CAPÍTULO II MARCO TEÓRICO
2. BASES CONCEPTUALES Y TEÓRICAS PARA LA FORMULACIÓN DEL MODELO
In addressing the problem of how STS researchers make the objects of their research, Lucy Suchman (2011) argues that research methods constitute a practice, and that this practice is itself an object of research. In this paper, I have argued that this is a longstanding concern in STS since the elaboration of the concept of ‘reflexivity’ as one of the key pil- lars of science studies (Bloor 1976; Woolgar 1988a, 1988b; Ashmore 1989; Pollner 1991; Pinch 1993; Lynch 2000). However, I join Suchman’s argument according to which Feminist Science Studies have shaped our thinking about this in a more radical way. She draws on Barad’s elabora- tion in arguing that the sense of the apparatus extends “beyond the by now well accepted premise that instruments have material effects in the construction of scientific facts, to more deeply conjoin agencies of obser- vation, including subjects, and their objects. She [Barad] emphasizes that we are neither outside of the world looking at it, nor are we inside of it. Rather we are ofit” (Suchman 2011, 21-22).
Following this input, in this paper I have sought to shed light on the importance of writing research as a practice that contributes significantly to the “material entanglements that participate in (re)configuring the world” (Barad 2007, 91). This acknowledgement solicits STS researchers to trouble the character of writing as a neutral practice, and open up fur- ther questions that inevitably shape the form of our account: what and who is this written for? Whose voices and visions do it comprise? Who and what is left out? How could it be otherwise?
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1I use the phrase ‘Feminist Science Studies’ as in Barad (2011) to indicate a research and activitist field that questions the entanglements among matters of science, politics and power. To further clarify, as Barad puts it: “Feminist science studies was never a subfield of science studies that talked about women and gen- der. Feminist science studies, for all its diversity and because of all its diversity, is a richly inventive endeavor that is committed to making a better world” (Barad 2011, 9).
2 To reconstruct the entire debate about reflexivity is out of the scope of this paper since this task would deserve an entire study on its own. To know more about the debate in STS, I would remind the reader to the following essential ref- erences: Woolgar (1988a, 1988b), Ashmore (1989), Pollner (1991), Pinch (1993), Lynch (2000).
Essay
TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies 10 (2) pp. 99-119 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net 2019