Daniel Neyland

Does STS Mean Business

In recent years Science and Technology Studies (STS) has been subject to various uses and transformations, especially as STS has been appropriated within new contexts, including management studies and business schools.1 This paper examines the nature and consequences of these moves whereby STS comes into contact with Organization and Management Studies (OMS)2 and of the shifts of STS into business schools and into business and management environments. Thus stated, our task appears relatively straightforward. We need to describe how, where and when has STS moved, in what ways has it had an infl uence, and with what effect? The fi rst part of this paper attempts just such a description. We call this our smooth narrative. It depicts STS as a largely homogenous entity and raises questions about the different contexts in which it fi nds itself, about the effects of its movement and appropriation upon its purportedly ‘radical’ pretensions, and the mode and manner of its engagement with others. However, it turns out that this task, while (perhaps) relatively uncomplicated in relation to many other areas of social science, throws up a whole series of interesting issues and challenges when asked of the movement and fate of STS. In brief, these issues and challenges arise because STS itself has much to say about the contingent character of academic practice

Marketing mobile futures: assembling constituencies and creating compelling stories for an emerging technology

This paper engages with the marketing of an emerging technology: Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID). It is based on a lengthy ethnographic field study with a marketing team in a hi-tech corporation. We argue that building market relations for this emerging technology involves three closely intertwined activities: the identification of relevant people and things which can form a constituency into which the product can be launched; the narration of a tellable story which articulates and renders accountable relations of people and things; and the development of a compelling version of this story to provide a basis for ongoing engagement of the putative constituency. Identifying potential members for the constituency, convincing them of the compelling nature of the mobility based story, managing access to the constituency and maintaining internal relations between the marketing team and the rest of the corporate organization are all ongoing aspects of this market building activity. The paper forms a contribution to marketing theory by bringing ideas of constituencies, tellable and compelling stories from science and technology studies research together with insights from the literature on marketing.

Dismissed content and discontent: an analysis of the strategic aspects of actor-network theory

Actor-network theory (ANT) has contributed greatly to the development of science and technology studies. However, recent critiques appear to have left ANT in a gloomy theoretical black box. What is the likelihood of ANT exiting its current theoretical discontent? Is ANT worthy of salvation and on what grounds? Law argues that recent critiques stem from ANT’s development into a particular theoretical strategy. However, this article will argue that by focusing on strategy as messy and impure, ANT can be afforded the opportunity to shift from a fixed approach to an ambiguous and contingent strategy, well placed to carry on. The article achieves such an argument by first highlighting how ANT has contributed to a recent study of strategy in action; second, by outlining the strategic aspects of ANT; and third, by using the study of strategy in action as a means of engaging with ANT’s current theoretical discontent.

Bearing account-able witness to the ethical algorithmic system

This paper explores how accountability might make otherwise obscure and inaccessible algorithms available for governance. The potential import and difficulty of accountability is made clear in the compelling narrative reproduced across recent popular and academic reports. Through this narrative we are told that algorithms trap us and control our lives, undermine our privacy, have power and an independent agential impact, at the same time as being inaccessible, reducing our opportunities for critical engagement. The paper suggests that STS sensibilities can provide a basis for scrutinizing the terms of the compelling narrative, disturbing the notion that algorithms have a single, essential characteristic and a predictable power or agency. In place of taking for granted the terms of the compelling narrative, ethnomethodological work on sense-making accounts is drawn together with more conventional approaches to accountability focused on openness and transparency. The paper uses empirical material from a study of the development of an “ethical,” “smart” algorithmic videosurveillance system. The paper introduces the “ethical” algorithmic surveillance system, the approach to accountability developed, and some of the challenges of attempting algorithmic accountability in action. The paper concludes with reflections on future questions of algorithms and accountability.

On Organizing Algorithms

This short paper acts as a comment on Totaro and Ninnos ‘The Concept of Algorithm as an Interpretative Key of Modern Rationality’ and also introduces some new avenues for exploring the organization of algorithms. In recent discussion of algorithms, concerns have been expressed regarding the apparent power, agential capacity and control that algorithms command of our lives (Beer, 2009; Lash, 2007; Slavin, 2011; Spring, 2011; Stalder and Mayer, 2009). The logic of order, if there is one within these discussions, appears somewhat distinct from the metaphor of recursion suggested by Totaro and Ninno. Using this distinction as a starting point, the paper explores alternative metaphors from which to begin an engagement with political questions of algorithmic ordering. The paper argues for engaging with associative metaphors of: algorithmic account, fluidity, absent-presence and sociality. The paper explores these associative metaphors through an important set of emerging questions regarding organizing algorithms: who and what is included or excluded, on what terms and to what ends?

