The topics raised in the Oxford workshop were further discussed in a lunch-session at this year’s EASST/4S Conference in Rotterdam. Again, the event attracted a strong audience with a number of ‘original’ presenters also turning up to offer additional commentary.
Prior to the event, a small report had been compiled and distributed enabling non-participants to read up on the topic: ‘A Turn To Ontology?’ – A Summary of the Workshop (Cheniti, T., Sugden, C., and Toennesen, C.) in addition to the orginal provocation piece by Woolgar et al. Most of the papers and responses can be downloaded from here.
The discussion was kicked off by Tarek Cheniti, who summarised briefly the course of events at the initial conference, following which Chris Sugden and Christian Toennesen highlighted a number of pertinent issues and questions. Is STS, for example, trying to become less ‘fashionable’ by picking up (fights with) traditional philosophical topics and turning them into units of investigation? Are we even talking about the same thing?
Annemarie Mol was quick to point out that the conflict over what exactly is meant by ontology – and indeed ontologies – is an old point of friction between STS and philosophy. The latter group, she argued, has yet to come to terms with the multiple and emerging nature of ontologies, as described in her own studies on atherosclerosis. Sally Wyatt, among others, opposed this claim, suggesting that several branches of philosophy have already grappled with the question of multiplicity in a sophisticated and fruitful manner. This, she said, is a battle over territory that STS is bound to lose. Deborah G. Johnson, describing herself as a philosopher with a profound interest in STS, on the other hand, said that said battle has already been won by STS’ers – “they have already had it their way.”
Were you present; did you pick up on other things or would you have liked to raise other issues?
