Producing and Reproducing Knowledge: Tinkering on Models with Karin Knorr

• In Event: Classic STS Papers, Re-incorporated, Reimagined, Re-enacted - II

Abstract

In the late 1970s, Karin Knorr (later Karin Knorr Cetina) published a series of articles presenting different versions of a “model” (or sometimes more ambitiously a “theory” or even “logic”) of scientific practice. Knorr simultaneously articulates her models with respect to her data from a rich ethnographic study of a large plant protein laboratory in Berkeley, and with respect to a very wide variety of theoretical traditions and insights. I will focus on one of Knorr’s articles, from 1977, but in the context of the others, to see her tinkering with presentations and concepts. I will explore what kind of an object a model of scientific practice was for Knorr, and consider whether there is place for that kind of object in today’s STS.

Author

• Sergio Sismondo, Queen's University