Notes

1 A term that is, which would acknowledge that many others in the field are committed to a thoroughgoing view of scientific, technical and social knowledge as socially constructed; I am referring particularly to Pinch and Bijker - see note 20.

² B Barnes & D Mackenzie, 'On the Role of Interests in Scientific Debate', in R Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge (Sociological Review Monograph 27, Keele University , 1979), pp.49-66; D Mackenzie, 'Statistical Theory and Social Interests: A Case Study', Social Studies of Science 8, 1978, pp.35-83; B Barnes, 'On the Conventional Character of Knowledge and Cognition', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11, 1981, 303-33, esp. 324-8; B Barnes, 'On the "Hows" and "Whys" of Cultural Change (Response to Woolgar)', Social Studies of Science 11, 1981, pp 481-98; D Mackenzie, 'Interests, Positivism and History', Social Studies of Science 11, 1981, pp 498-504.

³ S Woolgar, Interests and Explication in the Social Study of Science', Social Studies of Science 11, 1981, pp 365-94; S Yearley, 'The Relationship Between Epistemological and Sociological Cognitive Interests: Some Ambiguities Underlying the Use of Interest Theory in the Study of Scientific Knowledge', Stud Hist Phil Sci 13(4), pp.353-88.

⁴ See also e.g. S Shapin, 'The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes', in Wallis (ed.), op. cit., pp.139-78; A Pickering, 'The Role of Interests in High Energy Physics: The Choice Between Charm and Colour', in K Knorr et al. (eds.), Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 4: The Social Processes of Scientific Investigation (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980), pp.239-68.

⁵ Mackenzie, 1978, op. cit., p.36.

⁶ Ibid., p.48.

⁷ Ibid., p.66.

⁸ Woolgar, op. cit., p.369.

⁹ And I confess I remain unclear as to the distinction.

¹⁰ Barnes, 'On the "Hows" and ...', p.490.

¹¹ Woolgar's argument is reiterated and apparently supported in J Law, 'The Anatomy of a Sociotechnical Struggle: the Design of the TSR2', paper to conference Technology and Social Change, Edinburgh, June 1986, pp.3-4. The way out of this reflexive dilemma is to recognise that our knowledge claims as analysts like those we study are necessarily aligned to interests in the practical transformation or maintenance of the social world. I think it rather a sorry state to get to when the logic of one's argument leaves one impartial and indifferent to one's own claims.

¹² Yearley, op. cit. See also Yearley, Science, Technology and Social Change (Unwin Hyman, London, 1988), pp.41-2.

¹³ Ibid., p.361.

¹⁴ Ibid., p.362.

¹⁵ M Callon and J Law, 'On Interests and their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment', Social Studies of Science 12, 1982, pp 615-25.

¹⁶ Ibid., p.616. See the equivalent denial in Law, op. cit.

¹⁷ See esp. ibid., p.622; also Law's slightly extended but similar concept of 'concerns': op. cit.

¹⁸ M Callon, 'The State and Technical Innovation: A Case Study of the Electric Vehicle in France', Research Policy 9, 1980, pp 358-76; B Latour, 'How to Write "The Prince" for Machines as Well as for Machinations', paper to conference Technology and Social Change, Edinburgh, June 1986; Law, op. cit. . For further indications of their approach, see: M Callon and B Latour, 'Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them Do It', in K Knorr-Cetina and A Cicourel (eds.), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towards An Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies (RKP, 1981), pp 277-303; J Law, 'On Power and its Tactics: a View from the Sociology of Science', Sociological Review 34, 1986, pp 1-38.

¹⁹ S Russell & R Williams, 'Opening the Black Box and Closing It Behind You: On Microsociology in the Social Analysis of Technology', paper to British Sociological Association Conference Science, Technology and Society, Leeds, UK, April 1987

²⁰ See e.g. Latour, Science in Action (Open University, Milton Keynes, 1987), p.108 and elsewhere. Though they make no such grand declarations and indeed claim they wish to make broader connections, the same argument can be made about the approach of Pinch and Bijker in their explicitly subjective notion of interests. T Pinch, 'Understanding Technology: Some Possible Implications of Work in the Sociology of Science', paper to conference Technology and Social Change, Edinburgh, June 1986; T Pinch and W Bijker, 'The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other', Social Studies of Science 14, 1984, pp 399-41; W Bijker, 'Social Groups and the Technological Styles: Towards an Explanation of the Developmental Process of Bakelite', in C&C/EASST/4S, George Sarton Centennial (Communication & Cognition, 1984), pp 329-32.

