At the beginning I was sort of careless about this “trial”, but, after having passed through two of them, now I think it is indeed a very good idea. As, finally, it is not that easy to find readers for your work (not at all). And, plus, it helps you go back and forth in your text again and again according to different suggestions that, quite often, you did not have the time to realize or consider. So these “trials” do increase the possibility of facing a reduced form of a tribunal many times before facing THE tribunal. And thus, gives you the possibility of committing more errors and solve them.

Back in ‘83:

” ‘Accumulated knowledge’ people say with admiration, but this acceleration is made possible by a change of scale, which in turn makes possible the multiplication of trials and errors. Certainty does not increase in a laboratory because people in it are more honest, more rigorous, or more ‘falsificationist’. It is simply that they can make as many mistakes as they wish or simply more mistakes than the others ‘outside’ who cannot master the changes scale. Each of mistake is in turn archived, saved,recorded, and made easily readable again,whatever the specific field or topic may be.” (Latour, 1983)

One is to believe that our department is lab-like becoming day by day (Still, it remains doubtful the extent to which it could raise the world…).

I do not know the date yet, but arguably at the end of September I should be doing this accountable exercise called “panel”. On previous panels I received great feedback from prof. Luz Ma. Martínez (UAB), Jenny Cubells (UAB) and Pep Vivas (UOC).  And also, belonging to FIC research group, I also got feedback from them. It is great to have them as readers ! ¿How do yo u sign in readers for your work? M?

RAX!

As Deleuze said, concepts do have an origin and a need to be but also do have an expiring date. That is to say, you use one or another concept if it makes sense in a particular “agencement” in which you are trying to live or, in this case, research. And, likewise, you abandon a concept if it suddenly does not make sense or it does not bring forward new connections or affinities with what you are interested in. It is all about finding the “agencements qui nous conviennent” and stopping our “interpretation” about if that meant A or B. You can further elaborate this very idea if you take into consideration Alice in Wonderland quote about the meaning of words (Which Deleuze does also refer to; and Did I in a previous post).

“- When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, – it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

- The question is,said Alice, – whether you can make words mean so many different things.

- The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, – which is to be master – - that’s all.” (Carroll, 1865)

Having said so, I think that, unless we want to act as some sort of “thought police (thinkpol for Orwell fans…)”, we should celebrate (which does not mean to accept everything) the proliferation of a multiplicity of uses of some notions that, originally embedded in STS, have been used in other fields. Some of these translations have been fruitful such as to seriously take into consideration post/de-colonial and feminists approaches; for instance. That said, if we think about the notion of Cyborg as elaborated by Donna Haraway, we can acknowledge for many “misuses” of the term. But were not that misuses relevant to someones, weren’t they aimed at a purpose? I think that the relevance of “cyborg” was precisely due to a quick and widely acceptance into many academic fields which, more or less accurately (that is the point), did respect the very idea from which the cyborg arose. In deed, Donna Haraway, in a conference held at Barcelona and cosponsored by the UAB’s Department of Social Psychology, sustained that, although many STS scholars referred to the notion of cyborg (amongst which she explicitly mentioned Bruno Latour), they (her words) never realized that it was about gender.

So, after all, it should not be that strange to found pertinent uses of STS concepts “across the borders”. Though, and here is the crucial point (IMHO), battles for naming and labeling may arise. Given that, if what you are doing with “my” concept is not what “I” do, then call it another thing which is great in order to avoid confusion. But it is also naïf in the sense that, somehow, one is to believe that there is only one proper way of “using” things and neglects, indeed, the possibility of “translation” of this very concepts that, although retaining something, do also leave something aside. For the notion of cyborg (which btw I am not quite sure we could include it into STS vocabulary, but still) when re-used by some STS scholars, and according to Haraway, it was “gender” which was left aside when translated. So, ¿what is really “unacceptable” and what is “suitable” for different translations of STS concepts such as Obligatory Point of Passage, Translation, Actor, Network, Script, etc. Which, ironically, they are themselves translations from other sources or “origins”?; to put it shortly.

from saltpublishing.com

This is not to argue against a concern about how concepts are abused (insofar as you do not need to talk about an Action-Net if the only thing you state in a paper is that some elements are interconnected or, else, if claims of authority are made as you assume to rightfully use a term or concept). Instead I am willing to interrogate what it is that we found so disrupting in misusing a term, concept or notion.

