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8/10/2019 The Life Inside the Left Hand SIde - Review Malcolm Ashmore Body Multiple
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The Life Inside/The Left-Hand SideThe Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice by Annemarie MolReview by: Malcolm AshmoreSocial Studies of Science, Vol. 35, No. 5, Scientific Collaboration (Oct., 2005), pp. 827-830Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25046672.
Accessed: 23/12/2014 08:55
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8/10/2019 The Life Inside the Left Hand SIde - Review Malcolm Ashmore Body Multiple
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SISIS
REVIEW
The
Life
Inside/The
Left-Hand
Side
Malcolm Ashmore
Annemarie Mol, The
Body
Multiple:
Ontology
in Medical Practice
(Durham,
NC:
Duke
University
Press,
2002),
224
pp.,
?45.95/
l50.00/$74.95
(hbk),
?16.96/
17.50/$21.95
(pbk).
ISBN
0-82232-902-6
(hbk),
0-82232-917-4
(pbk).
This
is1
a
very
good
book.
It
is
multiply
interesting:
to
people
in
science
studies,
to
philosophers
and
ethnographers,
to
anybody
interested
in
the
social sciences
of
medicine.
It
is rich and
multi-layered.
Beautifully
writ
ten. Unusually well-made (as
a
material object; Duke University Press was
a
sound
choice).
Buy
it and read
it;
think about
it;
then
use
it and cite it
and read it
again.
Above
all,
take
pleasure
in
it.
In
an
ideal
world,
in which
reviewing
a
text
was
simply
and
common
sensically
a
matter
of
'giving
one's
opinion'
as
a
guide
and recommenda
tion for
those
who
currently
do
not
know the
text,
that would be
it;
job
done. But of
course,
that is
not
the main function
of
reviewing
in
this
'scientific'
context
(for
a
comprehensive analysis
of the functions of scien
tific
reviews,
see
Restrepo
Forero
[2003]).
And
anyway,
it would be
quite
surprising
if there
are
many
readers of this
journal,
and hence this
review,
who
are
currently
unaware
of
The
Body
Multiple.
Arthur
Frank,
in his
highly
complimentary
review
in
the American
Journal
of
Sociology
(no less),
suggested
that
'Awards committees should take notice of
this
major
con
tribution'
(Frank,
2003:
534).
They
have: the book
won
the 2004 Ludwik
Fleck Prize
of
the
Society
for Social Studies of Science
(thereby providing
Mol with
an
'Author
meets
Critics' session
at
the
Society's
Paris
con
ference)
as
well
as
the
British
Sociological
Association's
Sociology
of
Health and Illness Book Prize, 2004. The commonsense function of this
particular
review is thus
very
likely
to
be redundant.
You
already
know this
book. You have
already
been
told,
officially,
that it
is
good.
At
any
rate,
I
am
going
to
proceed
on
that
assumption.
Book
reviewing
is
a
relatively
lowly
task in the academic division
of
labours. Not
too
many
British academics
will
(hope
to)
include
one
in
their
Research Assessment
Exercise
returns.
(I
haven't written
one
in
years.)
The
Social Studies
of
Science
35/5(October 2005)
827-830
?
SSS
and SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks
CA,
New
Delhi)
ISSN
0306-3127
DOI: 10.1177/0306312705056053
www.
sagepublications.
com
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8/10/2019 The Life Inside the Left Hand SIde - Review Malcolm Ashmore Body Multiple
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828
Social Studies
of
Science
35/5
pros
of the
practice:
you
get
the
book,
and
you
get
a
'proper'
(that
is,
instrumental)
reason
for
reading
it;
the best result
of which is that
you
read
it
more
thoroughly
than is often the
case
with
academic
writing
that
tends
to
be mined
for
quotes
and cites. The
cons
of
reviewing
are
its
low
status
as
an
activity
and its character
(more
often than
not)
as
a
chore,
undertaken
for
some
vague
collegiate
reason,
rather
than
for
any
intrinsic
pleasure.
Thus,
I
am
happy
to
report
that
the task
I
have undertaken
here
has
involved
two
linked
pleasures:
the
reading
of
a
very
fine
book
-
so
fine,
in
fact,
that
I had
already bought
and
started
it well
before
I
was
asked
to
review it
-
and this
writing, particularly
the
argument
you
will
find
in the
footnote
-
which
is,
of
course,
my
small and
relatively
unaccomplished
attempt
to achieve a Mollian double-text within the constraints of
my
fading
imagination
and this
journal's
typesetting
capabilities.
