Encounters with Failure in STS I

Abstract

Science and Technology Studies has long focused on how knowledge is made and how publics are then enrolled in it. However, these past studies have often focused on successful articulations of knowledge; we argue that what is left behind, discarded or disputed is just as generative and important to research. While not exhaustive, these may include failures in policy, failures of pilot schemes or mundane failures in everyday life. Moreover, failure also occurs in relation to research processes. In research we can, for example, encounter absences in our data where perhaps we expected it to be. This can in turn make us unable to narrate and analyse the processes that enrol publics in the various failures that stand in relief to what becomes successful. What methods might exist or be developed to help discuss and analyse failure in the face of absent data, missing voices and actors for whatever reason we struggle to follow?

This panel is primarily focused on the methods involved in researching failure or doing research in the face of failure or absence. As such, we invite papers that deal with one or both of these areas. We also welcome papers with a focus on digital methods or inventive methods. Due to the subject of the panel, we also encourage papers which reflect research projects at different stages of the research process. This panel aims to start and progress conversations amongst researchers about how conduct studies amongst failures and absences.

Discussant

• Katrine Meldgaard Kjær

Individual Presentations

• Keeping It Together When Things Fall Apart: Lessons From the Social Construction/Destruction of Vaping - Amelia Howard, University of Waterloo

• Proprietary Chemicals in the FracFocus Database: Studying Absences, Inconsistencies, and Omissions - Grace Poudrier, Northeastern University; Sara Wylie, Northeastern University

• "We Found No Primates": Ethnography of An Unsuccessful Primatological Research - Paride Bollettin, Universidade Federal da Bahia

• What glitches, accidents and breakdowns tell us about good relations between humans and robots - Chris Chesher, The University of Sydney; Justine Humphry, University of Sydney

Session Organizer

• Jessamy Perriam, IT University of Copenhagen