Opening the "black box" of climate change science: Actor-Network theory and rhetorical practice in scientific controversies

Southern Communication Journal

Volumn 76, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 120-136

  Besel, Richard D ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79953862899     PISSN: 1041794X     EISSN: 19303203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10417941003642403     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. Michael Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes, "Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing over the Past Six Centuries, " Nature 392 (1998): 779-787.
2. Recent investigations concerning what constitutes a "hard science" have suggested that the use of charts, figures, and graphs are one common and essential way scientists make information concise, mobile, and persuasive. See Laurence D. Smith, Lisa A. Best, D. Alan Stubbs, John Johnson, and Andrea Bastiani Archibald, "Scientific Graphs and the Hierarchy of the Sciences: A Latourian Survey of Inscription Practices, " Social Studies of Science 30 (2000): 73-94.
3. Tom Avril, "A 'Hockey Stick' Graph Starts Fight; A Scientist Soon to join Penn State Found a Spike in 20th-Century Temperatures that is Central to a Debate over Academic Freedom, " Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2005, A1.
4. David Ignatious, "A Bid to Chill Thinking; Behind Joe Barton's Assault on Climate Scientists, " The Washington Post, July 22, 2005, A23.
5. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, "Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, " Energy & Environment 14 (2003): 751-771.
6. Mann, Bradley, and Hughes responded to the M&M critique by correcting "several errors" but still insisted that "none of the errors affect our previously published results. " Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes, "Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing over the Past Six Centuries, " Nature 430 (2004): 105.
7. McIntyre and McKitrick later extended their critique. See Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, "The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications, " Energy & Environment 16 (2005): 69-100.
8. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, "Hockey Sticks, Principal Components, and Spurious Significance, " Geophysical Research Letters 32 (2005): L03710.
9. Ignatious, "A Bid to Chill, " A23.
10. Paul Brown, "Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt Against Climate Change Scientists, " The Guardian, August 30, 2005, 11.
11. Juliet Eilperin, "GOP Chairmen Face Off on Global Warming; Public Tiff over Probe of Study Highlights Divide on Issue, " The Washington Post, July 18, 2005, A4
12. Andrew Revkin, "Two G.O.P. Lawmakers Spar over Climate Study, " The New York Times, July 18, 2005, 14.
13. Brown, "Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt, " 11.
14. Eilperin, "GOP Chairmen Face Off, " A4.
15. Brown, "Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt, " 11.
16. Dan Vergano, "Global Warming Roils Congress, " USA Today, July 18, 2005, 7D.
17. G. Thomas Goodnight, "The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Deliberation, " Journal of the American Forensic Association 18 (1982): 214-227
18. Thomas B. Farrell and G. Thomas Goodnight, "Accidental Rhetoric: The Root Metaphors of Three Mile Island, " Communication Monographs 48 (1981): 271-300
19. David Zarefsky, "The Decline of Public Debate, " USA Today, March 1998, 56-58.
20. For a canonical example of how actor-networks are referenced in science studies, see Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 180.
21. Latour, Science in Action, 78.
22. Examples of articles and book chapters that mention ANT-related concepts in passing include Chantal Benoit-Barne, "Socio-Technical Deliberation about Free and Open Source Software: Accounting for the Status of Artifacts in Public Life, " Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (2007): 211-235
23. Darin J. Arsenault, Laurence D. Smith, and Edith A. Beauchamp, "Visual Inscription in the Scientific Hierarchy: Mapping the 'Treasures of Science,'" Science Communication 27 (2006): 376-428
24. Kenneth J. Gergen, "The Checkmate of Rhetoric (But Can Our Reasons Be Causes?), " in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simons, 293 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
25. Richard Harvey Brown, "Reason as Rhetorical: On Relations Among Epistemology, Discourse, and Practice, " in The Rhetoric of the Human Science, eds. John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, 188 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987)
26. Alan G. Gross briefly mentions Latour in his earlier rhetoric of science work, but only enough to dismiss him. See Alan G. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 140-141
27. Alan G. Gross, "The Origin of Species: Evolutionary Taxonomy as an Example of the Rhetoric of Science, " in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simons, 91 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
28. In his later work, Gross does not mention ANT scholars at all, despite writing about compatibility between sociology and rhetoric. See Alan G. Gross, Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006).
29. A notable exception to omitting ANT from rhetorical studies is found in William J. Kinsella, "A 'Fusion' of Interests: Big Science, Government, and Rhetorical Practice in Nuclear Fusion Research, " Rhetoric Society Quarterly 26 (1996): 65-81.
30. In addition to Latour's Science in Action, see Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)
31. Bruno Latour. "Drawing Things Together, " in Representation in Scientific Practice, eds. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar, 19-68 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990).
32. See also Michel Callon and John Law, "On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment, " Social Studies of Science 12 (1982): 615-625
33. Michel Callon and John Law, "After the Individual in Society: Lessons on Collectivity from Science, Technology, and Society, " Canadian Journal of Sociology 22 (1997): 165-182
34. John Law and R. J. Williams. "Putting Facts Together: A Study of Scientific Persuasion, " Social Studies of Science 12 (1982): 535-558
35. John Law and John Hassard, eds. Actor Network Theory and After (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
36. For examples of how Latour, Callon, and Law have been embraced by Science Studies scholars, see Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39, " Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420
37. Mike Dent, "Managing Doctors and Saving a Hospital: Irony, Rhetoric, and Actor Networks, " Organization 10 (2003): 107-127.
38. See also the special issue of Organization introduced by Hassard, Law, and Lee. John Hassard, John Law, and Nick Lee, "Preface, " Organization 6 (1999): 387-390.
39. For articles that problematize the traditional view of ANT, see Frederic Vandenberghe, "Reconstructing Humants: A Humanist Critique of Actor-Network Theory, " Theory, Culture & Society 19 (2002): 51-67
