Steve Woolgar

Steve Woolgar (1950) is a British sociologist of science.

Career

He currently holds the Chair of Marketing at the Green College of the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford in England. He is also Director of the Virtual Society Programme, and a Board Member of the Oxford Centre e-Science and the Oxford Internet Institute.

Before moving to Oxford in 2000, Steve Woolgar was Professor of Sociology, Head of the Department of Human Sciences and Director of the CRICT (Centre for Research in Innovations, Culture and Technology) at Brunel University. Steve Woolgar completed his studies and PhD in Philosophy at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge.

He has supported a multitude of sociology conventions and meetings such as the Sociology'79-81 at McGill University, the Program in Science Technology and Society'83- 84 at MIT, the Center for Sociology of Innovation '88-89 at the School of Mines in Paris and Sociology '95-96 at UC San Diego.

He received Fulbright, Fulbright Senior scholarships and was the recipient of the ESRC Senior Research Fellowship, of which he was director of the “Virtual Society? - the social science of electronic technologies” from 1997 to 2002 with twenty-two research projects across the UK.

His publications are based on social studies of science and technology, social problems and social theory, and have been translated into Dutch, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. He has worked together with Bruno Latour with whom he has written Life in the laboratory: the construction of scientific facts (1979).

He has collaborated with the EC (VALUE) Think Tank, being in charge of the design of strategies for "Interactions between Research and society", in two panels, or group of experts, of the objectives of the British government, specifically to ITEC (Information Technology, Electronics and Communications; and Leisure and Learning) as advisor to the office of the "Better Government"; the POST initiative “Electronic Government”; and various commissions of experts from the ESRC program; and as a member of the HEFCE RAE sociology panel from 1996 to 2001. He was a member of the Norwegian, Dutch and Danish Research Council. He currently sits on two E-Commerce Ministerial Council teams, alongside Member of Parliament Patricia Hewitt; and Consumer Information; with Member of Parliament Dr Kim Howells; as a member of the Council of the Consumers Association.

Research areas and proposals

Steve Woolgar focuses his research on social studies of science and technology, the social implications of electronic technologies, visual evidence and representation technologies, authority and responsibility relationships, mundane technologies; and social theory. His approaches have proposed a critical look within the studies STS Studies of Science, technology and society

Worldly Government

Steve's research on mundane governance looks at the ways in which ordinary objects and technologies increasingly participate in the control and regulation of individual behavior.

Neuromarketing

Steve's neuromarketing paper examines this relatively new way of studying from an ethnographic perspective to determine how marketers are using the research and whether it is supported by industry practice. Steve and his team are also working with research partners in the Netherlands, France and Germany to discover the impact of neuroscience on the social and human sciences.

Web-based classification and ranking schemes

Steve and his research team are studying web-based rating and ranking generating schemes to understand the impact of these systems in a world where seemingly every aspect of life can be rated or evaluated.

Opening the Black Box, reference work

In his text Opening the Black Box is where a critical review of science and therefore of its methods is reflected. In its approach to science, technology and society studies (STS), in this approach of European tradition, this book reflects on the nature of scientific activity proposing a sociological study of it. The theoretical approaches of this way of approaching science are combined with the analysis of more concrete examples.

The 5 rules of virtuality

Regarding new media, Woolgar (2002) has proposed "five rules of virtuality '" Drawing from in-depth research in the UK, this proposition comes from his article Five Rules of virtuality

1. The acceptance and use of new technologies depends crucially on the local social context. Both the absorption and use of new media are critically dependent on non-IT contexts in which people are situated (sex, age, employment, income, education, nationality).
2. The fears and risks associated with new technologies are socially unevenly distributed. Temors and risks associated with the new media are unevenly socially distributed, particularly in relation to security and surveillance.
3. Virtual technologies are a complement and not a substitute for real activity. CMC or mediated by 'virtual' interactions complement instead of replacing 'real'.
4. The more virtual, the more real The introduction of a greater "virtual" interaction capacity acts as a stimulus for face-to-face contact or "real" interaction.
5. The more global, the more local.The "virtual" communication capacity to promote globalization encourages, perhaps paradoxically, the new forms of "localism" and the incrustation, instead of transcendence, of identities based on a sense of place, belief, experience or practice.

Work

• La Vie de laboratoire: la Production des faits scientifiques written with Bruno Latour and edited by Sage in 1979 and by Princeton in 1986, edited in Spain by Editorial Alliance in 1995 with the title La vida en el laboratorio: La construcción de los hechos ciencias.
• Science: the Very Idea edited by Routledge in 1988, and in Spain by Anthropos in 1991 as Science: Opening the black box
• Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge edited by Sage. 1988
• The Cognitive Turn: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science next to S.Fuller and M. de Mey by the Kluwer publishing house. 1989
• Representation in Scientific Practice with M. Lynch for MIT in 1990
• Science: opening the black box. Volume 8 of Technology, Science, Nature and Society (Scientific monographs) Series. He translated Eduardo Aibar. Illustrated edition of Anthropos Editorial, 170 pp. ISBN 8476583036 1991
• Life in the Laboratory: Building Scientific Facts. Laboratory life. Volume 813 of Alliance University. With Bruno Latour. He translated Eulalia Pérez Sedeño. Editor Alliance, 326 pp. ISBN 8420628131, 1995
• The Machine at Work: Technology, Work and Societyalong with K. Grint by the editorial Polity Press. 1997
• Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality edited by Oxford University Press. 349 pp. 2002 online
• Virtual society?: technology, "cibérbole", reality. Collection New technologies and society. Editorial UOC, 346 pp. ISBN 8497880366, 2005 online