Abstracts
The Culture Project: New Approaches to the Study of Cultural Practices
Friday, 13 March to Sunday, 15 Marc
Solon Barocas, New York University
Patterns of Knowledge and a Pattern of Failure: The Historical Epistemology of Predictive Models
What should we make of the advent of ‘causally agnostic’ predictive models
in the production of economic and social scientific knowledge? This paper
will situate and contrast predictive models, based on inductive machine
learning, with early models in political economy as well as the mathematical
and formal models and complex simulations that have predominated in both the
professions and disciplines for the past half century. It will subject
predictive models to a cluster of key questions inspired by Mary Poovey’s
work in historical epistemology, particular her treatment of the problem of
induction as a generative problematic: What is the epistemological status of
predictive models and the knowledge they purport to produce? To what
particular class of questions do these models and predictions offer an
answer? Upon what grounds or through which representational, discursive,
institutional, or otherwise social practices do these models and predictions
secure their epistemological status?
Predictive modeling—also known as predictive analytics and predictive data
mining—refers to a range of computer-automated pattern discovery procedures
that help locate non-intuitive regularities and correlations within massive
sets of data that then serve as the basis for probabilistic predictions and
forecasting. This paper will address the epistemological novelty of
predictive models and the challenge machine learning, in general, is thought
to pose prior forms of knowledge production. This challenge is nowhere more
forcefully expressed than in Chris Anderson’s controversial and polemic
essay, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method
Obsolete,” published in Wired last year, which argues that pattern discovery
through data mining has rendered causal explanations unnecessary.
Correlation, he argues, is sufficient; successful predictions trump
parsimonious accounts of causality. The paper will interrogate Anderson’s
and similar claims in light of the earlier epistemological discussion, but
also as they bear on recent debates about the place of predictive models in
finance and their alleged contribution to the current ‘financial crisis.’
The paper will conclude by addressing the ways in which invocations of the
supposed culpability of models—on the grounds of complexity (i.e., hidden
and incorrect assumptions) and opacity (i.e., inscrutability) rather than
causal agnosticism—paradoxically reassert the epistemological coherence of
models. Such arguments also fail to account for the ways in which new
predictive models may solve—at a technical level—an otherwise intractable
epistemological and political debate about causality.
***
Ruth Braunstien, New York University
Ruth Braunstien, New York University
The law of unintended consequences: Judges’ participation in defining science in contests over evolution
Previous studies of legal contests over the teaching of evolution in public schools have analyzed mainstream scientists’ efforts to defend the authority and autonomy of their field against creationists, and later, proponents of intelligent design. Yet these studies have overlooked the extent to which judges have also participated in the authority contests being waged within their courtrooms. After reviewing the history of the court’s role as a “gatekeeper” of science, this paper will explore three competing explanations for why judges might participate in the defense of mainstream science and the theory of evolution: epistemic congruence, secular congruence and congruent interests in promoting the authority of expertise. Finally, this paper will assess potential implications of judges’ use of demarcation rhetoric in their decisions. The closed and inflexible nature of a court’s decision – given its subsequent entrenchment in legal precedent – contrasts significantly with the open-ended and flexible nature of scientific inquiry and scientists’ historic use of boundary-work. Although evolution trial decisions have consistently favored mainstream scientists and their allies, the courts’ codification of a demarcation definition of science may prove a long-term detriment to scientific authority and innovation, to efforts to defeat the creationist and ID movements, and to a functioning public sphere.
***
Will Davies, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Capitalism as Competitive Sport: Rules and the Neo-Liberal Game
As Foucault points out, since the late 19th century, liberal economic theory has been heavily preoccupied by the problem of competition and monopoly. The central distinction between 19th century liberalism and 20th century neo-liberalism is that the former viewed competition as inevitable, while the latter presents it as needing artificial protection from the state. In this regard, antitrust policy is the defining neo-liberal invention, as evidenced by its prominence in the early neo-liberal policy proposals of the Freidburg and Chicago Schools.
