There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceñ... more There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez’. In Colombian ‘Flatland’ (the world of state and bureaucracy, of documentary realities) both are imposters: the citizen, because his name(s) match(es), ‘criminally’, (one of) the guerrilla’s; who is, for the agents of Flatland, a “terrorist”, and most importantly “the alias Mono Jojoy” – a name that must be false, and who therefore must have a real one, plus a biography, a history, and a genuine cédula (ID card) that, as for all Colombian adults, must be trusted to guarantee an individual unique identity. We trace the search for the guerrilla’s truth along with the story of the citizen’s travails in which he is serially and terminally ‘(mis)taken’ for the guerrilla. But this ‘mistake’ is one that can only happen by denying any authority to evidence from ‘Fatland’ (the world of face-to-face life): the citizen looks, acts, and lives, nothing at all like the guerrilla.
There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceñ... more There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez’. In Colombian ‘Flatland’ (the world of state and bureaucracy, of documentary realities) both are imposters: the citizen, because his name(s) match(es), ‘criminally’, (one of) the guerrilla’s; who is, for the agents of Flatland, a “terrorist”, and most importantly “the alias Mono Jojoy” – a name that must be false, and who therefore must have a real one, plus a biography, a history, and a genuine cédula (ID card) that, as for all Colombian adults, must be trusted to guarantee an individual unique identity. We trace the search for the guerrilla’s truth along with the story of the citizen’s travails in which he is serially and terminally ‘(mis)taken’ for the guerrilla. But this ‘mistake’ is one that can only happen by denying any authority to evidence from ‘Fatland’ (the world of face-to-face life): the citizen looks, acts, and lives, nothing at all like the guerrilla.
In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various ... more In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various times during the long drawn out process of being commissioned as Editors of this Special Issue, of commissioning the authors and thereafter variously exhorting, encouraging and congratulating them (at a crucial stage, when the whole thing had got too big and the consulting referees had reported, being obliged to reject the efforts of some potential contributors); engaging the services of said referees, and later, with some difficulty, negotiating with them the continuation of the project; and finally, after an incredibly intense period of solid wall-to-wall subediting on the final drafts (Ashmore) and the writing of this Introduction (Richards), finding it all, almost, over: at last, at last! This is attempted through the deployment of an extended narrative metaphor which likens our field to a restaurant, and a lyrical coda celebrating anticlimax. We also manage to introduce the papers.
This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “mem-ory wars”—... more This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “mem-ory wars”—the current controversy around “recovered ” or “false ” memory. As it is played out inside professional psychology, the dispute features clinical practitioners act-ing largely as proponents of recovered memory and experimentalists as proponents of false memory. Tracing a genealogy of this dispute back to a pair of original sites (Mesmer’s salon and Wundt’s laboratory), we show how the traditions ’ engagement in three modes of scientific demonstration varies systematically in terms of the modes of social relation inherent in their epistemic practices and the kinds of “reliable witness” these practices produce. We conclude that whereas the experimentalist tradition is able to transport their produced witnesses from one to another site of demonstration with rela-tive ease, the clinical tradition has much greater difficulty in doing so and thus has to engage in a variety of compensatory demo...
Uno de los casos mas notorios de error cientifico patente es la forma de radiacion "no exist... more Uno de los casos mas notorios de error cientifico patente es la forma de radiacion "no existente" conocida como rayos-n descubierta en la primavera de 1903 por el fisico frances Blondlot. Despues de una corta vida, aunque plena e interesante, los rayos-n fueron aniquilados, segun reza la historia, en el otono de 1904 por el fisico americano Wood, quien, despues de visitar el laboratorio de Blondlot en Nancy, publico en la revista Nature un informe condenatorio de lo que encontro, o no encontro. En este articulo, examino la forma en que en comentarios subsecuentes se han representado dichos eventos, incluyendo uno posterior elaborado por Wood, con especial enfasis en la "saga de la remocion del prisma". Tambien examino la fuente de la efectividad de la retorica de Wood del "desdescubrimiento" que yo argumento radica en su construccion y puesta en ejecucion de un "teatro de los ciegos", en el que solo nosotros que no estabamos alli podemos ver q...
Health economists see their practice as the application of economics to the field of human health... more Health economists see their practice as the application of economics to the field of human health. One of the forms that the practical application of health economics takes is the attempt to persuade professionals in health care to accept and implement economists' recommendations for changes in their practice. This paper examines one such attempt by means of a detailed textual analysis of 'The Essentials of Health Economics', a major series of articles written for doctors by two leading health economists. The 'dilemma of application' faced by these authors is that if they are to persuade doctors to accept the positive benefits of economics, they must also persuade doctors to accept deficiencies in their current practice. This dilemma encourages the use of textual strategies such as 'avoiding confrontation' and 'criticism without offence'. This kind of rhetoric of application is seen to stem from the authors' skilful deployment of two distinct,...
