Karin Knorr Cetina | |
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Born | |
Nationality | Austrian |
Alma mater | University of Vienna, (Cultural Anthropology, minor in Sociology), Ph.D., 1971; Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Post-doctoral Diploma (Sociology), 1972; University of Bielefeld, Habilitation (Sociology), 1981 |
Occupation(s) | Sociologist, professor |
Employer(s) | Universität Konstanz, University of Chicago |
Known for | Work on epistemology and social constructionism |
Notable work | The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (1981) and Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (1999) |
Awards | Ford Fellow, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley |
Karin Knorr Cetina (also Karin Knorr-Cetina) (born 19 July 1944 in Graz, Austria) is an Austrian sociologist well known for her work on epistemology and social constructionism, summarized in the books The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (1981) and Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (1999). Currently, she focuses on the study of global microstructures and Social studies of finance. Knorr Cetina is the Otto Borchert Distinguished Service Professor (Jointly Appointed in Anthropology) and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago.
A knowledge object is a theoretical concept introduced by Knorr Cetina to describe the emergence of post-social relations in epistemic cultures. Knowledge objects are different from everyday things and are defined as unfolding structures that are non-identical with themselves; Jyri Engeström based the concept of social objects on this concept. [1]
Knorr-Cetina studied at the University of Vienna, receiving a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology (with a minor in sociology) in 1971. Her dissertation research focused on the structural analysis of oral literature. She shifted her focus toward sociology as she found that cultural anthropology at the time was too focused on historical concerns, while she was more interested in contemporary social phenomena. [2] Following the completion of her doctorate, Knorr-Cetina went to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, where many influential sociologists were invited to give presentations. This resulted in a Post-doctoral diploma in sociology, and an appointment as an instructor in anthropology at the University of Vienna from 1972 to 1973, and then in sociology from 1973 to 1976. During this time, Knorr-Cetina engaged in her first empirical investigations of science leading the 1975 publication (with Hermann Strasser and Hans Georg Zilian) Determinants and Controls of Scientific Development. [3] It was also during these years that she first encountered the work of the ethnomethodologically-inclined sociologist Aaron Cicourel, specifically "Method and measurement in sociology."
From 1976 to 1977, Knorr-Cetina received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to study at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. Shortly before her arrival in California, the French philosopher-turned-sociologist Bruno Latour and British sociologist Steven Woolgar began their well known "laboratory studies" at the Salk Institute in southern California. Korr-Cetina's work at Berkeley ultimately contributed to this network of laboratory studies in the late 1970s, which would eventually become the field of the Social Studies of Science and Technology. The empirical research conducted while at Berkeley also became her widely cited 1981 publication The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Knorr-Cetina also received her Habilitation in sociology at the University of Bielefeld in 1981, and served as Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld from 1983 to 2001. Her work in the social studies of science during these years culminated in her widely-cited book Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, published in 1999.
Knorr-Cetina's progression to understanding how technology mediates sociality led her to select global financial markets as a new "laboratory" to study knowledge in society. The first suggestion of this new field site was in the article "Sociality with objects: Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies" (1997), followed later by a conference on "The Status of the Object in Social Science" at Brunel University in September 1999. The paper she presented at this conference, entitled "The Market as an Object of Attachment: Exploring Postsocial Relations in Financial Markets", was later published in 2000. Her co-author was Urs Bruegger, a former foreign exchange dealer. The two collaborated on over a dozen articles on global financial markets.
With the turn of the century, Knorr Cetina became interested in global financial markets as an object of study. From early work with Urs Bruegger, [4] [5] we see this developing into a strong research interest. [6] This work is enhanced by the application of tools from science studies and the sociology of knowledge, for example, imagining "the market" as an object of attachment for traders or using market infrastructure (e.g. Bloomberg terminals) to see the microconstruction of the global market in the space of the local. The financial market infrastructure also comprises a "global scopic system" that integrates news and information across the world. [7]
Knorr Cetina’s lecture “The Synthetic Situation: Interactionism for a Global World” from 2008 is vital in rethinking past assumptions about communication and interaction order previously published by sociologists, namely Erving Goffman. [8] In the lecture, which was eventually published in 2009, Knorr Cetina introduces and explains new concepts regarding global interaction. Although Goffman is widely published and read in these areas, much has changed since his day and Knorr Cetina conceptualized such changes.
The introduction of the “synthetic situation” is arguably one of her most important new concepts. It is defined as a situation that “…invariably includes, and may in fact be entirely constituted by, on-screen projections…”. [8] A synthetic situation, therefore, can manifest in many ways, both informal and formal. Examples include an online video chat, playing video games against others on the Internet or even a business deal done via videoconference. This idea can be seen as a result of the advancement in technology in recent years, and adds a new dimension to Goffman’s social situation where face-to-face interaction is required. Knorr Cetina explains the difference of the two situations by the use of surgery. [8] A Goffmanian situation occurs when there is just the surgeon and the patient. A synthetic situation arises, however, when the surgeon uses technology like a scope and a screen in order to accomplish the task at hand. Without looking at the patient through the screen, the job would not be able to be done and would remain a face-to-face, social situation.