This paper analyses the neo-liberal account of competition, specifically in terms of its attempt to construct formal rules for the economic ‘game’. It draws on the work of Goffman, Wittgenstein and H. L. Hart to consider what it means to move from a game in which the rules are ‘internal’ to the contest, and normatively binding in the absence of an external authority, to a game in which the rules are ‘external’, and therefore obeyed and resisted at the same time. As economic sociologists such as Harrison White have argued, markets are primarily cooperatively performed and mutually recognised spaces in which firms agree to compete in a certain way. But with the introduction of state sovereignty to enforce and codify competition, firms are relieved of the responsibility to uphold norms, and need only focus on beating their rivals. There remains an unwritten normative aspect as to how one plays a competitive game (as Wittgenstein and Hart argue) but competitors are free to disagree on this.
Competitions are therefore appealing to the neo-liberal mindset, precisely because they offer a form of governance in a complex modern society that makes no appeal to values. As Boltanski & Thevenot argue, competitions differ from moral systems, in that they are delimited arenas, and not prescribed for humanity in general. For neo-liberal thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman, this makes formal competition a safer basis for organising society than governance which depends on a notion of the common good.
The paper draws on research on the history of antitrust policies and fieldwork in Washington DC and Brussels.
***
Paolo Gerbaudo, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Previous studies of legal contests over the teaching of evolution in public schools have analyzed mainstream scientists’ efforts to defend the authority and autonomy of their field against creationists, and later, proponents of intelligent design. Yet these studies have overlooked the extent to which judges have also participated in the authority contests being waged within their courtrooms. After reviewing the history of the court’s role as a “gatekeeper” of science, this paper will explore three competing explanations for why judges might participate in the defense of mainstream science and the theory of evolution: epistemic congruence, secular congruence and congruent interests in promoting the authority of expertise. Finally, this paper will assess potential implications of judges’ use of demarcation rhetoric in their decisions. The closed and inflexible nature of a court’s decision – given its subsequent entrenchment in legal precedent – contrasts significantly with the open-ended and flexible nature of scientific inquiry and scientists’ historic use of boundary-work. Although evolution trial decisions have consistently favored mainstream scientists and their allies, the courts’ codification of a demarcation definition of science may prove a long-term detriment to scientific authority and innovation, to efforts to defeat the creationist and ID movements, and to a functioning public sphere.
***
Will Davies, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Capitalism as Competitive Sport: Rules and the Neo-Liberal Game
As Foucault points out, since the late 19th century, liberal economic theory has been heavily preoccupied by the problem of competition and monopoly. The central distinction between 19th century liberalism and 20th century neo-liberalism is that the former viewed competition as inevitable, while the latter presents it as needing artificial protection from the state. In this regard, antitrust policy is the defining neo-liberal invention, as evidenced by its prominence in the early neo-liberal policy proposals of the Freidburg and Chicago Schools.
This paper analyses the neo-liberal account of competition, specifically in terms of its attempt to construct formal rules for the economic ‘game’. It draws on the work of Goffman, Wittgenstein and H. L. Hart to consider what it means to move from a game in which the rules are ‘internal’ to the contest, and normatively binding in the absence of an external authority, to a game in which the rules are ‘external’, and therefore obeyed and resisted at the same time. As economic sociologists such as Harrison White have argued, markets are primarily cooperatively performed and mutually recognised spaces in which firms agree to compete in a certain way. But with the introduction of state sovereignty to enforce and codify competition, firms are relieved of the responsibility to uphold norms, and need only focus on beating their rivals. There remains an unwritten normative aspect as to how one plays a competitive game (as Wittgenstein and Hart argue) but competitors are free to disagree on this.
Competitions are therefore appealing to the neo-liberal mindset, precisely because they offer a form of governance in a complex modern society that makes no appeal to values. As Boltanski & Thevenot argue, competitions differ from moral systems, in that they are delimited arenas, and not prescribed for humanity in general. For neo-liberal thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman, this makes formal competition a safer basis for organising society than governance which depends on a notion of the common good.
The paper draws on research on the history of antitrust policies and fieldwork in Washington DC and Brussels.