Chat: pretty basic stuff; we can all recognise it and we can all do it. Yet when we come to defin... more Chat: pretty basic stuff; we can all recognise it and we can all do it. Yet when we come to define chat we have to make decisions about its character. For us, chat is defined by its 'informality' (not that we are capable of defining that), not its modality. Thus it names informal textual interaction as well as informal voiced interaction: holiday postcards, letters to friends and informal emails, along with telephone and dinner table conversation. However, in Conversation Analysis (CA) -- the pre-eminent mode of 'chat analysis' -- textually produced interaction is not considered an altogether appropriate topic, and 'textual CA' remains marginal at best (McHoul; Nelson; Mulkay). According to CA, conversation (or 'talk-in-interaction') is the primordial mode of social interaction. As a practice, ordinary talk is not considered by its practitioners to be particularly skilled (presumably because it is so basic, so pervasive, so ordinary); yet CA shows it ...
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
This article looks at the history, varieties, influences on, and criticisms of reflexivity in sci... more This article looks at the history, varieties, influences on, and criticisms of reflexivity in science and technology studies (STS). It deals with the epistemic, aesthetic, practical, and political aspects of reflexivity in this context. First, the meanings of ‘reflexivity,’ as this term has been understood in STS, are set out. A brief history of the varieties of reflexive concerns in this field is presented, from Bloor's explicit, yet limited, endorsement, to the full-blooded treatments of ‘the reflexivists’ (Mulkay, Woolgar, Ashmore) and beyond. Criticisms of reflexive writing from within STS (especially from Collins and Latour) are dealt with and responded to. A consideration of the internal role and status of reflexive work in STS and an assessment of the current state and future prospects of reflexivity are undertaken.
This is1 a very good book. It is multiply interesting: to people in science studies, to philosoph... more This is1 a very good book. It is multiply interesting: to people in science studies, to philosophers and ethnographers, to anybody interested in the social sciences of medicine. It is rich and multi-layered. Beautifully written. Unusually well-made (as a material object; Duke University Press was a sound choice). Buy it and read it; think about it; then use it and cite it and read it again. Above all, take pleasure in it. In an ideal world, in which reviewing a text was simply and commonsensically a matter of ‘giving one’s opinion’ as a guide and recommendation for those who currently do not know the text, that would be it; job done. But of course, that is not the main function of reviewing in this ‘scientific’ context (for a comprehensive analysis of the functions of scientific reviews, see Restrepo Forero [2003]). And anyway, it would be quite surprising if there are many readers of this journal, and hence this review, who are currently unaware of The Body Multiple. Arthur Frank, in his highly complimentary review in the American Journal of Sociology (no less), suggested that ‘Awards committees should take notice of this major contribution’ (Frank, 2003: 534). They have: the book won the 2004 Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science (thereby providing Mol with an ‘Author meets Critics’ session at the Society’s Paris conference) as well as the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize, 2004. The commonsense function of this particular review is thus very likely to be redundant. You already know this book. You have already been told, officially, that it is good. At any rate, I am going to proceed on that assumption. Book reviewing is a relatively lowly task in the academic division of labours. Not too many British academics will (hope to) include one in their Research Assessment Exercise returns. (I haven’t written one in years.) The
There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceñ... more There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez’. In Colombian ‘Flatland’ (the world of state and bureaucracy, of documentary realities) both are imposters: the citizen, because his name(s) match(es), ‘criminally’, (one of) the guerrilla’s; who is, for the agents of Flatland, a “terrorist”, and most importantly “the alias Mono Jojoy” – a name that must be false, and who therefore must have a real one, plus a biography, a history, and a genuine cédula (ID card) that, as for all Colombian adults, must be trusted to guarantee an individual unique identity. We trace the search for the guerrilla’s truth along with the story of the citizen’s travails in which he is serially and terminally ‘(mis)taken’ for the guerrilla. But this ‘mistake’ is one that can only happen by denying any authority to evidence from ‘Fatland’ (the world of face-to-face life): the citizen looks, acts, and lives, nothing at all like the guerrilla.
