Articles and Chapters by Timothy Webmoor
Paperback, Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society, Sep 15, 2020
Digitalization and computerization are now pervasive in science. This has deep consequences for o... more Digitalization and computerization are now pervasive in science. This has deep consequences for our understanding of scientific knowledge and of the scientific process, and challenges longstanding assumptions and traditional frameworks of thinking of scientific knowledge. Digital media and computational processes challenge our conception of the way in which perception and cognition work in science, of the objectivity of science, and the nature of scientific objects. They bring about new relationships between science, art and other visual media, and new ways of practicing science and organizing scientific work. Not least, new visual media are being adopted by science studies scholars in their own practice. This volume gathers together thirteen contributions from science studies scholars from anthropology, visual studies and the sociology, history and philosophy of science, reflecting on the way that scientists use images in this age of computerization, and on the way digital technologies are affecting the study of science.
Contributors were involved with the Oxford University conference in 2011, 'Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation', and include:
Chiara Amrosio,
Anne Beaulieu,
Andreas Birkbak,
Annamaria Carusi,
Lisa Cartwright,
Matt Edgeworth,
Peter Galison,
Aud Sissel Hoel,
Torben Elgaard Jensen,
Michael Lynch,
Anders Koed Madsen,
Anders Kristian Munk,
David Ribes,
Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone,
Tom Schilling,
Alma Steingart,
Timothy Webmoor,
Steve Woolgar,
Albena Yaneva
REVIEWS:
"The STS perspective provides a thoughtful counterpoint in the midst of rapid technological change across science and engineering . . .The editors provide a strong introductory essay that sets a clear context for the various essays that follow, and the quality of the writing across the book is very high. The articles are specialized and intended for readers with strong backgrounds in STS." - R. A. Kolvoord, James Madison University
This article examines the convergence of new media and archaeology, specifically cultural heritag... more This article examines the convergence of new media and archaeology, specifically cultural heritage management. I examine the events involving Yahoo!’s creation of a global, ‘‘electric anthropology archive.’’ This archive was part of the company’s ‘‘mixed reality’’ time capsule project to transmit user-generated digital contributions from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Teotihuacan, Mexico. Working through the specifics of how this new media mogul operationalized the functionality of Web 2.0 at a cultural heritage site, I identify the salient components of what is new about this emerging technology (a ‘‘platform shift’’) and how it parallels ethical and legal demands to open archaeology to greater public involvement (a ‘‘paradigm shift’’). Considering the emerging centrality of users in new media, I examine the potential of new media for academic projects by discussing the integration of a wiki, a particular and defining type of new media, into the investigation of what constitutes heritage for locals at Teotihuacan. Current concerns in archaeology, such as the need to create and maintain digital databases as well as the granting of restrictive Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) over the material of the discipline, may be creatively and productively worked through by using such new media.
In this paper, the authors examine some of the implications of born-digital research environments... more In this paper, the authors examine some of the implications of born-digital research environments by discussing the emergence of data mining and the analysis of social media platforms. With the rise of individual online activity in chat rooms, social net- working sites and micro-blogging services, new repositories for social science research have become available in large quantities. Given the changes of scale that accompany such research, both in terms of data mining and the communication of results, the authors term this type of research ‘massified research’. This article argues that while the private and commercial processing of these new massive data sets is far from unproblematic, the use by academic practitioners poses particular challenges with respect to established ethical protocols. These involve reconfigurations of the external relations between researchers and participants, as well as the internal relations that compose the identities of the participant, the researcher and that of the data. Consequently, massified research and its outputs operate in a grey area of undefined conduct with respect to these concerns. The authors work through the specific case study of using Twitter’s public Application Programming Interface for research and visualization. To conclude, this article proposes some potential best prac- tices to extend current procedures and guidelines for such massified research. Most importantly, the authors develop these under the banner of ‘agile ethics’. The authors conclude by making the counterintuitive suggestion that researchers make themselves as vulnerable to potential data mining as the subjects who comprise their data sets: a parity of practice.
