Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA.
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Soc Stud Sci. 2021 Dec;51(6):799-819. doi: 10.1177/03063127211048804. Epub 2021 Oct 6.
Much current work in Science and Technology Studies inflects knowing with care. Analyses of the ethos of objectivity, and of the practices by which objectivity is crafted, have shown that knowing and caring cannot be thought apart from each other. Using case studies from our own work we analyse how, in the sociotechnical relationships that we study, knowing and caring are entangled through 'attachments'. We appreciate - both in the sense of valuing or respecting and in the sense of evaluating or assessing - how the notion of 'attachment' invites re-imagining relations between the social and the technical, between knowers and objects known, and between sociotechnical work and the affective sensibilities that enable, and are brought to life by, such work. Our respective ethnographic engagements with dog-human relations, obesity surgery and dementia care demonstrate that it is agents' diverse and shifting attachments to technologies and techniques that shape the ways in which bodies, knowledge and practices form. The affects that arise in this process, or so we claim in neo-pragmatist fashion, are not preconditions to, but rather the result of such practices of attachment; rather than a prerequisite, they are an effect of the work of attaching itself. Thinking with attachments recognizes how techno-scientific work builds and shapes passions, aesthetics and sensory experience, allowing us to trace how varied sensibilities to what constitutes 'the good' come to be and come to matter in practices of relating between humans, animals and things.
当前科学技术研究中的许多工作都在对认知进行反思。对客观性精神的分析，以及对客观性形成的实践的分析表明，认知和关心不能彼此分开。通过我们自己工作中的案例研究，我们分析了在我们研究的社会技术关系中，认知和关心是如何通过“依恋”纠缠在一起的。我们赞赏——既包括重视或尊重的意义，也包括评估或评估的意义——“依恋”的概念如何邀请重新想象社会和技术之间、认知者和被认知者之间、社会技术工作和使这种工作能够产生并具有生命力的情感敏感性之间的关系。我们各自对狗与人的关系、肥胖手术和痴呆症护理的民族志参与表明，正是代理人对技术和技术的多样化和不断变化的依恋塑造了身体、知识和实践形成的方式。我们以新实用主义的方式声称，在这个过程中产生的影响不是这种依恋实践的前提条件，而是这种实践的结果；它们不是先决条件，而是依恋本身的工作的结果。思考依恋关系认识到技术科学工作是如何建立和塑造激情、美学和感官体验的，这使我们能够追溯出在人类、动物和事物之间的关系实践中，构成“美好”的各种敏感性是如何产生并变得重要的。