Note
1.
The
main theoretical
story
of
Annemarie Moi's
text,
which she
has
been
working
up
for
some
time
(together
with collaborators such
as
Marc
Berg [Berg
&
Mol,
1998]
and
John
Law
[Law
&
Mol,
2002]),
is
a
novel
account
of
ontology;
of,
that
is,
the
practices
involved in the
making
of 'this
is'
assertions.
It
is
novel in
two
senses:
first,
multiplicity:
not existence but existences; no-thing singular, every-thing plural; not 'This' but 'These'.
Or,
in
Moi's
(surprisingly
unrevolutionary)
phrase,
borrowed
from
Marilyn
Strathern,
'more
than
one,
but less than
many' (and
here
a
wag
of
a
weblogger quips,
'That would
be
...
two?'
[Spinuzzi,
2004]).
Despite
this fit of
moderation,
I
suspect
that 'This is
these'
('This
are
these'?)
will be the
gist,
the
takeaway
message,
the
news
of the main
(first,
top-of-the-page,
serif-fonted)
part
of this
appropriately
doubled
text,
produced
through
Moi's narrative of her
ethnography
of
hospital
Z,
somewhere
in
the Netherlands
-
or
rather,
as
she
insists,
her
'ethnography
of disease'
(p.
151);
the disease of
atherosclerosis.
The
second
novelty
of
Moi's
'ontic turn' consists in what it
turns
away
from,
and
wishes to replace; namely, the centrality of epistemology in philosophy and science
studies. Instead of
concerning
ourselves,
as
the
sociology
of
scientific
knowledge (SSK)
used
to
do,
with how
knowledge
is
achieved,
and
maintained,
and
lost,
and
destroyed,
instead
we
will
focus
our
attention,
like the
actors
in the
settings
we
examine,
on
that
which
is
the
object
of
their
attention,
the focus
of their
practices:
on
what 'it'
is,
on
its
ontic
character,
or
characters.
And
what,
in
Moi's
account,
links these novelties?
Practice. Intervention
as
opposed
to
representation.
What folks
do,
not
what
they
'think'
(though thought,
too,
is,
in
practice,
only analysable
in and
as
the
practices
of
discourse
[Edwards,
1997]).
Which
in
itself is
not
a
particularly
new
idea
(Hacking,
1983;
Pickering,
1992; Turner,
1994),
though
here
it
is
pretty
thoroughly
enacted via Moi's
preferred term, 'enactment'.
So
how does
'practice'
link
ontological multiplicity
and the
rejection
of
epistemology?
This
way
(among possible
others):
'ontology
is
not
given
in the
order
of
things
...
instead,
ontologies
are
brought
into
being,
sustained,
or
allowed
to
wither
away,
in
common,
day-to-day
sociomaterial
practices'
(p.
6,
top).
Note
two
things
here: the
similarity
between
this
account
of
the
bringing
into
being
of
ontologies,
and
my account,
above,
of the
concerns
of
SSK;
and the
hiding
of
epistemic
activity
in
the
gloss, 'brought
into
being,
sustained,
or
allowed
to
wither
away'.
Is
there such
a
thing
as
'ontic
practice',
independent
of,
and distinct
from,
'epistemic practice'?
Mol
clearly
thinks there
is:
ontics,
she
writes,
are
the third
step
'of the social sciences
in
the field
of
medicine',
where the first is the analysis of illness as patients' lived reality, the second is the analysis
of
medical
discourse,
in
which
we
enter
a
world
of
perspectival
meaning;
the world Mol
now
invites
us
to
leave with her third
step,
which takes
us
'into disease "itself"
...
[by]
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8/10/2019 The Life Inside the Left Hand SIde - Review Malcolm Ashmore Body Multiple
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Review: Ashmore:
The
Life
Inside/The
Left-Hand Side
829
foregrounding practicalities,
materialities,
events.
If
we
take this
step,
"disease" becomes
a
part
of what is done in
practice' (pp.
12-13,
top).
'Epistemology',
for
Mol,
is
a
term
of
art
in
professional
philosophy:
a
matter
of
representation, of correspondence, of normativity. But this image is irrelevant
-
or at
least,
seriously
retro
-
in
contemporary
science studies
inquiry,
as
I
am sure
she
is well
aware.