Another point, very different from concept uses or misuses, is about “choices” and “pertinence”. Here I am grateful to the suggestion of considering how the idea of space can be conceptualized. As, for the time being, I was looking at the idea of production of space by Henri Lefebvre so as to argue that wifi was not just an instrumental effect of a technology but rather a production of space that allowed (and was produced) by a series of practices that were not possible before. But did not pay attention to other theories or ways of conceiving space such as those appearing on Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump” known paper. Well, for days to come, I will have to think about crossings between urban sociology, political sociology and STS [given that it is not that “evident” that they could work together or at least, the way I intended to do it

Ok, quick posting for the aftermath of the seminar 

RAX!

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]]> http://wifi-r.molekulab.net/translate-a-concept-and-%c2%bf-on-uses-and-misuses-of-sts-notions/feed/ 0 http://wifi-r.molekulab.net/what-would-you-recommed-to-phd-first-year-students/ http://wifi-r.molekulab.net/what-would-you-recommed-to-phd-first-year-students/#comments Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:30:53 +0000 Yann Bona http://wifi-r.molekulab.net/?p=124

taken form phdcomics.com

First and main motto should be something like “may the force be with you”. But if we are to take the question a little (which literally means, a little) bit serious, then, let’s rewind to a couple of days before when we had a little discussion about ways of writing and presenting academic papers, slides, and so on.

As a result of this discussion, Katharina Schlierf has asked some of us to answer to these quick (not so quick really…) demand in order to help her providing her first year Ph.D students at the Universitat de Valencia with some ideas / advise.

Not that I consider myself into a position of giving advise to others, but, I think that some points might be worth considering. Kata asked for three points. Which is a great number for make nice groupings of information. Nevertheless, I prefer to present an extended version and let people choose (as the pressure to make a workable top three listing is not really on. Is it?

Off we go:

• There is no such thing as a divide between content and it’s presentation form. You can not present the same content in multiple formats. Whether you chose to make an oral presentation, a power point or write an article, the way you “formally” present things are THE content. So, do worry about content and DO worry about presentation.

• Try to clarify the following as to have a crystal-clear (whenever possible) answer to; “what is your thesis about?”

  • Your theme (say: decision making in urban planning)

  • Main objectives (say: analyze failure in assumed good urban plannings projects)

  • Research question( say: why excellent urban planning projects fail in reaching all or some of their goals)

  • Theoretical Background (say: Urban Studies and Anthropology of the City)

  • Relevance of your topic: (say: amongst the last decade, in the urban planning department of La Seu d’Urgell several external consultancies have been contracted to design and implement dozens of projects. More than a half of these projects have failed to achieve their proposals. Whereas the city-council and the literature in decision-making and urban planning are eager to publish data on failure, we think it might highlight what the weakness as well as opportunities for improving decision-making are…)

  • As time goes by, you should be able to be more specific and provide and enlarge details for all these questions at your will. But this is because as time goes by you are likely to be more into your field-work. And thus, gain concreteness. So it is normal to not have that much to say at the beginning of your thesis. Expect concreteness to reshape what your main objectives were and your research question was.

• Learn to write a lot (a blog might be a good starting point)

• Learn to delete and get rid of what you just wrote. A text is always an open text. Expect to go back and forth in your thesis. Deleting a complete chapter of your thesis might be painful, but from a readers perspective, could be grateful.

• Research tools (software based or not) are your friends (and worst enemies if you do not back up your data). Do not be afraid to use them or to ask someone for help. (here you can find a bunch of them; http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/; always look for Free/Libre software alternatives)

• No one said it was easy. But this does not mean you can not enjoy. If you are not enjoying it, try finding out why. And if you can do something about it, do it. If, instead of doing that by yourself, you can do with others, then the outcomes are likely to be more enjoyable. (stressful does not lead to successful; enjoyable neither, but at least, you enjoyed something)

Hope it helps. Morgan Meyer made an awesome presentation on writing tips as an answer. I will find out if I can attach it here too…

sharing is a pleasure; giving credit too:

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