¿Qué es la arqueología simétrica y por qué deci- mos que es simétrica tal arqueología? En esta in... more ¿Qué es la arqueología simétrica y por qué deci- mos que es simétrica tal arqueología? En esta introducción al trabajo colectivo de un grupo hetero- géneo de arqueólogos (Olsen 2003, 2005; Webmoor 2005; Witmore 2004), pretendo abordar brevemente ambas cuestiones. No obstante, mi intención es que se haga evidente, a lo largo del texto, la existencia de una tercera cuestión que abarca a las otras dos y da consistencia a nuestra empresa: cómo es la arqueología simétrica. El cómo la arqueología simétrica permite reconfigurar una multitud de dualismos básicos – tales como pasado / presente, sujeto / objeto, significado / significante, representación / representado – nos ser- virá como planteamiento de base para abordar las cuestiones sobre el qué y el porqué.
Visual tools and instruments have been a focal point of historical, social and cognitive studies ... more Visual tools and instruments have been a focal point of historical, social and cognitive studies of science for quite some time, and even more so with the onset of the digital era. Profound questions about the nature of scientific knowledge are posed by the plethora of digital images and computational visualizations to be found in scientific domains. Currently, we are seeing the emergence of a new generation of computational and digital tools which are fast becoming entrenched in all research domains across science, social science and the humanities, and which are even constitutive of new cross-cutting domains. It remains unclear which distinctions become important now that the predominant form of picturing is computational or in what specific ways this makes a difference.
In order to explore these questions, we organized a conference titled Visualization in the Age of Computerization held in March 2011 at Oxford University. For the reader, the papers of the issue may be approached like nodes of an expanding network of visualization scholars; offering entry points that connect a diversity of fields and flag paths for further reflection and future research. Amongst other fields, the papers assembled here include anthropology, cognitive science, communication studies, criminology, interactive art and technology, Internet studies, philosophy, sociology, and science and technology studies.
Contributors include:
Richard Arias-Hernandez
Grace Eden
Brian Fisher
Tera M Green
Diane Gu
Reynal Guillen
Jarita Holbrook
Marina Jirotka
Erin Kruger
Anders Koed Madsen
Eric T Meyer
Luis Felipe R Murillo
Matt Spencer
Sharon Traweek
Visualization in the Age of Computerization, Sep 2014
The philosopher of art Roger Scruton has claimed that photographic images are not representations... more The philosopher of art Roger Scruton has claimed that photographic images are not representations, on the basis of the role of causal rather than intentional processes in arriving at the content of a photographic image (Scruton 1981). His claim was controversial at the time, and still is, but had the merit of being a springboard for asking important questions about what kinds of representation result from the technologies used in depicting and visualising. In the context of computational picturing of different kinds, in imaging and other forms of visualisation, the question arises again, but this time in an even more interesting form, since these techniques are often hybrids of different principles and techniques. A digital image results from a complex inter- relationship of physical, mathematical and technological principles, embedded within human and social situations. This paper consists of three sections, each presenting a view of the question whether digital imaging and digital visual artefacts generally are representations, from a different perspective. These perspectives are not representative, but aim only to accomplish what Scruton’s paper did succeed in accomplishing, that is, being a provocation and a springboard for a broader discussion.
This is a version, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal of a discussion involving Bjørnar Olsen, Ti... more This is a version, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal of a discussion involving Bjørnar Olsen, Tim Webmoor, Chris Witmore and myself that appeared also in the journal World Archaeology (39: 2007).
Symmetry is an epistemological and ethical principle developed in the social study of scientific practice. This essay connects a symmetrical archaeology to major trends in the discipline since the 1960s and to key components of archaeological practice - relational ontologies, mixtures of past and present, people and things, biology and culture, individual and society. Symmetrical archaeology is a culmination of effort in archaeology to undercut these modernist dualities and to recognize the vitality of the present past. Symmetry adds new force to the claim that archaeologists have a unique perspective on human engagements with things, on social agency and constructions of contemporary identity.