²¹ The debate is further complicated by Law and Callon's tendency at times, though not as unequivocal than Woolgar's, to slide from agnosticism to atheism - from a concentration on actors' accounts of their interests and context, through the assumption that context only affects actors via their own perceptions, to a position that they only exist in the minds of the actors. Again I do not accept it, but do not wish to, nor am sure I could, find a way of establishing the merits of a realist account which would convincingly defeat that position. I shall just continue to assert the independent existence of a world out there, while still accepting that all knowledge of it is mediated by human perception and hence social construction.

²² See S Lukes, Power: a Radical View (Macmillan, London, 1974); with reference to

WB Gallie, 'Essentially Contested Concepts', Proc Aristotelian Society 56, 1955-6, pp.167-98. See also T Benton, '"Objective" Interests and the Sociology of Power', Sociology 15(2), 1981, 161-84, esp. p.164 and note 10.

²³ For a review, see e.g. C Ham and M Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State (1986), ch.4; or D McEachern, A Class Against Itself: Power in the Nationalisation of the British Steel Industry (Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1980), ch.1.

²⁴ The theory of agenda formation in this paradigm is best developed in C van der Eijk &

J Kok, 'Non-Decisions Reconsidered', Acta Politica 10, 1975, pp.277-301

²⁵ Lukes, op. cit.

²⁶ S Clegg, The Theory of Power and Organisation (RKP, London, 1979), p.63.

²⁷ Benton, op. cit.

²⁸ D McEachern, op. cit., p.20-2.

²⁹ JD Stolzman, 'Objective and Subjective Concepts of Interests in Sociological Analysis', Sociological Analysis and Theory 5, 1975, pp.107-115. His paper paradoxically supports much of my case, yet takes a firmly anti-relativist methodological stance. For other useful discussions of interests, see ID Balbus, 'The Concept of Interests in Pluralist and Marxian Analysis', Politics and Society 1, 1971, pp.151-77; W Connolly, 'On Interests in Politics', Politics and Society 2, 1972, pp.459-77.

³⁰ D McEachern, op. cit., p.17.

³¹ ibid.

³² J Westergaard and H Resler, Class in A Capitalist Society: A Study of Contemporary Britain (Heinemann, London, 1975), p.248

³³ R Alford, 'Paradigms of Relations between State and Society', in LN Lindberg et al. (eds.), Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism (Heath, lexington, 1975), pp.145-60; JK Benson, 'A Framework for Policy Analysis', in D Rogers & D Whetten, (eds.), Interorganizational Coordination (Iowa State UP, 1983), p.154.

³⁴ Benton, op. cit.

³⁵ A Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Macmillan, London, 1979), pp.188-90.

³⁶ B Jessop, The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods (Martin Robertson, 1982), p.256.

³⁷ ibid., pp.257-8.

³⁸ B Hindess, 'Power, Interests and the Outcome of Struggles', Sociology 16(4), 1982, pp.498-511

³⁹ Benton, op. cit., pp.162, 182; Jessop, op. cit., p.258.

⁴⁰ Offe warns against the 'objectivistic' extreme: a completely 'deductively obtained concept of the revolutionary class and its "objective" interests', in an approach which

runs the risk of raising the still to be proved class character of the state to a theoretical premise and at the same time degrading to trivialities the historical peculiarities of a particular set of institutions - whether it can be brought into line with the dogmatically preconceived class concept or not. There is a danger of playing down selection rules which do not fit easily into an objectivistic class theory.

C Offe, 'Structural Problems of the Capitalist State: Class Rule and the Political System: On the Selectiveness of Political Institutions', in K von Beyme (ed.), German Political Studies 1 (Sage, London, 1974), p.43.

⁴¹ e.g. Saunders et al.:

it may reasonably be argued, for example, that in a capitalist economy, it is in people's interests to maximise their economic benefits and minimise their costs. This is not to deny the existence (or indeed the substantive rationality) of altruistic behaviour within a market system, but it is to recognise that the function of a market lies in allocating values, and that the functionally rational goal of actors in that market thus necessarily relates to profit maximisation and the minimisation of costs.

P Saunders et al., 'Rural Community and Rural Community Power', in H Newby (ed.), International Perspectives on Rural Sociology (Wiley, London, 1978), p.68.

