Proverbial economies of STS

Abstract

This article discusses examples from an extended family of aphorisms, stories, and themes that have circulated widely in STS and remain associated with the formation and integration of the field. Drawing upon Harvey Sacks’s insightful remarks about features of everyday conversation, which he related to ancient practices in oral culture, we argue that familiar citation magnets in STS operate in many respects like proverbs, parables, and an extended family of neatly and memorably packaged viral articulations in ordinary language. After discussing the contingent production of proverbial truth, the article focuses on three well-known examples that combine memorable proverbs and themes with parables: Winner’s account of the low parkway bridges designed by city planner Robert Moses to show that technology has politics; Pinch and Bijker’s concise history of the bicycle to illustrate the social construction of technology, and Star and Griesemer’s viral two-word theme of ‘boundary objects’ as artifacts that sustain collaboration across organizational contexts. The discussion of these cases suggests that different elements of these examples become the focus of subsequent citations and applications, and that ambiguities about the origins and meanings of the cited items opens new avenues for critical reflection on practicing citational justice and the nature of STS as an affiliative discipline.