Steve G. Hoffman

How to Punch Someone and Stay Friends: An Inductive Theory of Simulation

One way to study ontology is to assess how people differentiate real activities from others, and a good case is how groups organize simulation. However, social scientists have tended to discuss simulation in more limited ways, either as a symptom of postmodernism or as an instrumental artifact. Missing is how groups organize simulations to prepare for the future. First, I formulate a definition of simulation as a group-level technique, which includes the qualities of everyday ontology, playfulness, risk and consequence reduction, constrained innovation, and transportability. Next, I use ethnographic data collected at an amateur boxing gym to argue that simulations simplify the most risky, unpredictable, and interpersonal aspects of a consequential performance. The problem is that a simulation can rarely proceed exactly like the reality it is derived from. For example, boxers hold back in sparring but should not in competition. The effectiveness of a simulation therefore depends on how robust the model is and how well members translate the imperfect fit between the contextual norms of the simulation and its reality.

Thinking science with thinking machines: The multiple realities of basic and applied knowledge in a research border zone.

Some scholars dismiss the distinction between basic and applied science as passé, yet substantive assumptions about this boundary remain obdurate in research policy, popular rhetoric, the sociology and philosophy of science, and, indeed, at the level of bench practice. In this article, I draw on a multiple ontology framework to provide a more stable affirmation of a constructivist position in science and technology studies that cannot be reduced to a matter of competing perspectives on a single reality. The analysis is grounded in ethnographic research in the border zone of Artificial Intelligence science. I translate in-situ moments in which members of neighboring but differently situated labs engage in three distinct repertoires that render the reality of basic and applied science: partitioning, flipping, and collapsing. While the essences of scientific objects are nowhere to be found, the boundary between basic and applied is neither illusion nor mere propaganda. Instead, distinctions among scientific knowledge are made real as a matter of course.

Walking the Line: The White Working Class and the Economic Consequences of Morality

Over one-third of the white working class in America vote for Republicans. Some scholars argue that these voters support Republican economic policies, while others argue that these voters’ preferences on cultural and moral issues override their economic preferences. We draw on in-depth interviews with 120 white working-class voters to defend a broadly “economic” interpretation: for this segment of voters, moral and cultural appeals have an economic dimension, because these voters believe certain moral behaviors will help them prosper economically. Even the very word “conservative” is understood as referencing not respect for tradition generally, but avoidance of debt and excessive consumption specifically. For many respondents, the need to focus on morality and personal responsibility as a means of prospering economically—what we call “walking the line”—accords with the rhetoric they associate with Republicans. Deindustrialization may have heightened the appeal of this rhetoric.

On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters (review)

Weiner’s book is a significant achievement. Whereas most of the literature on post-communist transformation focuses on macro-level factors, this book fills a void by illuminating the lived experiences of post-communist workers. The theoretical payoff for doing this is important: Weiner is able to offer an elegant explanation to the puzzling “quietness” of Czech workers by carefully showing the effects of the market discourse down to the individual level. Another positive attribute is the author’s willingness to discuss seriously the work of East European scholars – a habit not routinely embraced by Western scholars of post-communism. This is not to say, however, that the book is without its problems. For an account that concentrates on workers’ identities, the role of the workplace in creating and maintaining these identities is largely neglected. Not considering the possibility that some of workers’ identity is created and reproduced in the workplace leaves the book open to questions regarding the accuracy of the empirical story. For example, because most managers were employed by large multinationals, it is not impossible to imagine that they could have also learned self-reliance and independence from their colleagues and superiors. Another problem is the author’s reluctance to extrapolate beyond the Czech case. We should not expect bold generalizations from a qualitative study. However, in a book of this caliber the expectation is that the author will at least try to show how the current analysis might be useful in understanding other cases. These problems, however, do not significantly detract from the study’s importance. Weiner has written a compelling account that will be of great interest for students of post-communism, especially those interested in gender, work and ideology.