There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceñ... more There is a citizen, Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez; and there is a guerrilla, ‘Jorge Enrique Briceño Suárez’. In Colombian ‘Flatland’ (the world of state and bureaucracy, of documentary realities) both are imposters: the citizen, because his name(s) match(es), ‘criminally’, (one of) the guerrilla’s; who is, for the agents of Flatland, a “terrorist”, and most importantly “the alias Mono Jojoy” – a name that must be false, and who therefore must have a real one, plus a biography, a history, and a genuine cédula (ID card) that, as for all Colombian adults, must be trusted to guarantee an individual unique identity. We trace the search for the guerrilla’s truth along with the story of the citizen’s travails in which he is serially and terminally ‘(mis)taken’ for the guerrilla. But this ‘mistake’ is one that can only happen by denying any authority to evidence from ‘Fatland’ (the world of face-to-face life): the citizen looks, acts, and lives, nothing at all like the guerrilla.
In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various ... more In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various times during the long drawn out process of being commissioned as Editors of this Special Issue, of commissioning the authors and thereafter variously exhorting, encouraging and congratulating them (at a crucial stage, when the whole thing had got too big and the consulting referees had reported, being obliged to reject the efforts of some potential contributors); engaging the services of said referees, and later, with some difficulty, negotiating with them the continuation of the project; and finally, after an incredibly intense period of solid wall-to-wall subediting on the final drafts (Ashmore) and the writing of this Introduction (Richards), finding it all, almost, over: at last, at last! This is attempted through the deployment of an extended narrative metaphor which likens our field to a restaurant, and a lyrical coda celebrating anticlimax. We also manage to introduce the papers.
This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “mem-ory wars”—... more This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “mem-ory wars”—the current controversy around “recovered ” or “false ” memory. As it is played out inside professional psychology, the dispute features clinical practitioners act-ing largely as proponents of recovered memory and experimentalists as proponents of false memory. Tracing a genealogy of this dispute back to a pair of original sites (Mesmer’s salon and Wundt’s laboratory), we show how the traditions ’ engagement in three modes of scientific demonstration varies systematically in terms of the modes of social relation inherent in their epistemic practices and the kinds of “reliable witness” these practices produce. We conclude that whereas the experimentalist tradition is able to transport their produced witnesses from one to another site of demonstration with rela-tive ease, the clinical tradition has much greater difficulty in doing so and thus has to engage in a variety of compensatory demo...
Uno de los casos mas notorios de error cientifico patente es la forma de radiacion "no exist... more Uno de los casos mas notorios de error cientifico patente es la forma de radiacion "no existente" conocida como rayos-n descubierta en la primavera de 1903 por el fisico frances Blondlot. Despues de una corta vida, aunque plena e interesante, los rayos-n fueron aniquilados, segun reza la historia, en el otono de 1904 por el fisico americano Wood, quien, despues de visitar el laboratorio de Blondlot en Nancy, publico en la revista Nature un informe condenatorio de lo que encontro, o no encontro. En este articulo, examino la forma en que en comentarios subsecuentes se han representado dichos eventos, incluyendo uno posterior elaborado por Wood, con especial enfasis en la "saga de la remocion del prisma". Tambien examino la fuente de la efectividad de la retorica de Wood del "desdescubrimiento" que yo argumento radica en su construccion y puesta en ejecucion de un "teatro de los ciegos", en el que solo nosotros que no estabamos alli podemos ver q...
Health economists see their practice as the application of economics to the field of human health... more Health economists see their practice as the application of economics to the field of human health. One of the forms that the practical application of health economics takes is the attempt to persuade professionals in health care to accept and implement economists' recommendations for changes in their practice. This paper examines one such attempt by means of a detailed textual analysis of 'The Essentials of Health Economics', a major series of articles written for doctors by two leading health economists. The 'dilemma of application' faced by these authors is that if they are to persuade doctors to accept the positive benefits of economics, they must also persuade doctors to accept deficiencies in their current practice. This dilemma encourages the use of textual strategies such as 'avoiding confrontation' and 'criticism without offence'. This kind of rhetoric of application is seen to stem from the authors' skilful deployment of two distinct,...
Chat: pretty basic stuff; we can all recognise it and we can all do it. Yet when we come to defin... more Chat: pretty basic stuff; we can all recognise it and we can all do it. Yet when we come to define chat we have to make decisions about its character. For us, chat is defined by its 'informality' (not that we are capable of defining that), not its modality. Thus it names informal textual interaction as well as informal voiced interaction: holiday postcards, letters to friends and informal emails, along with telephone and dinner table conversation. However, in Conversation Analysis (CA) -- the pre-eminent mode of 'chat analysis' -- textually produced interaction is not considered an altogether appropriate topic, and 'textual CA' remains marginal at best (McHoul; Nelson; Mulkay). According to CA, conversation (or 'talk-in-interaction') is the primordial mode of social interaction. As a practice, ordinary talk is not considered by its practitioners to be particularly skilled (presumably because it is so basic, so pervasive, so ordinary); yet CA shows it ...