The principle of symmetry as part of a broader post humanist and materialist agenda in what some have called a new ontological turn.
A detailed introduction to this prospect of a materialist archaeology can be found in the book Archaeology: the Discipline of Things (University of California 2012) by the four of us - https://www.academia.edu/1234484/Archaeology_The_discipline_of_things
Object-oriented metrologies of care and the proximate ruin of Building 500, Apr 2014
In this chapter I work through the proximate ruin of Building 500 to develop the ontology of ruin... more In this chapter I work through the proximate ruin of Building 500 to develop the ontology of ruins, of how we think about and engage ruins, and to explore appropriate metrologies, or ‘units of measurement’, for manifesting them. Without the predetermination of what we take to be a ruin, the encounter and the reassembly of documentary material of Building 500 – the things-themselves of archaeological work – are granted more agency in channeling the account of what the abandoned building was. Allowing things to help determine their significance (or not) and the manifestation of their qualities suggests that ruins are better engaged as material conduits and understood through the notion of care. I discuss care and caring not simply as an extension of caring for objects, nonhumans and other life-fellows found at ruins, but as determinative of ruins. Ruination involves a shift in the ratios of human-centered and nonhuman-centered care at ruins. In addition, care also carries the etymological charge of accuracy and ‘closeness of measurement’ (OED). However, measurements predicated upon our received (scientifically derived) metrology are not entirely faithful to getting close to materials. I begin to develop thing-led ‘measurements’ not predicated upon mereological thought with its reductivist and quantifying impulses (Mol and Law 2002: 20; Stengers 2011: 368; Strathern 2010: 175). ‘Weight’, presence, sound, kinetics, relations, extension, discreteness, durability, complexity, composition, scales: The qualifications of things (to resuscitate the antiquated meaning of the noun). Finally, any consideration of manifesting the qualities of things must attend to the affordances and potentials of the media we deploy (Shanks and Webmoor 2012). In this final section I therefore discuss forms of mixed-media to register object-oriented metrologies.
Suspending such fundamental criteria means approaching ruins in terms of tidal ‘time’, through material connectivity and composition and less framed by conventional archaeological space-time systematics. Doing so suggests several implications. First, we might consider how modern ruins may be dissimilar to such obdurate materiality that lasts. Pasts that don’t persist. Just like the transformation of ruins into documents for transport – photographs, maps, finds drawings – ruins undergo perpetual upgrades, refits and remodels. Modernity destroys and refashions the old as quickly as it builds the new. We feng shui the past to suit contemporary aesthetes. Ruins as connective events in the ongoing flux of humans, life-fellows and materials, rather than as retrograde or enduring ‘endings’, means that ruins pop-up, percolate and evanesce everywhere, all the time. Secondly, modern ruins are proximate. Ruination is closer than it appears, close to home, even next door to our archaeology departments.
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, Sep 2013
In this contribution I will first briefly consider the collegial ideal of disciplinary co- operat... more In this contribution I will first briefly consider the collegial ideal of disciplinary co- operation which frames the premise of this section of the volume. I then move to the points of contact between STS and archaeology, exploring whether there is friction or slippage between the two disciplines. Here symmetry, not just as metaphor of parity but in the specific analytic form of generalized or ‘radical symmetry’ is unpacked as one point of contact between the fields. After the currents of thought in the fields are followed, I conclude by suggesting waypoints for orienting around what I feel to be eddies in the disciplines’ respective radical currents, to offer a knot in the future of object-centred inquiries.
Archaeology abounds not only in artifacts from the past but in modes of documenting and studying ... more Archaeology abounds not only in artifacts from the past but in modes of documenting and studying them. In this chapter, we look at the way visuality works in archaeology, from the graphics, maps, and photographs themselves to the roles they play. Along the way, we question the stress placed in much discussion of visual media on their mimetic and representational qualities—that is, their fidelity to what they are taken to represent.
