Interpretation as intervention in science and technology studies: revisiting methods as epistemic practices

Fredy Mora-Gámez, Andrea Schikowitz and Sarah R. Davies

Chapter 10 in Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 153-165 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Science and technology studies (STS) scholarship explores the production and institutional contexts of scientific knowledge. As such, it has examined research methods in both the natural and social sciences, framing such methods as necessarily intervening in the worlds they describe and explore. We discuss central concepts that STS mobilizes to engage with methods, in particular by introducing the notion of the “method assemblage” and its implications for interpretive methods. In doing so, we draw on our academic work to describe key ways in which STS has characterized research methods and to discuss what this might mean for other accounts of interpretive approaches. We argue that, as with any other method assemblage, interpretive methods can be understood as performative epistemic practices that enact the worlds – social, natural, political, and historical – that they purport to describe.

Keywords: Symmetry; Reflexivity; Enactment; Method assemblage; STS; Epistemic practices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926384
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803926391.00017 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21718_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().