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".
Social constructionism is a term used in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory. The term can serve somewhat different functions in each field; however, the foundation of this theoretical framework suggests various facets of social reality—such as concepts, beliefs, norms, and values—are formed through continuous interactions and negotiations among society's members, rather than empirical observation of physical reality. The theory of social constructionism posits that much of what individuals perceive as 'reality' is actually the outcome of a dynamic process of construction influenced by social conventions and structures.
In economics, a market is transparent if much is known by many about: What products and services or capital assets are available, market depth, what price, and where. Transparency is important since it is one of the theoretical conditions required for a free market to be efficient. Price transparency can, however, lead to higher prices. For example, if it makes sellers reluctant to give steep discounts to certain buyers, or if it facilitates collusion, and price volatility is another concern. A high degree of market transparency can result in disintermediation due to the buyer's increased knowledge of supply pricing.
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and semiotic role.
In micro-sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that sees social behavior as an interactive product of the individual and the situation. In other words, it derives social processes from social interaction, whereby subjectively held meanings are integral to explaining or understanding social behavior.
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
Social studies of finance is an interdisciplinary research area that combines perspectives from anthropology, economic sociology, science and technology studies, international political economy, behavioral finance, and cultural studies in the study of financial markets and financial instruments. Work in social studies of finance emphasizes the social and cultural dimensions of financial activities, but focuses also on technical and economic dimensions such as pricing and trading.
The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, acting, and the material objects that together shape a group of people's way of life.
A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge. Hence, such knowledge is composed of complex theoretical frameworks and methodology.
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is multi-directional when the causes and the effects affect the reflexive agent in a layered or complex sociological relationship. The complexity of this relationship can be furthered when epistemology includes religion.
Randall Collins is an American sociologist who has been influential in both his teaching and writing. He has taught in many notable universities around the world and his academic works have been translated into various languages. Collins is currently the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading contemporary social theorist whose areas of expertise include the macro-historical sociology of political and economic change; micro-sociology, including face-to-face interaction; and the sociology of intellectuals and social conflict. Collins's publications include The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998), which analyzes the network of philosophers and mathematicians for over two thousand years in both Asian and Western societies. His current research involves macro patterns of violence including contemporary war, as well as solutions to police violence. He is considered to be one of the leading non-Marxist conflict theorists in the United States, and served as the president of the American Sociological Association from 2010 to 2011.
In sociology, social psychology studies the relationship between the individual and society. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of psychology, sociological social psychology places relatively more emphasis on the influence of social structure and culture on individual outcomes, such as personality, behavior, and one's position in social hierarchies. Researchers broadly focus on higher levels of analysis, directing attention mainly to groups and the arrangement of relationships among people. This subfield of sociology is broadly recognized as having three major perspectives: Symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and structural social psychology.
The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintaining interdependence, and constituting themselves as sources of consensus, coercion and social control".
The Sociology of emotions applies a sociological lens to the topic of emotions. The discipline of Sociology, which falls within the social sciences, is focused on understanding both the mind and society, studying the dynamics of the self, interaction, social structure, and culture. While the topic of emotions can be found in early classic sociological theories, sociologists began a more systematic study of emotions in the 1970s when scholars in the discipline were particularly interested in how emotions influenced the self, how they shaped the flow of interactions, how people developed emotional attachments to social structures and cultural symbols, and how social structures and cultural symbols constrained the experience and expression of emotions. Sociologists have focused on how emotions are present in the creation of social structures and systems of cultural symbols, and how they can also play a role in deconstructing social structures and challenging cultural traditions. In this case, in order to understand the mind, affect and rational thought must be considered since humans find motivation among non-rational factors such as levels of emotional commitment to norms, values, and beliefs. Within sociology, emotions can be seen as social constructs that are fabricated by interaction and collaboration between human beings. Emotions are a part of the human experience, and they gain their meaning from a given society's forms of knowledge.
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency to macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenological method.
Michael Joseph Mulkay is a retired British sociologist of science.
Social objects are objects that gain meaning through processes of reification. Studies of this phenomenon have its origins in classical cognitive sociology, the historical traditions of the sociology of knowledge and phenomenology. A prominent work in this regard is The Rules of the Sociological Method, in which Emile Durkheim suggested the dictum, "The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things." This has led researchers to investigate the social and cultural contingencies of how "objects" cognitively become objects.
The sociology of valuation is an emerging area of study focusing on the tools, models, processes, politics, cultural differences and other inputs and outcomes of valuation.
Epistemic cultures is a concept developed in the nineties by anthropologist Karin Knorr Cetina in her book Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Opposed to a monist vision of scientific activity, Knorr Cetina defines the concept of epistemic cultures as a diversity of scientific activities according to different scientific fields, not only in methods and tools, but also in types of reasonings, ways to establish evidence, and relationships between theory and empiry. Knorr Cetina's work is seminal in questioning the so-called unity of science.
Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists is a book by Sharon Traweek on cultural anthropology and the sociology of science among people in the field of particle physics. It is an ethnography of high energy physicists that chronicles the laboratories, career paths, and values of a community of scientists based on her observations at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, US, and KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan.