The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergence in the Sociology of Science

Charlene Nolan

Pickering, A. The mangle of practice: Agency and emergence in the sociology of science. American Journal of Sociology,99(3), 559-589.

I found this article to be particularly dense, so my post is quite long as I try to work through this. I think it may be helpful to digest this article by understanding first 1) what is the concern with sociology of science; 2) what is the mangle of practice; and 3) what does it mean for us to decenter humanist science? I believe I can provide some insight into the first 2 questions, but the latter I believe we may need to discuss in class.

1) What is the Concern with Sociology of Science.

Pickering argues that sociology of science is now at a cross-roads to either reject non-human agency in understanding the practice of science or to recognize material agency with the caveat that now only “hard” scientists can practice science. Pickering offers the alternative of recognizing the dialectic, albeit asymmetrical dialectic, between material and non-material agentic forms (i.e. humans and tools). I would have found an explicit definition of what Pickering considers as “agency” helpful for digesting this chapter. Perhaps it is in the article and if so, would someone please provide a page number! I’m not familiar with actor-network analysis or sociology of science enough to know what the standard acceptable form of “agency” is. I therefore, assume that agency merely refers to the ability of a human or non-human to act in the world. In the case of humans, we act in accordance with specific goals and cultural practices, implicit and explicit, in mind. Non-human material tools act without intentionality, including and especially without human intention. This, I believe is the crux of his argument for why we should consider non-human material agency. It acts, at times against our wishes, and we then must re-act. This action and reaction constitute the “mangle of practice” which I attempt to outline in the next section.

To be completely clear, when Pickering talks about non-human things, I believe (and hope) he is talking about tools and artifacts and not non-human living things. In order to make his point about non-material agency, it is important to recognize that the non-material forms to which he refers have no intentionality in their agency. I suppose you could make a similar argument that non-human living kinds can participate in the “mangle of practice,” which I outline in the next section of this post, but I would argue that we would then have to consider the intentionality (future goals) of those non-human living kinds.

2) The Mangle of Practice

 “Resistance (and accommodation) is at the heart of the struggle between human and material realms in which each is interactively restructured with respect to the other—in which, as in our example, material agency, scientific knowledge, and human agency and its social contours are all reconfigured at once.”- pg. 385

I found the above quote to be particularly helpful. I believe this quote, plus the temporal unfolding of this process of resistance and accommodation to be the heart of the “mangle of practice.” In essence, what is the dialectic relationship between human and material in terms of resistance and accommodation unfolding across time?

One question that I had here was whether a material could accommodate or if this was solely a human accomplishment because it requires intentionality? Is this part of what Pickering means by an asymmetrical dialectic?

3) How this relates to us?

I found it interesting that in understanding the mangle of practice, Pickering emphasized modeling as an example of the link between the dialectic relationship of humans and materials. As humans design materials, encounter resistance from that material in regards to intended goals, and accommodate and redesign said materials, we participate in an act of modeling. “Modeling, then, is the link between existing culture and future states that are the goals of scientific practice, but the link is not a causal or mechanical one: the choice of any particular model opens up an indefinite space of different goals” (pg. 383).

Guiding questions for class discussion:

1. As a way into the discussion, can you think of a situation where you were modeling something and it did not go originally as planned? How does this connect with the mangle of practice?

2. What does this mean for us as we design learning environments and materials/tools to facilitate learning? How do we take into account material agency into our design and teaching?