Paper presented by Teun Zuiderent-Jerak and Ernst Thoutenhoofd to the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Saïd Business School, Oxford University, 18 March 2010.

1. Modes of intervention
in science and technology studies
Paper presented to the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society,
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, March 18th, 2010
Teun Zuiderent-Jerak
Institute of Health Policy and Management
Erasmus University Rotterdam
zuiderent@bmg.eur.nl
Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd
Virtual Knowledge Studio
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
ernst.thoutenhoofd@gmail.com

3. “My biggest hope would be that non-violence activists could find some value in the
sort of things I have been doing about tactics and strategies.”
Brian Martin
“I engage in trying to understand, in taking a stand myself; but I would
draw a line between engagement and activism.”
Helga Nowotny
“I am reluctant to say much about engagement, since at the end of the day some
people are simply engaged while others are not; that is no big deal.”
Arie Rip

4. Overview of the presentation
1. Intervention in STS
2. The current study: interviews with STS scholars—the iSTS project
3. The (non-)issue of constructivist epistemology for action
4. Modes of intervention and their consequences
5. Conclusions

5. Intervention in STS
Long-standing commitment of STS to reflexivity, normativity and consequences has led to
the Captives of controversy debate. Normative calls for intervention have included:
★ social movements agendas
★ the ‘post 9/11 public intellectuals’ claim
There has been a series of events addressing this theme:
★ Unpacking intervention in action-oriented STS (Amsterdam 2005, Århus 2006)
★ Does STS mean Business seminars (2004, 2005)
★ INCITE
★ 4S/EASST theme and plenary (2008)
Which have led us to undertake this current project (2007–2009), with the dual aim
★ to study how leading STS researchers construct intervention
★ to contribute to de-prophesizing intervention

6. Preamble
We find that once STS scholars start to empirically explore how their research may
intervene in the practices they study, this quickly turns into a normative plea for more of
such interventionist work and for getting real about the practical implications of analytical
work.
It leads to expectations for actors in the fields of study – already asking for prospective
ANT analyses – but also to claims that constructivist scholarly work should be combined
with political engagement to be up to the tasks that face the research community and
society at large.
The alternative leads to the suggestion of “quietism or, worse, mere academic
professionalism”. (Lynch 2006)

7. The debate then often takes a prophetic rather than an empirical turn. Prophecies suggest
what STS (in singularized form) should consider as a next step, whereby non-followers’
work is claimed to result in “banality [that] comes from recent attempts (…) to divest
epistemology of any normative force” (Fuller 2002).
One defensive response is to propose that the normativity of interventionist choices stems
from “other life-sources” rather than STS sensibilities (Lynch 2006).
—But perhaps the dichotomy between constructivism and intervention is itself a problem
to be addressed?

8. The current study:
Interviews with STS scholars
The research question with which we started was, what are the practical, empirical,
theoretical and normative consequences of STS intervention practices?
Most (of our) work on intervention has so far been based on reflexive analysis in individual
case studies.
In this study we aimed for in-depth interviews with Wiebe Bijker, Stuart Blume, Simon
Cole, David Hess, Sheila Jasanoff, Brian Martin, Annemiek Nelis, Helga Nowotny, Arie Rip
and Lucy Suchman.
The interview questions were in each case based on pre-reading a number of their
publications and not on a standard, pre-determined list.

9. Initial findings
Our initial findings suggest that constructivism is not a problem for action; but reported
interventions show different modes that afford different repertoires of action.
Intervention and engagement are not necessarily intertwined; freeing the debate on
intervention from this normative weight is intellectually productive.

10. The (non-)issue of
constructivism for action
In none of the interviews constructivism was presented as a problem for action.
Critiques that constructivism would provide weak grounds for action are—
★ empirically refutable
★ theoretically positivist: truth precedes action.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given complexity of issues of cosmo-politics: as if epistemologically
solid ground is available for others...
In order for STS to be able to intervene in the practices it studies, neither added ethics nor
asymmetrical realism is required.

11. Modes of intervention
and their consequences
The modes we recorded in talk about intervention work included:
Meta-activism
Balanced engagement
Diffracting mirror
STS prophet
Multiplicity and probes
With our reference to modes we do not propose a distinct topology but seek to open up
the somewhat closed notion of intervention for empirical diffraction.
Modes support reflection on the contingency of scholarly practices, rather than a
pigeonholing device for classifying scholars in a hierarchy of modes: all but one of the
respondents feature in the analysis of various modes.

12. Quotes from the interviews
The following slides contain a selection of quotes by respondents that we have
assembled under the respective modes after coding the transcripts in Atlas.ti and noting
in some cases how respondents talked about 1 how it helps to construct the field, 2 which
action repertoire it captures, 3 what researcher role it supports, 4 which gains it produces
and 5 what constraints apply.

