Keeping It Together When Things Fall Apart: Lessons From the Social Construction/Destruction of Vaping

• In Event: Encounters with Failure in STS I

Abstract

In this presentation I explore failure as (1) an emergent research theme and (2) a practical problem, by reflecting on my experience studying the history and politics of e-cigarettes. I present findings from a case study of the technological system of vaping, and examine how this project, my research practices, and my position as an inquirer, changed when the technological system I was studying, began to fail catastrophically.

Drawing from historical analysis of a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to user-generated content on vaping forums, you-tube videos, e-commerce websites, public records, documents, and news, I discuss e-cigarette innovation as a user solution to failure to stop smoking and show how this in turn led to the growth of the vaping marketplace. I then consider the controversy over e-cigarettes and its emergence as the vaping system began to disrupt the ecology of tobacco products and tobacco problems, and engendered responses from established actors, industries (e.g. tobacco) and professions (e.g. tobacco control) and systems (e.g. behavioural health) within this ecology. Finally, I will show how this culminated in an intense, widespread moral panic, which set into motion the implosion of the vaping technological system.

I conclude by reflexively discussing efforts to “keep it together” while studying a system that was falling apart in real time. I address problems of an increasingly volatile research site, disappearing digital records, hyper-proliferation of on-line content and how they were resolved (or not) and reflect on the emotional and intellectual difficulties - and pain - of bearing witness to failure, and how STS training helped me navigate this destabilizing experience.

Author

• Amelia Howard, University of Waterloo