Potted Disciplinary Histories, the Material Logic of Scholarly Practice, and the Demise of Social Epistemology

• In Event: The Fate of Fellow Travelers: Regenerating the Relationship of STS, Analytic Philosophy, and Social Epistemology

Abstract

In this presentation, I take up the problem of deriving normative arguments on the basis of narratives regarding the origin and disciplinary position of social epistemology. These narratives often come replete with preordained judgments—a position is traditional, radical or the like—leaving little room for negotiation. If social epistemology’s normativity resides predominantly with obligations assumed on the basis of expediently positioned origin stories and disciplinary frameworks, the diverse contributors to the field can more easily ignore one another and be ignored in relation to other disciplines—like STS. In providing an account of social epistemology’s socialization, I will analyze constructions of, and attitudes toward, social epistemology’s history in considering the relationship of the field to STS. I suggest that the inability of the social epistemology to craft a usable past presents a glaring reflexive problem—social epistemology fails to construe its knowledge as a collective achievement. Social epistemology, then, fails to know itself. I hold that social epistemology and STS have parted ways owing to a shared absence of a practical imagination—an imagination captive to the seemingly inescapable material logic regarding traditional scholarly practice and disciplinary development. This logic situates the internal stance of social epistemology as both an issue of individual priority and of disciplinary demarcation.

Author

• Jim Collier, Virginia Tech