The
(social)
constructivist
programme
of SSK and its
successors
-
including
actor
network
theory (ANT)
and its
successors
-
has made it
so.
But
then
Mol
is
a
philosopher
(she
works
in
a
philosophy department);
and it is
an
oddity
of this
book
to
notice
how
often,
and
how
directly,
old-fashioned,
pre-SSK philosophy
of
science
is
being
addressed. And
to
this
audience,
no
doubt,
Mol's
approach
is
startling,
even
shocking.
Even within
STS,
it
can
sometimes
seem
that Mol
(along
with fellow
spirits
such
as
John
Law)
is
leading
an
incipient
movement.
As
Ronlyn
Duncan
reports
being
told,
'ontology
is the fundamental issue.
Epistemology,
it
seemed,
was
pass?'
(Duncan,
2004: 17).
(Parenthetically,
here
is
another odd
thing:
it is the
'top
text' which is
most
strongly
addressed
to
philosophers.
The
secondary, bottom-of-the-page,
two-columned,
sans
serif'd,
narrative is
not.
Which,
now
I
come
to
think of
it,
is
one
of the
reasons
that
I
find
it
the
more
interesting,
and
more
successful,
of the
two.
Positioned
on
the
page
as
a
running
footnote,
this
text
is
wholly
concerned with
another
practice:
that
of'relating
to
the literature'. And
I find
it
quite
wonderful
-
and
not
only
because
a
text
of mine
[I
mean ours
-Ashmore
et
al.,
1989]
is related
to
for
all
the
right
reasons
[pp.
161-64,
bottom]
including
its
style.
It
is
a
matter,
I
think
-
and
I
share this view with Ronald
Frankenberg
[2004]
-
of
its
simultaneous
defeat and instantiation of that
most
boring
of
genres,
the literature review. The achievement of
breathing
life into this
corpse
is
remarkable
in
itself.)
But
I
do
not
wish
to
endorse
epistemics
as
opposed
to
ontics.
Rather,
in
the
spirit
of
the
Both/And,
I
want to
suggest
that Mol's
approach
can
be understood
as a
further
move
in
the
dynamics
of
unmasking
that has
always
characterized the modernist
project
of
sociology
of
knowledge.
SSK
was
founded
on a
distinction between the
'standard
view'
of
science beloved
of normative
philosophy
and
its
own
'new view'
(Mulkay,
1979).
This
dichotomy
has several
names:
normal
versus
revolutionary;
cold
versus
hot;
uncontentious
versus
controversial;
ready-made
versus
in-the-making.
The classic
texts
of
SSK
(Collins,
1985; Latour, 1987)
opened
up
the
right-hand
side
of
the
dichotomy
to
examination
for the first
time: the excitement and
uncertainty
of
current
controversy,
the
hard and difficult labour
of
fact-making
in the lab and
in the
world;
these
became
and
remained the
object
of
epistemically
relevant work
in
STS.
And the left-hand side
of
the
founding
division
was
left for dead
(and
for
philosophy)
-
as
if it
really
was as
lifeless
and
static and finished
as
the
SSK
critical
mythology
asserted.
Atherosclerosis
is neither
novel
nor
uncertain.
Nothing
inMol's
ethnography
suggests
that its
reality
and truth
are
anywhere
contested.
Yet Mol
shows
beautifully
that
a
disease
(a
fact)
is still
an
epistopic
(Lynch,
1993)
despite
its
appearance,
to
medical
and
many
STS
practitioners
alike,
of
being
black-boxed
and finished
-
and
so,
so,
dull
This then is
Mol's
major
contribution:
to
show
that the
assumption
of
stability
(of
coldness)
in
'finished
science'
is
inappropriate.
Nothing,
it
now
appears,
is
really
'finished'.
The action does
not
stop;
the
epistemic
labour
of
coordination,
distribution
and
inclusion continues.
This
I
think
is what
the
trope
of 'more
than
one
and
less
than
many'
is
most
interestingly
pointing
to.
And
this
too
explains
Mol's otherwise
puzzling
attention
to
the
concerns
and
conceptions
of
professional philosophers:
after
all,
this
territory
of the left-hand
side
had hitherto
always
been theirs.