***
Paolo Gerbaudo, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Navigating the Rebel Archipelago: Territorial communication, spatial orientation and involvement in autonomous scenes
Hannah Jones, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Kaleidoscopic Hackney: Negotiating Multiple Understandings of Place in the Governance of a London Borough
This paper examines simultaneous imaginings of an area of east London, and the ways that multiple ideas of a place are negotiated by the public servants tasked with governing it. Hackney is a local authority simultaneously experienced and represented as a contradictory symbol of hope and deprivation – as a place of great ethnic diversity and harmony; as one of the poorest parts of London; as a centre of London Fashion Week; as a place the Home Secretary said she would feel unsafe after midnight; as one TV show's 'worst place to live in Britain'; as a host for the 2012 Olympics. The ways that the press and government consider Hackney from these, and many other multiple perspectives, have material consequences for the lives of residents. This paper attempts to describe Hackney in a way that takes account of these competing official and unofficial narratives of place, paying particular attention to the way that it is imagined and negotiated within local government. The paper uses analysis of policy documents and national media, but focuses particularly on a series of interviews with local authority staff working in the borough, and reflects on the ways that they understand the multiple and shifting nature of Hackney as a place, and the negotiations they make to manage this multiplicity of geographies.
The paper will juxtapose a number of narratives, including the statistical and descriptive presentations of research sites by local authorities and and in national governmental documents; a selection of media portrayals (particularly ones that have been mentioned in interviews with policy makers); and the narratives presented by research participants from the position of both council officers and residents. I will consider the competition for authenticity of place – as one participant put it, some spaces may be part of the geography of Hackney but still considered 'not really “Hackney” Hackney'. Finally, I will consider how presentations of place interact with the motivations and presentations of self of local policy makers, and whether incorporating acknowledgement that some voices and stories are not heard can act as a way of gaining authority for those that are.
***
Despite widespread assertions about the importance of the Internet and new media among contemporary social movements, spaces of face-to-face interaction continue to constitute fundamental contexts of aggregation and a crucial mobilisation structure in the context of new social movements (Melucci, 1989).
A valuable example of this phenomenon is constituted by "autonomous scenes" (Haunss and Leach, 2006) sets of hang-outs (squats, social centres, alternative bars) and events (benefit concerts, assemblies, communal dinners and the like) which are frequented by anti-authoritarian activists and politicised subculturalists. One of the common features of these alternative everyday life scenes seems to be their invisible or at least hazy character, which is also connected to the fact that "there is no official guide to the rebel territories".
Thus this paper asks what are the communicative practices through which these scenes are made visible and accessible to their participants? How do different communicative practices articulate different degrees of participation in the scene?
In order to answer to this question, this paper discusses the workings of processes of territorial communication which allow participants in autonomous scenes to make sense of the spaces and events composing them. The discussion draws on over 40 interviews conducted with participants in the autonomous scenes of London, Berlin and Rome ethnographic observations and analysis of propaganda material.
From this analysis a dialectic emerges between processes of demarcation and processes of indexing, in the contexts of practices of territorial communication: the first being characterised by their stress on exclusivity, proximity and immediacy, and the second being often associated in activist recounts with a distant and "pick and choose" attitude towards political participation.
***A valuable example of this phenomenon is constituted by "autonomous scenes" (Haunss and Leach, 2006) sets of hang-outs (squats, social centres, alternative bars) and events (benefit concerts, assemblies, communal dinners and the like) which are frequented by anti-authoritarian activists and politicised subculturalists. One of the common features of these alternative everyday life scenes seems to be their invisible or at least hazy character, which is also connected to the fact that "there is no official guide to the rebel territories".
Thus this paper asks what are the communicative practices through which these scenes are made visible and accessible to their participants? How do different communicative practices articulate different degrees of participation in the scene?
In order to answer to this question, this paper discusses the workings of processes of territorial communication which allow participants in autonomous scenes to make sense of the spaces and events composing them. The discussion draws on over 40 interviews conducted with participants in the autonomous scenes of London, Berlin and Rome ethnographic observations and analysis of propaganda material.
From this analysis a dialectic emerges between processes of demarcation and processes of indexing, in the contexts of practices of territorial communication: the first being characterised by their stress on exclusivity, proximity and immediacy, and the second being often associated in activist recounts with a distant and "pick and choose" attitude towards political participation.