13. Meta-activism
Meta-activism
What I have done in recent years is more to try and offer tools to people who want to
intervene in debates. Years ago I did this booklet called ‘Strip the Experts’, and then I
edited the book called ‘Confronting the Experts’. During the last five years most of my work
has been on tactics and strategies. Martin
Constructing the field
So I am looking more at ways that one can generate research that addresses issues of
what I call undone science. And to me that is the essential rubric in connecting science
studies and activism. Hess
Repertoire of action
But my biggest hope would be that activists, non-violence activists could find some value
in the sort of things I have been doing about tactics and strategies. And if people in STS,
or other campaigners, find something useful there too that is a bonus. Martin
I am committed to developing a scholarly body of knowledge that could be of benefit to
general efforts in society, to enhance democratic participation in science and technology
policy. One way of achieving that is to develop a body of knowledge that theorizes
activism. Hess

14. Meta-activism
Researcher role: split between academic and activist repertoires
If I let everything come together, I’d probably go mad. And secondly […] it was
institutionally important to be clearer about what I’m doing here and what I’m doing out
there. Blume
Keeping things separated is a way to survive and not become schizophrenic. Bijker
Aims and gains
At a theoretical level, what this is doing is allowing us to start thinking about science in its
relationships to state industry, and publics, and social movements. So, what we are
interested in now is not the micro-sociology of the construction of knowledge, or the
growth of heterogeneous networks. We are interested in the politics of what kind of
knowledge gets selected to be done, and not done. What kind of technologies are built,
and not built. And how networks are embedded in fields, and how these micro-sociological
construction processes are embedded in the overall politics of agenda-setting. (...) The
study of activism and social movements is part of a broader shift in the STS field, to look at
the institutional relations of science. Hess

15. Meta-activism
Constraints: no ‘frictions within’ but performing an underdog
The main practical things that we said, such as “there should be a limited number of
centers in the Netherlands doing it”, nobody was powerful enough and cared enough to
make that happen—certainly not the minister—to stand up to all the academic centers who
wanted to do it. Blume

16. Balanced engagement
Balanced engagement
Activism is a commitment to a cause, and you pursue it with different means. (…) [With
interventionism] I could not but take a stand, but I was able to keep the balance between
distance and engagement. So I engage in trying to understand, in taking a stand myself;
but I would draw a line between engagement and activism. Nowotny
Constructing the field
That is one of the questions I often ask my graduate students, ‘what did you learn that
surprised you the most?’ And if you are just too crowded with normative commitments,
then you won’t notice the surprises, or you will screen them out. Hess
Repertoire of action
You have to ensure that something happens, but you shouldn’t completely abandon your
irony. That’s why I always introduced the point of productivity and then always said: it is
not so clear what productivity is. That is something that you should thematize in itself
because otherwise you’ll short-circuit and you become a consultant or a technocrat and
that’s not the aim. (...) If it became too technocratic, I became ironic and if it became too
reflexive, I became productive, I focused on production. Rip

17. Balanced engagement
Researcher role: no unified position
How do you frame things in such a way that societal issues can float to the surface without
drowning out the science? Nelis
Constraints: restricting writing practices
I take [projects] so seriously, that I do not want to do anything that may jeopardize those
interventions. I mean, they are just much more important than writing about them. And to
give it a sort of arrogant twist: STS colleagues could say, but you owe such an article to
the STS community. And I would say, well, I have done enough for the STS community,
and I will continue to do that. Don’t ask me this at this moment, because I do not wish to
jeopardise my work, even though that might be a bit of an overstatement. Bijker

18. Diffracting mirror
The mirror and the STS-kiss
My intervention increased in three stages. The first stage is only listening and being
interested in observation, to the extreme. The second stage is holding up the mirror. (...)
Now the third stage is not the mirror, but is the prince and the sleeping beauty: it is the
kiss. Bijker
Constructing the field
One thing I found useful, is to try to listen very closely to what the actors themselves see
as problematic. And tried to translate this into a language that they understand, and that I
understand. So to go really down to their level, and almost to ask: ‘what hurts you? What
is it you are dissatisfied with? What would you like to change?’ (...) Talking to me about
what hurts them, creates a kind of trust that is very difficult to reach otherwise. Which
means I have to be emphatic, I have to offer empathy: I try to understand, I try to see
what the possible solutions could be, and so on. And once you have established this, it is
easier to move back to an STS perspective, and to say that from an STS perspective we
would see it in such a way; and then try to offer this to them in a way they are likely to
understand. Nowotny

