Professional Documents
Culture Documents
STS 5105
November 18, 2015
Neoliberal STS and Reflexive Sociology
In Neoliberalism and the History of STS, David Hess argues that the historical
trajectory of STS theory, in significant ways, parallels the political shift from social
liberalism to neoliberalism. Hess calls for a reflexive approach based on Bourdieus field
sociology, one that would not only provide a better account of the relationship between
neoliberalism and science, but that would also interrogate the influence of neoliberal
thought within the field of STS itself. Hess is extremely careful to avoid drawing a
simplistic causal relationship between neoliberalism and mainstream STS theory, but
the relationship he describes is decidedly vague and conceptually unsatisfying.
Moore et al. argue that one needs to exercise caution in attempting to show the
direct and explicit linkages between challenges in the scientific field and neoliberal
globalization (511). Likewise, Hess avoids suggesting causation in his analysis; instead,
neoliberal thought parallels dominant STS theory, and sometimes it inflects it (178).
Hess also uses the Weberian term elective affinity to suggest some underlying
cultural resonances between the two (p. 187). Nevertheless, over the past several
decades, neoliberal values and practices seem to have colonized many other fields,
including science. Therefore, while it is prudent to avoid the short circuit of
deterministic interest-oriented models, STS scholars must also account for asymmetric
relationships between fields. For example, in his theorization of the relationship
between (neoliberal) capitalism and the life sciences, Kaushik Sunder Rajan argues: the
life sciences are overdetermined by the capitalist political economic structures within
events are rendered invisible (or made natural) in part by neoliberal practices and
values. The reflexive sociology that Hess advocates, therefore, would question how
neoliberalism, science, and the study of science are implicated in the unequal
distribution of suffering and harm in society, while leaving conceptual space to examine
the possibilities for agency, resistance, and transformation.