⁴² This list draws on the suggestions of Frey and of Offe's list and criticisms of each, with reference to his notions of 'selection mechanisms' operating to filter out challenges to the capitalist state. FW Frey, 'Comment: On Issues and Non-Issues in the Study of Power', Amer Pol Sci Rev 65, 1971, pp.1095-7; Offe, op. cit., pp.42-5.

⁴³ The definition of needs of course raises problems; they are always bound to a specific perceived context of opportunities and aspirations. While the approach is useful as a general indictment of a social system, it remains controversial and inconclusive for analysis of specific constraints, and critical effort 'is used up ineffectively in utopian thinking.' Ibid., p.43.

⁴⁴ Either units of analysis with comparable social characteristics and conditions can be used, or variables may be held constant to provide ceteris paribus conditions. Crenson takes this approach further than just qualitative expectations because of the absence or presence of an issue, to degrees of 'issue-ness' related quantitatively to political influence. M Crenson, The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decision Making in the Cities (John Hopkins UP, Baltimore, 1971). The limitations of the method are that selectivity common to the systems is not revealed; and the required conditions of comparability are seldom met.

⁴⁵ Here there are, first, a danger of self-justification if the method is used as anything more than just tentative suggestions; second, no criterion for distinguishing systematic from accidental exclusion; and third, no means of discovering potential conflicts not articulated in any of the regions or periods explored.

⁴⁶ cf. Benton's discussion of Gramsci's notion of 'effective action'. op. cit.

⁴⁷ It is however, hardly to be expected that all relevant selection rules will be laid down, or that those which are will be adhered to strictly. Indeed, fundamental ones will not explicitly be acknowledged because of a need to maintain legitimacy.

⁴⁸ As Lukes observes, justification of the counterfactual is relatively easy for Crenson. For ideological limitations on perceived possibilities and the legitimacy of demands, it is much more difficult. Lukes, op. cit., p.46.

⁴⁹ From these inadequacies Offe concludes that the actual limits of a specific system of government will only be perceived in the process of conflict with it, when 'collective normative options turn into empirical force', and further that such praxis cannot be based entirely on analytical insight. This is consistent with his analysis of capitalist states necessarily operating so as not to disclose their real role. Offe, op. cit., p.45.

⁵⁰ My conception of ideology draws in particular on J Larrain, The Concept of Ideology (Hutchinson, London, 1979); and Giddens, op. cit., ch.5.

⁵¹ cf. criticisms of Althusserian structuralism and structural functionalist sociology.

⁵² See Law's attempt to imply that interests models concentrate exclusively on capitalist social relations, and his apparent equation of these with an individualistic motivation of profit. Law, 'Anatomy ...'

⁵³ cf. Jessop, op. cit., pp.217-18; M Reed, Redirections in Organisational Analysis (Tavistock, London, 1985), pp.74-5; D Sayer, Marx's Method (Harvester, Brighton, 1979), pp.105-41.

⁵⁴ My depiction of structure and agency here relies heavily on Giddens, op. cit.

⁵⁵ S Russell, 'Risk Assessment as a Political Activity: The Case of Comparative Studies of the Health Costs of Energy Systems', paper to 2nd Conference on Science, Technology and Education, Risk and Participation, Leusden, Netherlands, August 1982.

⁵⁶ For a review, see e.g. S Cotgrove, 'Technology, Rationality and Domination', Social Studies of Science 5, 1975, 55-65

⁵⁷ As pointed out in the title of a paper by Colin Green, 'Acceptable Risk as a Problem Definition: or Is Someone Out There Trying to Kill Me?'

⁵⁸ See e.g. R Young, 'Why are Figures So Significant? The Role and Critique of Quantification', in J Irvine, I Miles & J Evans, (eds.), Demystifying Social Statistics (Pluto, London, 1979), pp.63-74.

⁵⁹ On the critique of revealed preferences as a basis for setting levels of 'acceptable' risk, see e.g. CH Green, 'Revealed Preference Theory: Assumptions and Presumptions', in J Conrad (ed.), Society, Technology and Risk Assessment (Academic, London, 1980); and Russell, 1982, op. cit.

⁶⁰ The point derives from first, the reflexive observation that not only are knowledge claims we are investigating aligned to social interests but so are our claims about them; and second from arguments about the relation between theory and praxis, especially as developed by Frankfurt critical theorists and by Offe: that modern institutions have to operate so as to conceal their true mode of operation, and that crucial ideological mechanisms of social control operate at the margins of consciousness, and are thus only exposed by challenge to those institutions, whether direct or vicarious. See note 49.