences between philosophical and STS construals of ontology? 19. Some typical (but doubtless caricatured) questions which philosophy might ask include: What is the point of doing ontology? What is social ontology? Are ontologies indispensable? What are the criteria for a good ontology? Is social ontology an academic specialty? (Schatzki, 2008). 20. Some typical (but doubtless caricatured) responses from STS might include: How can we even begin to ask what *is* social ontology? Is this not presuming a basis for existence (in this case, of social ontology) when we would want instead to document how such bases are claimed, contested and sustained? How can ontologies be either good or bad? Are such assessments in the gift of we analysts? Should we instead be asking: What is the communal/conventional basis whereby such assessments are made and made to stick??

4 21. Are the differences also something like this? That when philosophy talks about ontology it aspires to the level of the general, transcendent, context indifferent? But when STS talks about ontology it emphasises the local, contingent, particular and specific? 22. Lynch (2006) reminds us that one of the strengths of STS is its capacity to deflate high minded, lofty, abstract concepts, for example, to show that cognition is material practice, that mathematics is number work; that logic is messy and contingent. Is then the very idea of ontology a prime candidate for deflation at the hands of STS? What is ontology in practice? 23. What is added by speaking of social ontology or relational ontology, rather than just ontology? Relational ontology captures the view that the essence and existence of entities are best understood as the temporary upshot of interconnecting relations. But is there a danger that the former epithetised formulations imply the possibility of an ontology free from the social or the relational? 24. On the other hand is an advantage of the term social ontology that it suggests, not simply that ontology involves the social (that is, various contingent social circumstances are involved in ontological enactment), but also that what counts as social is itself the upshot of enactment. 25. It is tempting to fashion a long list of differences between different disciplinary approaches. But we would rather not return to the kind of turf wars argument that characterised early STS debates between objectivist philosophy and the strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Indeed, it is unclear, since they are so local, contingent, specific, that such categorisations are very helpful. 26. Marres (2004) characterises Mol s (2002) project as aiming to articulate an ontology one which posits the multiplicity of reality. She does this, says Marres, by transforming the ethnography of techno-science into a philosophical practice. How much is to be gained by pursuing a philosophy which turns sociological questions into ontological ones? Ambivalence, plurality, multiplicity, fluidity and deferral 27. The post essentialist agenda has been supplemented by ideas about ambivalence (eg Singleton and Michael, 1993; Law, 1997) - which stresses the contention that the impact, use and interpretation of entities is never certain nor fixed; plurality (Stirling, 2008) the idea that different objects and interpretations can exist side by side; multiplicity (eg Mol 2002; de Laet and Mol, 2000; Quattrone and Hopper, 2001; Thompson, 2005) - that objects and claims simultaneously exist in many different guises; and deferral (eg Rappert, 2001; Lee, 1999) - that the impact, use and interpretation of entities is delayed and/or dispersed through organisational networks, often with the effect of dissipating accountability. What is the connection between these?

5 28. They can all be seen as a form of relational ontology. But in the case of multiplicity in particular, what are the entities multiples of? Fluidity and multiplicity are different enactments of the same thing, but what exactly is this thing? 29. A similar question arises in relation to fluidity. Certain technologies are more fluid than others (iconically, the Zimbabwe bush pump, de Laet and Mol, 2000), but how and where is the property of fluidity instantiated? Proponents of the fluidity argument would presumably not want to claim that fluidity is an inherent (essential?) property of the technology? So can anything in principle become fluid? 30. Are certain entities (eg in Mol s case, bodies) more multiple than others? Or can anything become multiple? Mol s answer to parts of this question specify the important role of co-ordination work. Atherosclerosis in the laboratory is different from atherosclerosis in the doctor s surgery, yet they are made to be multiple manifestations of the same thing in virtue of the coordinating work which is done by the participants involved. In other words, the relation of multiplicity to its common it is the upshot of constant achievement (accomplishment, construction, fabrication) on the part of the actors in situ. 31. But how much coordination work is being done by the STS actor (viz Annemarie)?! Conclusion 32. So what is the answer? (The answer?!) 33. Consistent with (parts of) the STS agenda, are we forced to conclude that the turn to ontology is itself real and significant to the extent that it is enacted? What are the ontologies involved and how is this workshop helping to create them? References Ashmore, Malcolm (2005) 'Book Review: The Life Inside/The Left-Hand Side', Social Studies of Science 35(5). Berg, Marc (1998) 'The Politics of Technology: On Bringing Social Theory into Technological Design', Science, Technology, & Human Values 23(4). Bloor, D., (1973) Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 4, 2. Bowker, G. C. & Star, S. L. (1999) Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA Callon, M. (1986) The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case of the Electric Vehicle, in Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World, ed. Michel Callon et al. (Houndmills, UK: The Macmillan Press).

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