19. Diffracting mirror
Repertoire of action
So, the intervention was to say, ‘Hang on! Do you realize what you are doing? You are
doing this and this and this and that is what I would call STS.’ And I explained why I would
call that STS and I tried then to show how, once you identified that as a unit of analysis,
or a unit of research, or a unit of teaching, or of collaboration, how that then would open
new ways of collaboration and action. Bijker

20. Diffracting mirror
Constraints: finding a sympathetic ear?
The top-CEO of DSM said to me recently, ‘But Miss Nelis, surely you are not merely
listening to the public? One should expect the public to start think more positively, thanks
to your efforts.’ This was then followed by the rejoinder, ‘There is after all a great deal of
public finance invested in the Centre, so one would expect a return on that.’ With which
he of course meant benefit for government and its citizenry. This was their idea of where
my social accountability should be directed. And if I say that this is the mission of the
Centre—broad participatory input—then you will probably have a particular idea that likely
aligns with my own views, namely that you would wish to provide input in such a way that
any issue can make it onto the public agenda, that the public agenda is shaped in a
meaningful way. But for some people it simply means that genomics must be shoved into
society unconditionally, and that it should count as something positive. Nelis

21. STS-prophet
The STS-prophet
One aphorism that I have come to understand deeply in my bones is why prophets are
without honour in their own countries. (…) That aphorism can be quite usefully turned to
thinking about our own sort of abrasive role in the intellectual communities in which we
live, and it may help explain why, within our own contexts, for example me within the
Kennedy School, I am invisible, unrecognised, not known to ‘be worthy’. Jasanoff
Constructing the field
I'm trying to build up connections with anyone and anything that might find that a useful
message, that is sympathetic to that message. But who is that? Well, there aren’t many of
them. Some of them are the people in Bilthoven, and one of my ex-research assistants is
now in the strategic planning division of the Dutch vaccine institute. So it's basically those
few institutions that there still are, and there are less and less of them by the year. Blume

22. STS-prophet
Repertoire of action
I've begun to be looked at as a sui generis intellect who can speak quite comfortably on a
variety of things, that kind of public intellectual. Jasanoff
I am interested in not having another George Bush administration, and in having an
intellectual culture in which people will learn to recognise, in a down-at-the-bones way,
that left to our own devices our political culture will lead us this way; but hang on a
moment, can't we do something else? So that is the sort of change that I want to bring
about. Jasanoff

23. Multiplicity & probes
Multiplicity and probes
And like this you yourself are also a probe: through your action you get a reaction, and
this reaction tells something about the situation, or actually about the combination of the
situation plus yourself. Actor-network theory and co-evolutionary theory are particularly
well suited to address this, because there the individual and his intentions are not put
centre stage. That’s also why I’m reluctant to say something about engagement because
some people are engaged, others are not; that doesn't really matter that much. Rip
Constructing the field
You get to know the structure of the situation by reactions to insertion, to probing. So the
situation has to talk back. Rip

24. Multiplicity & probes
Repertoire of action
Case-based prototyping is about a performative understanding of socio-technical
relations, of artifacts, of technologies, of their creation and use. So that the ways in which
that kind of prototyping project happens -the multiplicities of it, the performativities of it -
exceeds its representation. (…) Basically by developing more performative, processual
understandings of what technologies are, and relations between humans and things, and
so forth. Suchman
Look, there are components and elements you can mix and match; how you do it is still a
problem, but at least recognise that it is not purely hypothetical. These are real people
moving around with the same kinds of things, the same aspirations and so on, who are
actually fundamentally organising things like reason and knowledge and uncertainty and
morality in different ways. Jasanoff
Constraints
There is a recognisable process that takes place when people get tenure; they become
more conservative when they are trying to get tenure (...) And I think that I, well… It is an
occupational hazard. Martin

25. Conclusions
Given the sheer richness of our respondents’ accounts of intervention in STS, the idea that
constructivism would be a problem for action can once and for all be retired.
STS scholars not condemned to choose between value-free relativism by celebrating
difference, or entering a hubristic and vibrant future of making a difference.
Engagement is only a minor part of some intervention modes, so neither a solution nor
something that can only be achieved by drawing on other life-sources—e.g.: the diffracting
mirror.
By disentangling intervention and engagement the important question about interventionist
STS becomes whether it is able to produce interesting findings that feed back into debates
within STS.
Modes of intervention are no pick and mix’ strategy consulting for STS intervention
enthusiasts, since interventions are co-determined by, for example, the enactment of the
field and the STS researcher, the kinds of action they afford and the aspirations that
intervention work may have.

26. End of slides