Looking at what might be called the political economy of visual media—the work they do in archaeology through networks of production, circulation, transaction, and articulation—also leads us to identify some of the implications of emergent digital media, not for more spectacular summations of data about the past, but as open forums for the co-production of pasts that matter now and for community building in the future.
I rethink archaeological media in terms of the symmetry principle. That is, the flat ontology tha... more I rethink archaeological media in terms of the symmetry principle. That is, the flat ontology that does not subscribe to anthropocentricism. Without this splintering exceptionalism at the root of much modernist thought there is an appreciation of the integral relations that bind not only representational media and ourselves together as we collectively assemble the past, but ourselves with the realities of the past. Creating ourselves as we create pasts. A relational existentialism extended to nonhumans. Yet not all pasts are equal. The isotopy of the pasts means they, like memories, must be made to endure. Archaeologists and their media are, amongst others, responsible for making certain pasts stable while others perish. I discuss the practices of ‘epistemography’ to trace the chains of associations that hold, however provisionally, particular pasts together. Epistemography also reveals failed pasts and the many other pasts that might be sustained as part of diverse heritage ecologies. Reconfigured in terms of ontologies that mix the human and nonhuman, natures and cultures, archaeology’s mandate to sustain the pasts entails an expanded sense of ‘self-interest’. In shifting a concern with representational practice to the ontological register, the discipline contributes to pressing issues of our time by developing a materially grounded metaphysics of care.
A recent trend in archaeology has been to turn reflexive attention upon the methods employed by a... more A recent trend in archaeology has been to turn reflexive attention upon the methods employed by archaeologists in field practice. In this article, I take a step back to consider the map as a fundamental conceptual framework that archaeologists utilize in directing their methods and formulating interpretations. I explore what a map ‘does’ for the consideration of a site. I work around this question with the ‘Millon map’ of Teotihuacán, Mexico as a case study. Building upon ideas expressed by Alfred Gell and Roland Barthes, I argue that maps cannot be utilized as independent, self-contained media, as maps ‘work’ via an inherent mutuality of subjective and objective elements. In archaeological discourse, this is best expressed by the integration of photography and graphic representation. Finally, I offer an example of integrated ‘mapwork’ through a novel interpretation of space at Teotihuacán. It is reiterated that media such as maps operate as conceptual frameworks and so predispose certain interpretations. Acknowledging this recursive relationship between media and interpretation draws critical awareness to the media archaeologists Mediational techniques and conceptual frameworks employ and encourages the innovative use of mediational techniques to engage archaeological subjects.
Norwegian Archaeological Review, Jan 1, 2008
The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015
Archaeology and philosophy share a long history of engagement. This engagement was most pronounce... more Archaeology and philosophy share a long history of engagement. This engagement was most pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s with the so-called New Archaeology that drew upon philosophy of science to build an epistemological and methodological framework. The ensuing debates concerning how to adequately do this resulted in archaeologists being largely disaffected with philosophy of science. In the 1980s and 1990s, while philosophy of science shifted toward a more practice-based post-positivist philosophy, increasingly merging with the interdisciplinary field of science studies, archaeology began to engage with a wider suite of philosophies, including continental and pragmatist sources. Currently, rather than epistemic issues, archaeology and science studies share a growing interest in ontology and the role of materiality in human life.
Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. University of Calfornia Press., 2012
This book does not set forth a sweeping new theory. It does not seek to transform the discipline ... more This book does not set forth a sweeping new theory. It does not seek to transform the discipline of archaeology. Rather, it aims to understand precisely what archaeologists do and to urge practitioners toward a renewed focus on and care for things
This paper discusses the principle of symmetry for archaeology in light of the discipline’s theor... more This paper discusses the principle of symmetry for archaeology in light of the discipline’s theoretical legacy. At the core, this principle involves a reconfiguration of how the relationship between humans and things is characterized. Advocating the recognition of mixtures of what are routinely parsed into categories of nature and society, a symmetrical archaeology centres itself upon the equitable study of the discipline’s defining ingredients. It is argued that such symmetry of humans and things undercuts many pesky dualisms exhibited throughout the recent history of archaeological theory and practice. The article summarizes the salient formulations of this relationship in archaeological thinking and suggests that a symmetrical focus on ontological mixtures removes the reliance upon multiplying epistemological settlements that fragment the discipline. An example is given of how heritage might be rethought.
Complutum
Theoretical archaeology ought to get back to debate, back to discussion! But is epistemology the ... more Theoretical archaeology ought to get back to debate, back to discussion! But is epistemology the right debate 30 years after New Archaeology? Is it the right trench to be digging in - in hopes of reaching solid and neutral bedrock.
The proponents of Symmetrical Archaeology, while they have been prematurely labeled as 'post-processualists' and misinterpreted as part of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) or scientific realists, likewise bemoan the dispersion of archaeology through theoretical disengagement. I discuss such a platform of symmetry in archaeology in light of criticisms of social constructivism and calls for a new processualism in archaeology under the banner of scientific realism. I argue that while the advocates of these positions admirably demand debate over key matters of concern - debate that has been stymied by 'social' archaeology - they nonetheless continue to ply well-worn (and tiresome) epistemic positions. Shifting to the ontological register I suggest that debate is important, but the debate has moved on.
What work does the adjective ‘social’ in social archaeology do? What is the character of human/th... more What work does the adjective ‘social’ in social archaeology do? What is the character of human/things relations under the rubric of social archaeology? We raise these questions in relation to the recent Companion to Social Archaeology by Meskell and Preucel. While the corrective of the ‘social’ has been extremely productive, in broaching these questions we enter very murky waters. Our task in this article is to show where meanings of the ‘social’ have broken down; our charge is to demonstrate how frames of reference in understanding people/things relations have become muddled. By building on the strength of archaeology with regard to things, we seek to revisit the question: what is it to be human?
A consideration of ‘cultures of contact’ for contemporary archaeological practice necessarily inv... more A consideration of ‘cultures of contact’ for contemporary archaeological practice necessarily involves engagements with non-archaeologists or local stakeholders. These discussions in the literature tend to revolve around ethics. That is, the ethical responsibility on the part of archaeologist to increasingly involve a public that has strong associations with sites that archaeologists study and work at. This paper assays the burgeoning literature devoted to the topic, and makes the claim that ethics is not the right trench to be digging in. This is because the fundamental issues which fuel the debate over whether to involve local stakeholders are at core epistemological dilemmas. Operating according to the deeply ingrained epistemological tradition of correspondence theory, archaeology faces a crisis of ‘doing the right thing’ ethically and incorporating ‘subjective’ values into archaeological representations or retaining objective representations and circumscribing non-archaeological participation. The paper fills out this assessment by examining two archaeological projects from two different contexts: a Traditional Cultural Property in the United States; and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Teotihuacán, Mexico. Pragmatic principles of knowledge justification, a ‘third-party’ philosophical tradition eschewing corres- pondence theories of objectivity, are discussed as a neither/nor solution to the current ethics-epistemology crisis.Implementing a symmetrical and ‘mediating archaeology’, based upon pragmatic justification of archaeological knowledge, is discussed in relation to an on- going project at Teotihuacan.