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
This article looks at the history, varieties, influences on, and criticisms of reflexivity in sci... more This article looks at the history, varieties, influences on, and criticisms of reflexivity in science and technology studies (STS). It deals with the epistemic, aesthetic, practical, and political aspects of reflexivity in this context. First, the meanings of ‘reflexivity,’ as this term has been understood in STS, are set out. A brief history of the varieties of reflexive concerns in this field is presented, from Bloor's explicit, yet limited, endorsement, to the full-blooded treatments of ‘the reflexivists’ (Mulkay, Woolgar, Ashmore) and beyond. Criticisms of reflexive writing from within STS (especially from Collins and Latour) are dealt with and responded to. A consideration of the internal role and status of reflexive work in STS and an assessment of the current state and future prospects of reflexivity are undertaken.
This is1 a very good book. It is multiply interesting: to people in science studies, to philosoph... more This is1 a very good book. It is multiply interesting: to people in science studies, to philosophers and ethnographers, to anybody interested in the social sciences of medicine. It is rich and multi-layered. Beautifully written. Unusually well-made (as a material object; Duke University Press was a sound choice). Buy it and read it; think about it; then use it and cite it and read it again. Above all, take pleasure in it. In an ideal world, in which reviewing a text was simply and commonsensically a matter of ‘giving one’s opinion’ as a guide and recommendation for those who currently do not know the text, that would be it; job done. But of course, that is not the main function of reviewing in this ‘scientific’ context (for a comprehensive analysis of the functions of scientific reviews, see Restrepo Forero [2003]). And anyway, it would be quite surprising if there are many readers of this journal, and hence this review, who are currently unaware of The Body Multiple. Arthur Frank, in his highly complimentary review in the American Journal of Sociology (no less), suggested that ‘Awards committees should take notice of this major contribution’ (Frank, 2003: 534). They have: the book won the 2004 Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science (thereby providing Mol with an ‘Author meets Critics’ session at the Society’s Paris conference) as well as the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize, 2004. The commonsense function of this particular review is thus very likely to be redundant. You already know this book. You have already been told, officially, that it is good. At any rate, I am going to proceed on that assumption. Book reviewing is a relatively lowly task in the academic division of labours. Not too many British academics will (hope to) include one in their Research Assessment Exercise returns. (I haven’t written one in years.) The
... Health and efficiency: A sociology of health economics. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: ... PAG... more ... Health and efficiency: A sociology of health economics. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: ... PAGES (INTRO/BODY): xii, 224 p. SUBJECT(S): Medical economics; Social medicine; NationalHealth Service (Great Britain); Great Britain. DISCIPLINE: No discipline assigned. ...
Uno de los casos más notorios de error científico patente es la forma de radiación "no existente"... more Uno de los casos más notorios de error científico patente es la forma de radiación "no existente" conocida como rayos-n descubierta en la primavera de 1903 por el físico francés Blondlot. Después de una corta vida, aunque plena e interesante, los rayos-n fueron aniquilados, según reza la historia, en el otoño de 1904 por el físico americano Wood, quien, después de visitar el laboratorio de Blondlot en Nancy, publicó en la revista Nature un informe condenatorio de lo que encontró, o no encontró. En este artículo, examino la forma en que en comentarios subsecuentes se han representado dichos eventos, incluyendo uno posterior elaborado por Wood, con especial énfasis en la "saga de la remoción del prisma". También examino la fuente de la efectividad de la retórica de Wood del "desdescubrimiento" que yo argumento radica en su construcción y puesta en ejecución de un "teatro de los ciegos", en el que sólo nosotros que no estábamos allí podemos ver que no había nada allí. A lo largo de todo el texto la credibilidad de Wood como informante se pone en cuestión con el fin de proporcionar una versión simétricamente escéptica de las pretensiones científicas de Wood y de su estatus, como contraparte a la historia más común.
Uploads
Papers by Malcolm Ashmore
informe condenatorio de lo que encontró, o no encontró. En este artículo, examino
la forma en que en comentarios subsecuentes se han representado dichos eventos, incluyendo uno posterior elaborado por Wood, con especial énfasis en la "saga de la remoción del prisma". También examino la fuente de la efectividad de la retórica de Wood del "desdescubrimiento" que yo argumento radica en su construcción y puesta en ejecución de un "teatro de los ciegos", en el que sólo nosotros que no estábamos allí podemos ver que no había nada allí. A lo largo de todo el texto la credibilidad de Wood como informante se pone en cuestión con el fin de proporcionar una versión simétricamente escéptica de las pretensiones científicas de Wood y de su estatus, como contraparte a la historia más común.