Despite
Mol's
own
occasional
rhetoric,
and that of her
followers,
it
seems
less than
useful
to
conceive
of
The
Body Multiple
as
the
instantiation
of
a
brand
new
programme
of
Ontics,
designed
and destined
to
replace
the tired
old routines
of
Epistemics.
I
suggest,
instead,
that
Mol's classic
ethnographic
move
of
uncovering
the
life
hiding
inside
a
mere
object
-
here,
the
object
of settled
science
-
is
an
important
(if
ironic)
renewal
of
the
dynamic
of
SSK.
So
let
us see
it
like
this:
epistemics
is that
branch
of
our
mutual
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8/10/2019 The Life Inside the Left Hand SIde - Review Malcolm Ashmore Body Multiple
5/5
830
Social Studies
of
Science
35/5
enterprise
that deals
with
the
hot
side
of
science,
with
novelty
and
controversy,
while
ontics has
as
its
object
the
(not so)
cold
side
of
(un)finished, (un)settled
science.
Peace,
then?
References
Ashmore, Malcolm,
Michael
Mulkay
& Trevor
Pinch
(1989)
Health and
Efficiency:
A
Sociology of
Health
Economics
(Milton
Keynes,
Bucks.:
Open University
Press).
Berg,
Marc
&
Annemarie
Mol
(eds)
(1998) Differences
inMedicine:
Unravelling
Practices,
Techniques,
and Bodies
(Durham,
NC: Duke
University
Press).
Collins,
H.M.
(1985)
Changing
Order:
Replication
and Induction
in
Scientific
Practice
(London
&
Beverly
H?ls,
CA: SAGE
Publications).
Duncan,
Ronlyn
(2004)
'Science
Narratives',
EASSTReview
23(2):
17-18.
Edwards,
Derek
(1997)
Discourse and
Cognition (London,
Thousand
Oaks,
CA
&
New
Delhi:
SAGE
Publications).
Frank,
Arthur W
(2003)
'Book
Review',
American
Journal
of Sociology
109(2):
532-34.
Frankenberg,
Ronald
(2004)
Sociology
of
Health and Illness Book
Prize
Winner,
2004.
British
Sociological
Association.
Available
at
.
Accessed
12
December
2004.
Hacking,
Ian
(1983)
Representing
and
Intervening:
Introductory
Topics
in the
Philosophy of
Natural Science
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press).
Latour,
Bruno
(1987)
Science in Action
(Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University
Press).
Law,
John
& Annemarie Mol
(eds) (2002)
Complexities:
Social
Studies
ofKnowledge
Practices
(Durham,
NC: Duke
University
Press).
Lynch,
Michael
(1993)
Scientific
Practice
and
Ordinary
Action:
Ethnomethodology
and
Social
Studies
of
Science
(Cambridge
& NewYork:
Cambridge
University
Press).
Mulkay,
Michael
(1979)
Science and the
Sociology of Knowledge
(London:
Allen &
Unwin).
Pickering,
Andrew
(ed.) (1992)
Science
as
Practice and Culture
(Chicago,
IL:
University
of
Chicago
Press).
Restrepo
Forero,
Olga (2003)
On
Writing
Review
Articles and
Constructing
Fields
of
Study,
Unpublished
D.Phil
dissertation,
Department
of
Sociology,
University
of York.
Spinuzzi,
Clay
(2004)
'reading:
the
body
multiple',
clay
spinuzzi's
website:
the
eyes
of
texas
are
upon
you.
Available
at
.
Accessed
12
December 2004.
Turner,
Stephen
(1994)
The Social
Theory of
Practices:
Tradition,
Tacit
Knowledge,
and
Presuppositions
(Chicago,
IL:
University
of
Chicago
Press).
Malcolm
Ashmore is author
of The Reflexive Thesis
(University
of
Chicago
Press,
1989)
and
co-author
of
Health and
Efficiency (Open University
Press,
1989).
Interested
in
the
sociodiscursive
analysis
of
science
and
expertise,
he
is
currently researching
the
false/recovered
memory
controversy,
the
visuality
of
text,
the
ironies of
document
authentication,
and the
knowledges
of love.
Address:
Department
of Social
Sciences,
Loughborough University,
Loughborough,
Leicestershire
LE11
3TU,
UK;
fax:
+44
1509
223944;
email:
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