Studies of scientific innovation that theorize the complex social and material influences on scientific inquiry and innovation can benefit from explicit theoretical attention to meso-level practices embedded in formal organizations. Combining insights separately developed by pragmatist perspectives in sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), I introduce an ecological pragmatist approach to scientific practice that helps account for the meso-level environments in which scientists innovate. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, I reanalyze classic works in sociology and STS on cancer research innovation to show how the distinct concerns for accountability in one formal organization—the U.S. National Cancer Institute—helped constitute the material and conceptual scaffolding that went on to shape individual innovations and macro-level institutional transformations. I conclude by suggesting ecological pragmatism offers a valuable perspective on recent efforts in sociology to conceptualize culture as cognition.
AbbottAndrew. 1999. Department & Discipline: Chicago Sociology at One Hundred. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
2.
AbbottAndrew. 2001. Time Matters: On Theory and Method. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
3.
AbbottAndrew. 2005. “Linked Ecologies: States and Universities as Environments for Professions.”Sociological Theory23(3):245–74. doi:10.1111/j.0735-2751.2005.00253.x.
4.
AbbottAndrew. 2010. Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
5.
AbbottAndrew. 2016. Processual Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
6.
AlačMorana. 2011. Handling Digital Brains: A Laboratory Study of Multimodal Semiotic Interaction in the Age of Computers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7.
AlačMoranaHutchinsEdwin. 2004. “I See What You Are Saying: Action as Cognition in FMRI Brain Mapping Practice.”Journal of Cognition and Culture4(3–4):629–61. doi:10.1163/1568537042484977.
8.
Aviles, Natalie B. 2018. “Situated practice and the emergence of ethical research: HPV vaccine development and organizational cultures of translation at the National Cancer Institute.” Science, Technology & Human Values 43(5): 810–833.
9.
Aviles, Natalie B. 2022. “Scientific innovation as environed social learning.” In Agency, Inquiry, and Democracy: The New Pragmatist Social Science. Eds. Neil Gross, Christopher Winship, and Isaac Ariail Reed. New York: Columbia University Press: pp. 231–255.
10.
BaradKaren. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
11.
BennettJane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
12.
BourdieuPierre. 2004. Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
13.
BrandomRobert B. 2008. Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
14.
CallonMichel. 1984. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.”The Sociological Review32(Suppl. 1):196–233. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.1984.tb00113.x.
15.
CallonMichelLatourBruno. 1983. “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan.” Pp. 277–302 in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology, edited by Knorr-CetinaKCicourelA.London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
16.
CambrosioAlbertoKeatingPeterMercierSimonLewisonGrantMogoutovAndrei. 2006. “Mapping the Emergence and Development of Translational Cancer Research.”European Journal of Cancer42(18):3140–48. doi:10.1016/j.ejca.2006.07.020.
17.
CeruloKaren A. 2010. “Mining the Intersections of Cognitive Sociology and Neuroscience.”Poetics38(2):115–32. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2009.11.005.
18.
CeruloKaren A.LeschzinerVaninaShepherdHana2021. “Rethinking Culture and Cognition.”Annual Review of Sociology47(1):63–85. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-072320-095202.
19.
CetinaKarin Knorr. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
20.
ClarkAndy. 2011. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
21.
ClarkAndyChalmersDavid. 1998. “The Extended Mind.”Analysis58(1):7–19. doi:10.1111/1467-8284.00096.
22.
DeweyJohn. 1939. “Theory of Valuation.”International Encyclopedia of Unified Science2(4):vii + 67.
23.
DiMaggioPaul. 1997. “Culture and Cognition.”Annual Review of Sociology23(1):263–87. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.263.
24.
EmirbayerMustafaMischeAnn. 1998. “What Is Agency?”American Journal of Sociology103(4):962–1023. doi:10.1086/231294.
25.
FleckLudwik. 2012. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
26.
FosterJacob G.RzhetskyAndreyEvansJames A.2015. “Tradition and Innovation in Scientists’ Research Strategies.”American Sociological Review80(5):875–908. doi:10.1177/0003122415601618.
27.
FujimuraJoan. 1996. Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
28.
GrossNeil. 2009. “A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms.”American Sociological Review74(3):358–79. doi:10.1177/000312240907400302.
29.
GrossNeil. 2018. “Pragmatism and the Study of Large-scale Social Phenomena.”Theory and Society47(1):87–111. doi:10.1007/s11186-018-9307-9.
30.
HackettEdward J.ParkerJohn N.VermeulenNikiPendersBart. 2017. “The Social and Epistemic Organization of Scientific Work.” Pp. 733–64 in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by FeltUlrikeFouchéRayvonMillerClark A.Smith-DoerrLaurel. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
31.
HenkeChristopher R. 2000. “Making a Place for Science: The Field Trial.”Social Studies of Science30(4):483–511. doi:10.1177/030631200030004001.
32.
HilgartnerStephen. 2000. Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
33.
HutchinsEdwin. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
34.
JasanoffSheila. 1994. The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
35.