Managing Ambiguities at the Edge of Knowledge: Research Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Labs in an Era of Academic Capitalism

Many research-intensive universities have moved into the business of promoting technology development that promises revenue, impact, and legitimacy. While the scholarship on academic capitalism has documented the general dynamics of this institutional shift, we know less about the ground-level challenges of research priority and scientific problem choice. This paper unites the practice tradition in science and technology studies with an organizational analysis of decision-making to compare how two university artificial intelligence labs manage ambiguities at the edge of scientific knowledge. One lab focuses on garnering funding through commercialization schemes, while the other is oriented to federal science agencies. The ethnographic comparison identifies the mechanisms through which an industry-oriented lab can be highly adventurous yet produce a research program that is thin and erratic due to a priority placed on commercialization. However, the comparison does not yield an implicit nostalgia for federalized science; it reveals the mechanisms through which agency-oriented labs can pursue a thick and consistent research portfolio but in a strikingly myopic fashion.

Respecifying Lab Ethnography: An Ethnomethodological Study of Experimental PhysicsRespecifying Lab Ethnography: An Ethnomethodological Study of Experimental Physics, by SormaniPhilippe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014. 278 pp.

interaction strategies. She reminds us that symbolic interactionism doesn’t concern itself with the morality of being honest or deceptive but rather on what is pragmatic— that is, on what contributes to shared definitions of situations, mutually understood meanings, and collaborative efforts at solving the paradoxes that emerge in interaction. In her chapter on the use of language in the performance of identities, Scott outlines three analytical frameworks: discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and frame analysis. While providing an excellent overview of these frameworks, Scott also addresses semiotics, Mills’s motive talk, and Scott and Lyman’s excuses and justifications. Scott effectively describes how key interactionist concepts help us to better understand both micro-realities (e.g., by employing conversation analysis) and mesoor macrorealities (e.g., through utilizing frame analysis). By redeploying interactionist concepts, Scott demonstrates the perspective’s broad applicability in analyzing social life, dispelling the common myth (and criticism) that symbolic interactionism is applicable only at the micro level. In her chapter on how social organizations and institutions shape identities, Scott revisits Goffman’s work on total institutions. In addition, she presents her own concept of reinventive institutions, characterizing them as structures sought out voluntarily for the purposes of self-improvement, where disciplinary power takes the form of ‘‘performative regulation.’’ Here, members exercise agency while simultaneously experiencing social control based on mutual surveillance. Scott identifies six types of these new sites for identity work, including religious and spiritual communities, military camps, secret societies and fraternities, therapeutic clinics, academic hothouses, and virtual institutions. The fascinating discussion of reinventive institutions is reminiscent of themes prevalent in Charles Edgley and Dennis Brissett’s book, A Nation of Meddlers (2000). Edgley and Brissett focus not only on the meddlers, but also on those who choose to be meddled with. The latter would likely be members in Scott’s reinventive institutions—in particular, in therapeutic clinics. Consideration of a new form of total institution, in the form of Scott’s reinventive institution, provides an important reevaluation of 12-step programs, self-actualization, and belief in the expertise of others. The implications for self (re)-construction are important and worthy of continued study. For the reader familiar with key micro sociological concepts, Scott provides contemporary examples in explaining and describing the concepts in a way that is reinvigorating. For the reader unfamiliar with the concepts, Scott’s excellent writing, featuring thoughtful explanations and provocative examples, sheds light on what is to be gained from micro-level sociological analysis. This book could have multiple uses: For anyone wishing to better understand how identity is negotiated—that is, the processes involved and strategies employed—this book is a must-read. For professors of social psychology classes (especially those emphasizing the symbolic interactionist perspective), this book would be an excellent selection for required reading. Finally, Scott’s book could also serve as a helpful resource for those who simply wish to brush up on old (but still highly relevant) micro sociological concepts. In this latter regard, the book could function as an interactionist reference book.

149.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781409465867.