40. Daniel Neyland, "Dismissed Content and Discontent: An Analysis of the Strategic Aspects of Actor-Network Theory, " Science, Technology, & Human Values 31 (2006): 29-51.
41. Latour has also noted that ANT is not a finished project. Bruno Latour, "On Recalling ANT, " in Actor Network Theory and After, eds. John Law and John Hassard, 15-25 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
42. Although actor-network theory and Kuhnian concepts have similarities, ANT offers a more detailed explanation of scientific transitions. Kuhn's understanding involves the use of "normal science" in one paradigm eventually giving way to another paradigm because of "anomalies" within scientific practice. My concern in this article is with ANT as a critical tool, not with the distinctions between Kuhnian and Latourian conceptions of how science works. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
43. Latour, Science in Action, 2-3.
44. Robert W. Smith and Joseph N. Tatarewiscz Smith, "Counting on Invention: Devices and Black Boxes in Very Big Science, " Osiris 9 (1994): 102.
45. Trevor Pinch. "Opening Black Boxes: Science, Technology, and Society, " Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 487-510.
46. Yuval P. Yonay, "When Black Boxes Clash: Competing Ideas of What Science is in Economics, 1924-39, " Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 41.
47. Yuval P. Yonay, "When Black Boxes Clash: Competing Ideas of What Science is in Economics, 1924-39, " Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 42.
48. Latour, Science in Action, 78.
49. Latour, Science in Action, 93.
50. Yonay, "When Black Boxes Clash, " 41.
51. Latour, Science in Action, 180.
52. Callon and Law, "After the Individual, " 170.
53. John Law, "Notes on the Theory of Actor-Networks: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity, " Systems Practice 5 (1992): 380.
54. John Law, "Notes on the Theory of Actor-Networks: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity, " Systems Practice 5 (1992): 380.
55. Latour, Science in Action, 108. Callon and Law have also observed translation in written documents when they write translating is a process in which "different claims, substances or processes are equated with one another. " His process results in readers becoming "provisionally 'enrolled' in the scheme of the authors, and fall into line. " See Callon and Law, "On Interests and Their Transformation, " 619.
56. Yonay, "When Black Boxes Clash, " 44. In reference to audience adaptation techniques used in written documents such as scientific journal articles, John Law and R. J. Williams also use the word "array" to refer to enrollment attempts. See Law and Williams, "On Interests, " 537.
57. Michael Calvin McGee, "Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture, " Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (1990): 279.
58. John Opie and Norbert Elliot, "Tracking the Elusive Jeremiad: The Rhetorical Character of American Environmental Discourse, " in The Symbolic Earth: Discourse and Our Creation of the Environment, ed. James G. Cantrill and Christine L. Oravec, 9-37 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996)
59. Dylan Wolfe, "The Ecological Jeremiad", the American Myth, and 3-24.
60. In addition to being generally used by critics, "close reading" or "close textual analysis" approaches are also widely used by environmental communication scholars. For examples, see Laura Johnson, "Environmental Rhetorics of Tempered Apocalyptism in An Inconvenient Truth, " Rhetoric Review 28 (2009): 29-46
61. Barbara Willard, "Rhetorical Landscapes as Empistemic: Revisiting Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, " Environmental Communication 1 (2007): 218-235
62. Wolfe, "The Ecological Jeremiad, " 3-24.
63. Leah Ceccarelli, Shaping Science with Rhetoric (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 6.
64. For a specific application of how ANT has been applied to questions of Big Science, see William J. Kinsella, "A 'Fusion' of Interests: Big Science, Government, and Rhetorical Practice in Nuclear Fusion Research, " Rhetoric Society Quarterly 26 (1996): 65-81.
65. Much of the literature that addresses hearings and Congressional procedures indicates the MBH98 investigations were at least structurally "standard" with opening statements, witnesses, and question-and-answer periods. See Roger H. Davidson and Walter J. Oleszek, Congress and its Members (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981), 220-221
66. Walter J. Oleszek, Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1978), 66-68.
67. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 3.
68. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 122.
69. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 100.
70. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 67.
71. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 18.
72. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 6.
73. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 12.
74. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 32.
75. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 136.
76. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 135.
77. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 48.
78. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 38.
79. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2006, 38.
80. Callon argues some nodes or actors are so important to the network that they are must be engaged before the rest of the network can be encountered. These nodes become critical network channels. Actors will often create these passage points to ensure their indispensability to the network. Sometimes these narrow passages in the network function as a "funneling" device. See Star and Geismer, "Institutional Ecology, " 390
81. Callon and Law, "On Interests and Their Transformation, " 619.
82. House Subcommittee, Questions, 63.
83. House Subcommittee, Questions, 64.
84. House Subcommittee, Questions, 34.
85. House Subcommittee, Questions, 234.
86. House Subcommittee, Questions, 34.
87. House Subcommittee, Questions, 235.
88. House Subcommittee, Questions, 116.
89. House Subcommittee, Questions, 251.
90. House Subcommittee, Questions, 23.
91. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 619.
92. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 608.
93. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 622-623.
94. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 633.
95. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 636-637.
96. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 637.
97. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 638.
98. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., July 27, 2006, 670.
99. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers (Valencia, Spain: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007).
100. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Doubleday, 1999), xxv.