JasanoffSheila. 2012. Science and Public Reason. New York: Routledge.
36.
JoasHans. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
37.
KassnerMaciej. 2021. “Should Economics Make a Pragmatic Turn? John Dewey, Karl Polanyi, and Critique of Economic Naturalism.” Pp. 45–61 in Words, Objects and Events in Economics: The Making of Economic Theory. Vol. 6: Virtues and Economics, edited by RónaP.ZsolnaiL.Wincewicz-PriceA.Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
38.
KeatingPeterCambrosioAlberto. 2011. Cancer on Trial: Oncology as a New Style of Practice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
39.
KuhnThomas S.1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
40.
LatourBruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
LatourBruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
42.
LeonelliSabina. 2019. “Scientific Agency and Social Scaffolding in Contemporary Data-intensive Biology.” In Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution, edited by LoveA. C.WimsattW.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press: 42–63.
43.
LivingstoneDavid N. 2010. Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
44.
LizardoOmarMowryRobertSepulvadoBrandonStoltzDustin S.TaylorMarshall A.NessJustin VanWoodMichael. 2016. “What Are Dual Process Models? Implications for Cultural Analysis in Sociology.”Sociological Theory34(4):287–310. doi:10.1177/0735275116675900.
45.
MagnusP. D. 2007. “Distributed Cognition and the Task of Science.”Social Studies of Science37(2):297–310. doi:10.1177/0306312706072177.
46.
MeadGeorge H. 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. London, England: Open Court.
47.
MertonRobert K. 1973. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
48.
MukerjiChandra. 2015. Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal Du Midi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
49.
NersessianNancy J. 2006. “The Cognitive-cultural Systems of the Research Laboratory.”Organization Studies27(1):125–45. doi:10.1177/0170840606061842.
50.
NoëAlva. 2004. Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
51.
NortonMatthew. 2020. “Cultural Sociology Meets the Cognitive Wild: Advantages of the Distributed Cognition Framework for Analyzing the Intersection of Culture and Cognition.”American Journal of Cultural Sociology8(1):45–62. doi:10.1057/s41290-019-00075-w.
52.
OrlikowskiWanda J. 2006. “Material Knowing: The Scaffolding of Human Knowledgeability.”European Journal of Information Systems15(5):460–66. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000639.
53.
OsbeckLisa M.NersessianNancy J.MaloneKareen R.NewstetterWendy C.2010. Science as Psychology: Sense-making and Identity in Science Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
54.
PadgettJohn F.PowellWalter W.2012. The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
55.
ParkerJohn N.UgoCorte. 2017. “Placing Collaborative Circles in Strategic Action Fields: Explaining Differences between Highly Creative Groups.”Sociological Theory35(4):261–87. doi:10.1177/0735275117740400.
56.
PearceTrevor. 2020. Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
57.
PoirierPierreChicoisneGuillaume. 2006. “A Framework for Thinking about Distributed Cognition.”Pragmatics and Cognition14(2):215–34.
58.
RheinbergerHans-Jörg. 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
59.
RouseJoseph. 2015. Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
60.
SchefflerRobin Wolfe. 2019. A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
61.
SchefflerRobin WolfeAvilesNatalie B.2022. “State planning, cancer vaccine infrastructure, and the origins of the oncogene hypothesis.”Social Studies of Science52(2): 174–198.
62.
SterelnyKim. 2003. Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
63.
SuchmanLucy A. 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
64.
VaiseyStephen. 2009. “Motivation and Justification: A Dual-process Model of Culture in Action.”American Journal of Sociology114(6):1675–715. doi:10.1086/597179.
65.
VaiseyStephen. 2021. “Welcome to the Real World: Escaping the Sociology of Culture and Cognition.”Sociological Forum36(Suppl. 1):1297–315. doi:10.1111/socf.12770.
66.
VaughanDiane. 1997. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
67.
VaughanDiane. 1999. “The Rôle of the Organization in the Production of Techno-scientific Knowledge.”Social Studies of Science29(6):913–43. doi:10.1177/030631299029006005.
68.
VertesiJanet. 2015. Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
69.
VertesiJanet. 2020. Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
70.
WhitfordJosh. 2002. “Pragmatism and the Untenable Dualism of Means and Ends: Why Rational Choice Theory Does Not Deserve Paradigmatic Privilege.”Theory and Society31(3):325–63.
71.
WimsattWilliam C. 2014. “Entrenchment and Scaffolding: An Architecture for a Theory of Cultural Change.” Pp. 77–105 in Developing Scaffolds in Evolution, Culture, and Cognition, edited by CaporaelL. R.GriesemerJ. R.WimsattW. C.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
72.
WimsattWilliam C.GriesemerJames R. 2007. “Reproducing Entrenchments to Scaffold Culture: The Central Role of Development in Cultural Evolution.” Pp. 227–323 in Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice, edited by SansomR.BrandonR. N. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
73.
WohlHannah. 2022. “Innovation and Creativity in Creative Industries.”Sociology Compass16(2):e12956. doi:10.1111/soc4.12956.