Hannah Jones, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Kaleidoscopic Hackney: Negotiating Multiple Understandings of Place in the Governance of a London Borough
This paper examines simultaneous imaginings of an area of east London, and the ways that multiple ideas of a place are negotiated by the public servants tasked with governing it. Hackney is a local authority simultaneously experienced and represented as a contradictory symbol of hope and deprivation – as a place of great ethnic diversity and harmony; as one of the poorest parts of London; as a centre of London Fashion Week; as a place the Home Secretary said she would feel unsafe after midnight; as one TV show's 'worst place to live in Britain'; as a host for the 2012 Olympics. The ways that the press and government consider Hackney from these, and many other multiple perspectives, have material consequences for the lives of residents. This paper attempts to describe Hackney in a way that takes account of these competing official and unofficial narratives of place, paying particular attention to the way that it is imagined and negotiated within local government. The paper uses analysis of policy documents and national media, but focuses particularly on a series of interviews with local authority staff working in the borough, and reflects on the ways that they understand the multiple and shifting nature of Hackney as a place, and the negotiations they make to manage this multiplicity of geographies.
The paper will juxtapose a number of narratives, including the statistical and descriptive presentations of research sites by local authorities and and in national governmental documents; a selection of media portrayals (particularly ones that have been mentioned in interviews with policy makers); and the narratives presented by research participants from the position of both council officers and residents. I will consider the competition for authenticity of place – as one participant put it, some spaces may be part of the geography of Hackney but still considered 'not really “Hackney” Hackney'. Finally, I will consider how presentations of place interact with the motivations and presentations of self of local policy makers, and whether incorporating acknowledgement that some voices and stories are not heard can act as a way of gaining authority for those that are.
***
Jane Jones, New York University
Money is Green: Fundraising and the Whitewashing of Elite Philanthropy
This paper examines racial diversity among major gift donors and board members, or trustees, to non profit organizations. In order to look at racial diversity I speak to development executives – or fundraisers – about the racial composition of their donor base. I find that for the most part, both the board and major donor population of the organizations I speak with are not racially diverse. In order to justify this lack of racial diversity, development executives rely on economic market metaphors in order to assert a sentiment of race neutrality, and thus circumvent talking about the complexities of race. Specifically, development executives defer to the neutrality of the market for donors to their organizations, as a way to absolve themselves of any responsibility for not recruiting black donors. The language of market neutrality, however, contradicts the actual practices of fundraising that the development executives describe.
***
Sarah Beth Kaufman, New York University
Situating Death Penalty Sentencing Trials: Form and Content of Judgment
Money is Green: Fundraising and the Whitewashing of Elite Philanthropy
This paper examines racial diversity among major gift donors and board members, or trustees, to non profit organizations. In order to look at racial diversity I speak to development executives – or fundraisers – about the racial composition of their donor base. I find that for the most part, both the board and major donor population of the organizations I speak with are not racially diverse. In order to justify this lack of racial diversity, development executives rely on economic market metaphors in order to assert a sentiment of race neutrality, and thus circumvent talking about the complexities of race. Specifically, development executives defer to the neutrality of the market for donors to their organizations, as a way to absolve themselves of any responsibility for not recruiting black donors. The language of market neutrality, however, contradicts the actual practices of fundraising that the development executives describe.
***
Sarah Beth Kaufman, New York University
Situating Death Penalty Sentencing Trials: Form and Content of Judgment
Capital punishment in the United States is understood to be exceptional among Western industrialized nations, an outlier both in its continued use and its symbolization of the United States’ commitment to punitive mass incarceration. But little has been said about the practice of the trials where an offender is sentenced to death. Drawing on observations of death penalty sentencing hearings across the United States during 2007 and 2008, this paper situates capital punishment practice as a “trouble case” (Gluckman 1955) of the way we judge violence. The hearings are unusual to the everyday practice of criminal sentencing in the United States, but they help elucidate connections between the form that judgment takes and the reproduction of social order.