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Articles and Chapters by Timothy Webmoor
Contributors were involved with the Oxford University conference in 2011, 'Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation', and include:
Chiara Amrosio,
Anne Beaulieu,
Andreas Birkbak,
Annamaria Carusi,
Lisa Cartwright,
Matt Edgeworth,
Peter Galison,
Aud Sissel Hoel,
Torben Elgaard Jensen,
Michael Lynch,
Anders Koed Madsen,
Anders Kristian Munk,
David Ribes,
Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone,
Tom Schilling,
Alma Steingart,
Timothy Webmoor,
Steve Woolgar,
Albena Yaneva
REVIEWS:
"The STS perspective provides a thoughtful counterpoint in the midst of rapid technological change across science and engineering . . .The editors provide a strong introductory essay that sets a clear context for the various essays that follow, and the quality of the writing across the book is very high. The articles are specialized and intended for readers with strong backgrounds in STS." - R. A. Kolvoord, James Madison University
In order to explore these questions, we organized a conference titled Visualization in the Age of Computerization held in March 2011 at Oxford University. For the reader, the papers of the issue may be approached like nodes of an expanding network of visualization scholars; offering entry points that connect a diversity of fields and flag paths for further reflection and future research. Amongst other fields, the papers assembled here include anthropology, cognitive science, communication studies, criminology, interactive art and technology, Internet studies, philosophy, sociology, and science and technology studies.
Contributors include:
Richard Arias-Hernandez
Grace Eden
Brian Fisher
Tera M Green
Diane Gu
Reynal Guillen
Jarita Holbrook
Marina Jirotka
Erin Kruger
Anders Koed Madsen
Eric T Meyer
Luis Felipe R Murillo
Matt Spencer
Sharon Traweek
Symmetry is an epistemological and ethical principle developed in the social study of scientific practice. This essay connects a symmetrical archaeology to major trends in the discipline since the 1960s and to key components of archaeological practice - relational ontologies, mixtures of past and present, people and things, biology and culture, individual and society. Symmetrical archaeology is a culmination of effort in archaeology to undercut these modernist dualities and to recognize the vitality of the present past. Symmetry adds new force to the claim that archaeologists have a unique perspective on human engagements with things, on social agency and constructions of contemporary identity.
The principle of symmetry as part of a broader post humanist and materialist agenda in what some have called a new ontological turn. A detailed introduction to this prospect of a materialist archaeology can be found in the book Archaeology: the Discipline of Things (University of California 2012) by the four of us - https://www.academia.edu/1234484/Archaeology_The_discipline_of_things
Suspending such fundamental criteria means approaching ruins in terms of tidal ‘time’, through material connectivity and composition and less framed by conventional archaeological space-time systematics. Doing so suggests several implications. First, we might consider how modern ruins may be dissimilar to such obdurate materiality that lasts. Pasts that don’t persist. Just like the transformation of ruins into documents for transport – photographs, maps, finds drawings – ruins undergo perpetual upgrades, refits and remodels. Modernity destroys and refashions the old as quickly as it builds the new. We feng shui the past to suit contemporary aesthetes. Ruins as connective events in the ongoing flux of humans, life-fellows and materials, rather than as retrograde or enduring ‘endings’, means that ruins pop-up, percolate and evanesce everywhere, all the time. Secondly, modern ruins are proximate. Ruination is closer than it appears, close to home, even next door to our archaeology departments.
Looking at what might be called the political economy of visual media—the work they do in archaeology through networks of production, circulation, transaction, and articulation—also leads us to identify some of the implications of emergent digital media, not for more spectacular summations of data about the past, but as open forums for the co-production of pasts that matter now and for community building in the future.
The proponents of Symmetrical Archaeology, while they have been prematurely labeled as 'post-processualists' and misinterpreted as part of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) or scientific realists, likewise bemoan the dispersion of archaeology through theoretical disengagement. I discuss such a platform of symmetry in archaeology in light of criticisms of social constructivism and calls for a new processualism in archaeology under the banner of scientific realism. I argue that while the advocates of these positions admirably demand debate over key matters of concern - debate that has been stymied by 'social' archaeology - they nonetheless continue to ply well-worn (and tiresome) epistemic positions. Shifting to the ontological register I suggest that debate is important, but the debate has moved on.