The socially organized basis of everyday ‘economic’ conduct: evidence from video recordings of real-life pre-verbal salesperson-shopper encounters in a showroom retail store

This paper reports the results of an analysis of the ways shoppers regularly occasioned (or attempted to occasion) or avoided (or attempted to avoid) verbal encounters with salespersons in a retail store. These everyday events are of vital importance for retail researchers and practitioners as they not only precede and influence but also make possible th

Tacit Knowledge and Realism and Constructivism in the Writings of Harry Collins

In this paper I examine Harry Collins’s influential writing on tacit knowledge. In particular I turn my attention to his recent book, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge [Collins 2010], or TEK, which is arguably the most complete and systematic statement of what he means by the term “tacit knowledge”. As well as examining tacit knowledge as elaborated in this contribution, I draw out an underlying tension in Collins’s major contributions to the sociology of scientific knowledge in general between the realism underlying his notion of “tacit knowledge” and the constructivism underlying his other well-known concept, “the experimenters’ regress” (as for instance, elaborated in his well-known book Changing Order [Collins 1992]). In order to make this argument I pay particular attention to an aspect of his writings on tacit knowledge which I think is worthy of closer examination: namely the sorts of empirical support claimed for the features and properties of tacit knowledge to which he attends. In short I ask questions concerning some of the specific empirical examples and the conclusions he draws from them.Dans cet article, j’examine les écrits influents de Harry Collins consacrés à la connaissance tacite. Je me penche en particulier sur son récent livre, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge [Collins 2010] ou TEK, qui est sans doute l’exposé le plus complet et le plus systématique de la manière dont Collins conçoit la connaissance tacite. Tout en examinant la connaissance tacite telle qu’elle est développée dans cette contribution, je dégage, au sein des contributions majeures de Collins à la sociologie de la connaissance scientifique en général, une tension sous-jacente, entre d’un côté le réalisme qui sous-tend sa notion de « connaissance tacite », et, de l’autre, le constructivisme qui sous-tend son concept célèbre de « régression de l’expérimentateur » (tel qu’élaboré par exemple dans son fameux livre Changing Order [Collins 1992]). Pour construire cet argument, j’accorde une attention particulière à un aspect des écrits de Collins sur la connaissance tacite qui, je pense, mérite un examen plus approfondi : à savoir les types de support empirique qui sont invoqués en faveur des caractéristiques et des propriétés de la connaissance tacite visée. En bref, je pose des questions à propos de certains des exemples empiriques spécifiques invoqués et des conclusions qui en sont tirées

Attributing scientific and technical progress: the case of holography

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science

A sonic theory unsuitable for human consumption

The past decade has seen the proliferation of scholarly work on audio culture by philosophers, sociologists, ethnographers, musicologists, anthropologists, and others. There is now a range of histories and ethnographies on listening and on the soundscape, and a proliferation of epistemological, methodological, and cultural investigations of the sonic. At the same time, as John Kieffer notes, sound art is fast becoming “the new kid on the cultural block” (2010). Different writers have engineered different conceptual approaches for studying the sonic. These voices are symptomatic of a body of work that has developed as a way of reacting against the primacy of Cartesian reason, looking for ways of escaping the Western tendency to measure, calculate and represent everything. They offer strategies for defending and resurrecting the nullified senses, like hearing, which must no longer surrender to the tyranny of ocularcentrism. However, the belated recognition of sound as a valid academic object of study and art discipline, often risks fetishizing the sonic and repeating the same ideological separations between sound and image, body and mind. Moreover, refreshing as they may be, they are too often confined within a human-centred position and interested in predominantly addressing the phenomenal experience of sound. This article wishes to discuss alternative schemas daring to go beyond the audiophile anthropocentric angle. It mainly draws on Kodwo Eshun’s unconventional method of ‘sonic fiction’ (1998), in order to argue for the value of developing a sound theory that brings together speculative philosophy, science fiction, and experimental audio art. Ultimately, it attempts to explore how such ‘a sonic intervention into thought’ (Goodman, 2010) can drag us away from the sociopolitical and historical organisation of sound and toward the vicinity of a more ‘unreal state’, where the boundaries between fiction and theory are provisional and utterly permeable