***
Amy LeClair, New York University
Anti-depressants in the Post-Prozac Era: SSRI consumption among young adults
***
Amy LeClair, New York University
Anti-depressants in the Post-Prozac Era: SSRI consumption among young adults
Over the past three decades there has been a paradigmatic shift within the world of medicine in the United States from the psychodynamic to the biomedical model. Simultaneously, there has been a vast increase in the number and availability of psycho-pharmaceuticals. These medications are both best-sellers and household names. Previous studies have explored the meanings of these medications to their consumers, but the respondents in those studies lived through the cultural changes in the definitions of mental illness, and their narratives reflected those macro-level shifts. It would make sense, however, that young adults who have grown up solidly in the “post-Prozac” era would experience these drugs differently. Are there new cultural meanings of SSRIs that sociologists have yet to identify? How does the increasingly public nature of anti-depressant consumption transform these pharmaceuticals into cultural products, especially amongst young adults? Looking specifically at the class of drugs known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), this paper proposes research to examine how anti-depressants function as consumer objects among young adults. Using interviews with non-institutionalized young adults between the ages of 18 and 30, I explore the meanings consumers give to these drugs, their practices of consumption and the extent to which these medications do and do not differ from other prescription drugs. Pilot interviews reveal confusion, guilt, ambivalence and pleasure as emergent themes, suggesting that previous studies’ focus on the “seriously” mentally ill may not accurately reflect the meanings of these drugs to the wider population of consumers.
***
John Macartney, London School of Economics
Listening to the guiding voice: a decision narrative in Complementary Healthcare
This paper looks at people who have had cancer and who used CMs in their healthcare. To receive a diagnosis of cancer is a life transforming experience for many people. In the UK, the increasing emphasis on individual responsibility and choice in healthcare means that those with cancer are now in the novel position where they have to make many of their own decisions about their treatment. This paper examines one of the narrative frameworks people used to do this.
The paper uses an embodied narrative approach which provides the reader with the possibility of thinking with the narrative (Frank, 1995; 2004). I have drawn on my interviews with people who have or have had cancer and who use CMs. The paper shows how the interviewee’s narrative involves a guiding voice that helps to evaluate voices, feelings or sentiments that come from within and without. This is also identified as listening to an inner you, feeling or voice; gut feelings that guide you; various forms of instinct; as well as ‘just knowing’, or ‘doing what speaks to you’.
What we find is a narrative that first, necessitates the act of listening; second it implicitly entails a way of distinguishing what it is that is good or bad about what is being heard; and third, it often involves some form of imperative as what one should do. Therefore, the guiding voice is one way of engaging and organising the various narratives from within and without as it enables the interviewee to distinguish what is good or bad, better or worse, about what is confronting them.
The paper uses an embodied narrative approach which provides the reader with the possibility of thinking with the narrative (Frank, 1995; 2004). I have drawn on my interviews with people who have or have had cancer and who use CMs. The paper shows how the interviewee’s narrative involves a guiding voice that helps to evaluate voices, feelings or sentiments that come from within and without. This is also identified as listening to an inner you, feeling or voice; gut feelings that guide you; various forms of instinct; as well as ‘just knowing’, or ‘doing what speaks to you’.
What we find is a narrative that first, necessitates the act of listening; second it implicitly entails a way of distinguishing what it is that is good or bad about what is being heard; and third, it often involves some form of imperative as what one should do. Therefore, the guiding voice is one way of engaging and organising the various narratives from within and without as it enables the interviewee to distinguish what is good or bad, better or worse, about what is confronting them.
***
Olivia Muñoz-Rojas, London School of Economics
Stone, granite and concrete: three images of the urban under Franco
This paper proposes three images of the urban through which to analyse the reconstruction, architecture and planning discourses during the early years of the Franco regime, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. The city of stone, the city of granite and the city of concrete reveal the Franco regime’s preference for certain construction materials because of their close symbolic and material association with the perceived historical sources of the New Spain—the Roman Empire and the Hapsburg Empire—and the ideal of a technically functional traditionalist nation. By looking at the post-war reconstruction processes of three selected sites in Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao, the paper discusses these images along with the tensions and contradictions within, and amongst, them as illustrative, too, of the ideological efficacies and inconsistencies of the regime. The contrasting between the Roman city of stone and the Moorish and medieval city of brick that some of the regime’s ideologues elaborated on is present in the discourses on the disclosure of the ancient city-wall in post-war Barcelona. The modest fate of the plans to reconstruct a monumental, neo-imperial capital city of granite is reflected in the neglect of the ruins of Madrid’s Cuartel de la Montaña where the headquarters of Falange—the state party—were initially projected. Finally, the appreciation for modern technique that nurtured the ideal of the New Spain, in parallel to the glorification of the past, can be identified in the reconstruction of Bilbao’s fixed bridges in reinforced concrete according to a rationalist design.