The sociology of knowledge that followed The Social Construction of Reality shifted from the study of rarified ideas to practical activity, focusing on the stabilization of a sense of shared reality. The opposite side of this shift in emphasis has received much less attention – activities that place reality into a state of play and, in so doing, call attention to its ephemerality. I discuss three empirical areas where the practical use of other realities is central to the sociology of knowledge. First, I document cases in which skilled practitioners, such as airline pilots, safety engineers, and athletes, use simulation to prepare for events that are understood as highly uncertain and risky. Next, I describe how other realities are mobilized epistemologically, such as through experimentation in technoscience and experimentalism in unrealized or ‘unbuilt’ art and architecture. Finally, I consider autotelic and transcendent social experiences through fantasy and technological mediations like augmented realities.

The Practical Use of Other Realities: Taking Berger and Luckmann into the Wild

The headline story of the mock tabloid, Science World Weekly, recently announced, ‘‘Stephen Hawking Shocker: Supernovas Suggest Universe Has Small Cosmological Constant!’’ In this imaginary society, the publication of a general theory of social reality might land a feature article. Alas, this is not the world most of us live in. Here, academic scholarship circulates within small networks of specialists. It is good to keep this in mind when sociologists propose that we increase our impact by modeling the natural and physical sciences. We fight over the crumbs of public attention. Academic scholarship can get especially niche at its highest levels of abstraction, as with a synthetic, formal, and universalistic theory of all social reality. As Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman (1987) point out, synthetic theory is ‘‘the specialty of a minority of theorists. . . and at their best provide fodder for graduate courses and other grand theorists, but in practice are ignored by most sociologists.’’ Whatever one thinks of this state of affairs, it is undoubtedly true. So who needs a general theory of social reality? Jonathan H. Turner believes we all do and has spent much of his career building it. He suggests that the main challenge is a shortsighted antipathy toward theoretical unification that has three main sources. First, Parsonsian functionalism’s combination of conceptual mountains and explanatory failure tainted future efforts at ‘‘grand theory.’’ Second, a ‘‘new age of specialization and middle-range theorizing’’ has advanced knowledge piecemeal, accumulating many timeless truths but providing no overall framework. Finally, there is the ‘‘smug cynicism’’ of the anti-positivists who gained a bullhorn during the cultural turn in social theory (the miscreants go nameless and are summarily dismissed). These factors have coalesced into an intellectual climate forbidding to explanatory theory with universalistic ambition. Turner warns that the cost is a fragmentation that erodes the discipline’s place in the scientific pecking order. But fret not, for Turner has taken up the good fight. The publication of the first two volumes of Theoretical Principles of Sociology offers an opportunity to pose a few questions related to the prospects of grand sociological theorizing. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been and will continue to be a place for some grandness, what might such a theory look like? If a unified theory is to hold widespread sway (in full disclosure, I would not bet on one), it will require considerably more than just explanatory coverage. It will also require more than predictive reliability. It will require excited and energized followers and lots of them. Who will read, engage, and proselytize for a twenty-first century grand theory? I will speculate on this before moving to a secondary issue, which is whether or not Turner delivers the goods. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1: Macrodynamics, by Jonathan H. Turner. New York, NY: Springer, 2010. 364pp.

Who Needs a General Theory of Social Reality

169.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781441962270.

Review: Weaving Self-Evidence: A Sociology of Logic, by Claude Rosental, translated by Catherine Porter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 294pp.

who through her early field research successfully challenged the male-biased ethological view of sex roles in primates (Hrdy 1981). Diane Rodgers’s book is written with verve, and is a provocative and suggestive starting point for a number of more comprehensive analyses. However, in order to be convincing, much more consideration has to be given to the science itself. What is needed is in-depth studies of the kind that many empirically-oriented historians of science or field sociologists conduct: research that examines the interaction of scientific and social factors without reducing the former to the latter. This kind of research would look at such things as the problems of the science at the time as well as cognitive and strategic scientific concerns of individual scientists, in addition to politically and socially relevant factors.