The Collaborationist
Stance in STS
Ron Eglash, RPI
Science: can’t live with it, can’t live without it
Bad Stuff
Good Stuff
Elitist concentration of
power
Revolutions against Church
and State (eg Kovaleskaia)
Racism, Sexism, Classism,
etc.
Mertonian universalism, tools
for contesting patriarchy, white
supremacy, etc.
Environmental and health
damage
Medicine, protection from
environment
 Welcoming
Antagonistic 
Therefore STS offers many different Stances wrt
Science and Technology
Sharon Traweek: “Storming the Citadel”
Helen Longino: “alternatives to androcentric science”
Sandra Harding: “Successor science,” “Strong Objectivity”
Woodhouse, Hess, Breyman, Martin: “Reconstruction”
Linnda Caporael: “Intervention”
Donna Haraway: “Cyborgs,” “My People”
Mike and Kim Fortun: “Friendship”
Harry Collins: “Alternation”
Why do we need a Collaborationist Stance?
Phoebe Sengers, computer scientist and STS scholar: if
STS is just about “storming the citadel” then leave me out of it.
Senger’s “Sensual Evaluation Instrument”
(with Isbister, Höök, & Laaksolahti )
Fractal sim for
Logone-Birni
Logone-Birni
Fractal sim for
Mokoulek
Mokoulek
Examples of collaborationist stance
from African Fractals
1) Analysis of Owari as cellular automaton in African Fractals
2) Special edition of Pour la Science on ethnomath
included Owari example; caught attention of French mathematicians
3) Mathematician André Bouchet and computer scientist Henning Bruhn publish articles
proving new theorems on Owari-like systems (eg “Periodical states and marching
groups in a closed owari”)
4) Marc Chemillier merges these results with other Owari math analysis in his book “Les
Mathématiques naturelles” – recapture or liberation?
5) Other examples of the collaborationist stance in the African Fractals project
If the collaborationist stance is so great,
why doesn’t everyone do it?
• Sometimes
collaboration is
the wrong choice:
Vichy France,
collaborated
with the Nazi
occupation in
WWII.
•Everyone does do it.
There is always some
element of both
collaboration and
opposition
Malinche, the
indigenous mistress of
Spanish conquistador
Hernando Cortez.
But
STS has barriers against using the
collaborative stance when we should
From the POV of “oppositional technophilia”
STS suffers from:
a. Christian ideology of spiritual purity: eg the fall from the pure
garden; Jesus critiques impure rule-based authority in Synagogues.
b. Romantic organicism: natural always better than artificial; ignoring
its use by fascism, patriarchy, etc.
c. Realism: “real” human contact always better than representations.
Carolyn Merchant and Vandana Shiva’s primitivizing view of
indigenous societies.
d. Religious organicism and normative sexual concepts:
"unnatural sex" not ordained by God. Homosexuality, BDSM, and
other “deviant” sexual practices become metaphors for condemning
“unnatural” technological practices.
Most importantly, STS correctly recognizes the need for
alternative accounts, but incorrectly frames relativism and
subjectivism as the only route to that multiplicity.
This leaves us completely disarmed when right wing
politics attacks science:
“Intelligent Design”
Inventing a global warming controversy
Inventing a tobacco controversy
Inventing a pesticide controversy
Etc.
Multiple Objectivity: anti-relativist approach to situated
knowledge
1752: Euler: Vertices, Edges, and Faces V - E + F = 2. Polyhedra
are defined as "a solid whose faces are
polygons."
1815: Hessel: for a cube with a cubic hollow
inside does not satisfy Euler's theorem.
Polyhedra are redefined as "a surface made
up of polygonal faces."
1865: Mobius notes that two pyramids joined a vertex also defies
Euler's theorem. Polyhedra are again redefined.
STS needs more:
• Oppositional technophiles
• Multiple objectivists
• Scholars willing to inhabit the grey area
between positivism and relativism
STS needs more of us to take the
collaborationist stance