***
Laura Noren, New York University
Provisions or Prohibitions: Peeing in New York
Public infrastructure brings fresh water in and takes the dirty water away, but the ‘last mile’—the restroom – is a provision that has increasingly been left to the private sector resulting not only in an access differential that cuts along class lines, but one that also divides by gender continuing to constitute the street as a masculine space. The lack of public provisions at first seems more comic than tragic. For New Yorker’s whose work sites are unplumbed, the lack of public provisions presents a daily struggle to maintain health, dignity and a clean criminal record. The privatization of the last mile is a failure of provisioning heightened by prohibition policies – being without a bathroom is bad enough, but being fined and written up for publicly relieving oneself escalates the consequences. Five city departments are authorized to levy fines for public urination and defecation. A telling wrinkle in state and city legal code is that canine public excretion is subject to fewer restrictions than human excretion. Dogs are free to pee; people risk legal sanction for the same behavior. The problem must not be the pee, but the people. Public excretion, especially peeing, is pollution more symbolic than biological. New York City’s ongoing prosecution of publicly urinating people in the midst of a dwindling number of public restrooms reinforces class-based divisions and helps create a masculine streetscape by skewing the gender balance of
the street-based work force who lack reliable access to the last mile of plumbing infrastructure.
Public infrastructure brings fresh water in and takes the dirty water away, but the ‘last mile’—the restroom – is a provision that has increasingly been left to the private sector resulting not only in an access differential that cuts along class lines, but one that also divides by gender continuing to constitute the street as a masculine space. The lack of public provisions at first seems more comic than tragic. For New Yorker’s whose work sites are unplumbed, the lack of public provisions presents a daily struggle to maintain health, dignity and a clean criminal record. The privatization of the last mile is a failure of provisioning heightened by prohibition policies – being without a bathroom is bad enough, but being fined and written up for publicly relieving oneself escalates the consequences. Five city departments are authorized to levy fines for public urination and defecation. A telling wrinkle in state and city legal code is that canine public excretion is subject to fewer restrictions than human excretion. Dogs are free to pee; people risk legal sanction for the same behavior. The problem must not be the pee, but the people. Public excretion, especially peeing, is pollution more symbolic than biological. New York City’s ongoing prosecution of publicly urinating people in the midst of a dwindling number of public restrooms reinforces class-based divisions and helps create a masculine streetscape by skewing the gender balance of
the street-based work force who lack reliable access to the last mile of plumbing infrastructure.
***
Alton Phillips, New York University
Charting Antiretroviral Supply Chains in Uganda
Based on fieldwork in Uganda and interviews with key players in the Ugandan antiretroviral (ARV) supply chains, this research follows the course of antiretrovirals as they travel through the country from quantifications and forecasts to their physical arrival at Entebbe International Airport and along the multiple pathways into the pharmacies of HIV treatment programs across the country. The research centers on a comparison of the Ministry of Health supply chain, which is largely supplied with money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the supply chain of a local NGO funded by the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The former has faced drug expiries and regular stock-outs; the latter, a steady stream of ARVs. Using interviews and business process mapping, the research identifies a series of structural differences in the two chains and discusses some of the challenges currently faced by the Ministry. The paper concludes with respondents' thoughts on future directions for the development of supply chains for medical commodities in Uganda, and a model for three dimensions of harmonization.
Alternatively, if I have finished the above far enough in advance, I would instead present something more theoretical about the tensions between the Pharmacy Department of the Ministry of Health and the PEPFAR-funded NGO, Supply Chain Management Systems (SCMS), which provides technical assistance for supply chain logistics to the Ministry. One of the key tensions between the two organizations is over the techniques used to quantify populations in order to forecast demand for medical commodities. The Ministry uses sampling and demographic data, while SCMS uses individual patient-level data. Similar population management strategies to SCMS' -- that is, those based on the surveillance of individual-level effects versus population-level effects -- are also being rolled out through USAID's global pharmacovigilance programs, as implemented by the Ugandan National Drug Authority and the drug regulatory agencies in other PEFAR focus countries. This paper would look at the theoretical implications of this refinement in population management strategy and of the deployment of these new techniques by Western aid agencies in developing countries.
***
Alex Rhys-Taylor, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Slime and Reason
By way of a multi-sited ethnography based around two street markets in
East London my current research explores the relationship between multi-sensory experience and the formation of social stratification. The research contends that an ethnographic attention honed on the multi-sensory architecture of everyday urban lives enriches understandings of the manner in which the re/production of class, gender and ethnicity are commonly understood.
