pragmatology = revealing the action of things (human and nonhuman). This is criterion for understanding our relations in the world: what work, what action is done. Classical Pragmatism = criterion of knowing the world is through effects/action. STS focus on action that is 'equivalent to specific and materially heterogenous relations. . . these relations carry action, they exert it, and they modify it.' To understand is not achieved by reductionism, to break phenomena/events into constituents, reify conceptual categories (modernist) and place causality in a 'chain of effects'. But to specify the action achieved; to know what work by collectives has been done. The what question.

Return to Key Themes