Moving images: the mobility and immobility of ‘kids standing still’

Mobility is a frequently recurring theme in recent debates around the emergence of new technologies. However, with this increasing attention paid to mobility, how does ‘immobility’ become notable as an absence of mobility? How are such perceptions of immobility used to occasion assessments of motive, intent and moral standing? This paper features a sociological interrogation of examples of immobility made notable through expectations of mobility. It utilises a study of CCTV as its principle example of the constitution and assessment of mobility and immobility. The paper explores theoretical strategies available for interrogating these issues. It concludes through an engagement with the boundaries constituted around mobility and immobility. The ways in which forms of assessment operate through, and further maintain, these boundaries are considered.

Managing Electronic Waste: A Study of Market Failure

This paper analyses market based initiatives as solutions to techno-scientific problems. It focuses on electronic waste to argue that market- based initiatives are key locations in which techno-scientific work takes place. Such work is explored through recent ideas inspired by Actor-Network Theory and the concept of performativity.

Who's who? The biometric future and the politics of identity

This article engages empirically with the futures of biometric identification. It does so by engaging with the current UK political debate regarding the introduction of identity cards, by participating in a trial of biometric technologies and by working with an organisational setting where ID cards would be introduced (an airport). The article suggests that, although social science can not predict the future, it can map out ways to engage with technological uncertainty, the challenges of producing and mobilizing identity and the politics of technology development. The article argues that detailed engagement with these areas is currently neglected and that such neglect leaves problematic spaces in discussions regarding the development of biometric technologies.

The Accomplishment of Spatial Adequacy: Analysing CCTV Accounts of British Town Centres:

The number of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in British town centres has rapidly increased in recent years. These increases are mirrored in Europe and North America. In Britain many of these cameras videotape town centres, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. How do CCTV systems account for the space of the town centres in which they operate? What theoretical sensibilities can we use to engage with CCTV spatial accounting? To what extent do terms such as ‘professional,’ ‘legal’, ‘sociotechnical’, and ‘mundane’ enable adequate renditions of spatial-accounting activity? In this paper I will argue that engagement with the accomplishment of mundane public flows and specific incidents of accountable otherness can initiate a discussion of these questions and initiate an alternative to panoptic renditions of CCTV. The discussion will seek to draw together a potentially tense and disruptive theoretical combination of ethnomethodology and science and technology studies.

On the transformation of children at-risk into an investment proposition: A study of Social Impact Bonds as an anti-market device

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government accelerated a number of market-based interventions into public problems. Experimenting with new forms of intervention provided a moment to effectively problematize the public sector as a whole and its budgets, opening up for discussion the basis for making an intervention, and the methods and costs involved. Questions were posed of the apparently irreducible costs associated with supposedly intractable problems of government (such as homelessness, vulnerable children or crime). In particular, crisis and austerity became a means to give new momentum to a series of experimental ways to shape the social investment market that had been under discussion in various forms since at least 2000. Social Impact Bonds form one particular type of intervention. They involve drawing together investors with delivery agencies, the third sector and national and local government, coordinated by a commissioner. In the recent move by the UK government to set up and use Social Impact Bonds, much has been made of the opportunity they represent to introduce competition, efficiency, efficacy, private sector thinking and investment to a range of different social problems. As the first results of these experiments are now emerging, this article reports on a study conducted into a market-based intervention that experiments with the transformation of ‘children at-risk’ into an investment proposition through a Social Impact Bond. The article suggests that the Social Impact Bond can be usefully explored by drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) treatments of markets as collective, heterogeneous assemblages. However, in contrast to scholars who focus on market devices, the article argues that the Social Impact Bond in practice operates as something akin to an anti-market device. The article begins with an introduction to Social Impact Bonds. It then explores the means through which market-based competition and an investment proposition were anticipated, but did not emerge through the composition and enactment of the Bond. It concludes with an assessment of the anti-market device and the future of Social Impact Bonds.