Slime and Reason looks at episodes of squeamishness recorded around a seafood stand sat on the historical boundary of the City of London and the East End. Against explanations of disgust that foreground biological ‘pathogens’ and ‘contagions’ the paper picks through the melange symbolic, material and cultural contingencies shaping specific experiences of disgust. Taking the belief that 'squirms' are protective responses to the sensed contravention of social boundaries, the paper explores ways in which distinctions in class, gender and age are made through multi-sensory experience within marginal urban spaces.
***
Hans Steinmuller, London School of Economics
The Ironies of Work, Family, and Fatherland in China
The moral discourses of work ethics, family values, and popular nationalism are of undeniable importance in the lives of many people in the Chinese countryside. Such moral discourses present categorical demands on how to act and how to be. Yet in reality many people do not quite live up to these demands. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Bashan Township in central China, this paper is about some of the ironies arising from the tension between the categorical and the contingent elements of work, family, and fatherland in China. The different forms that such ironies can take are shown in three fields: Firstly, how people in Bashan make sense of success and failure in terms of family and work. I explore these discourses of family and work in short portrayals of three men that I encountered during my fieldwork. Secondly, the ways in which people relate to the state and its official discourse. And finally, my own insider-outsider position in fieldwork. Irony is proposed as a strategy to acknowledge the ambiguities between lived experience and abstract representation in all these fields.
***
Owen Whooley, New York University
The Birth of the American Medical Association: An Organizational Solution to an Epistemological Problem
Epistemology, as addressed within philosophy, has centered on normative prescriptions on how knowledge ought to be justified, failing to empirically explore how epistemological justification is dealt with in practice. As a corrective, sociologists of science rightly recognizes that the attribution of truth – justification - a process that occurs “downstream” from its production, as actors advocate for ideas in the public realm. This research, however, is biased toward cultural explanations (i.e. frame resonance, boundary-work) to account for the efficacy of a given idea or epistemological position.
This paper explores the debates over cholera in the 19th century United States to reveal the role of organizational strategies in justifying claims to knowledge. Introducing the concept of an epistemic contest – debates in which not only the truth of particular ideas are at stake, but also the very nature of truth and legitimate ways of knowing – I reveal that the early 19th century cholera epidemics ushered in a period of professional crisis for orthodoxy physicians, especially as homeopathy seized the epidemics to advance their own professional interests. Failing to muster an effective cultural response, orthodoxy adopted an organizational solution to address their epistemological problems. In founding the American Medical Association, regulars made organizational membership the indicator of legitimate knowledge; they sought to circumvent cultural debates by substituting organizational criteria. Organizations emerge from this analysis as more than passive arenas or contexts for cultural debates; they can be active instruments in struggles over knowledge. Epistemic contests are not waged by epistemic means only.
The Birth of the American Medical Association: An Organizational Solution to an Epistemological Problem
Epistemology, as addressed within philosophy, has centered on normative prescriptions on how knowledge ought to be justified, failing to empirically explore how epistemological justification is dealt with in practice. As a corrective, sociologists of science rightly recognizes that the attribution of truth – justification - a process that occurs “downstream” from its production, as actors advocate for ideas in the public realm. This research, however, is biased toward cultural explanations (i.e. frame resonance, boundary-work) to account for the efficacy of a given idea or epistemological position.
This paper explores the debates over cholera in the 19th century United States to reveal the role of organizational strategies in justifying claims to knowledge. Introducing the concept of an epistemic contest – debates in which not only the truth of particular ideas are at stake, but also the very nature of truth and legitimate ways of knowing – I reveal that the early 19th century cholera epidemics ushered in a period of professional crisis for orthodoxy physicians, especially as homeopathy seized the epidemics to advance their own professional interests. Failing to muster an effective cultural response, orthodoxy adopted an organizational solution to address their epistemological problems. In founding the American Medical Association, regulars made organizational membership the indicator of legitimate knowledge; they sought to circumvent cultural debates by substituting organizational criteria. Organizations emerge from this analysis as more than passive arenas or contexts for cultural debates; they can be active instruments in struggles over knowledge. Epistemic contests are not waged by epistemic means only.
