10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17462
The essay suggests “the swerve” as an analytical metaphor useful for researchers and theorists engaged in building the future of STS studies. What is suggested is to shape one's own “swerving methodology”, presented as a “reflective practice” adopted in the comparison with objects, with research questions and STS epistemologies.
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2038-3460
17462
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Federico Neresini
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
community
“The Swerve”: A Modest Hint for Appreciating Tradition and Escaping Self-referentiality
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
11
Anniversary Reflections
2020-11-12
2023-06-27
2020-11-12
2023-10-12
59-63
TS
Federico Neresini
2020/11/12
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17462
59
Università di Padova
2038-3460
1
community
en
63
“The Swerve”: A Modest Hint for Appreciating Tradition and Escaping Self-referentiality
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17462/16311
11
                                                                                    Essay
                                                                                          59




‘The Swerve’: A Modest Hint for Appreciating
Tradition and Escaping Self-referentiality

Federico Neresini
Università di Padova



     Abstract: The essay suggests ‘the swerve’ as an analytical metaphor useful
     for researchers and theorists engaged in building the future of STS studies.
     What is suggested is to shape one's own “swerving methodology”, present-
     ed as a “reflective practice” adopted in the comparison with objects, with
     research questions and STS epistemologies.

     Keywords:          STS   epistemology;                methodology;   displacement;
     interdisciplinary; community.

     Submitted: May 30, 2020 – Accepted: June 30, 2020

     Corresponding author: Federico Neresini, FISPPA - Dip. di Filosofia,
     Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia applicata, Università di Padova, Via
     Cesarotti, 10/12, 35123 Padova, Italy. Email: federico.neresini@unipd.it.




1. Ten minutes. Ten minutes should give us more than enough time to
play a round of ‘the swerve’. However, before we play, we must under-
stand the goal of the game, which is to avoid being unintentionally mis-
guided by our STS assumptions… or prejudices, if we are speaking blunt-
ly. The first rule for playing the swerve is to spend just ten minutes put-
ting some distance between us and our research object as well as our re-
search question. In other words, the swerve involves briefly suspending
our next research activity so we can reflect on the almost certain reality
that we are investigating an object and a research question to which
someone has already dedicated her/his attention and time, in the more or
less remote past. The move I suggest calling ‘the swerve’ sounds like a
displacement, able to relocate our viewpoint to a position other than that
which we usually assume. Actually, the concept of ‘displacement’ has al-
ready been discussed within the STS community, but it was introduced
primarily to indicate one effect of becoming aware that technoscientific
objects can be regarded from a vantage point other than the one usually

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
11 (1) pp. 59-63 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2020
60                                                          Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

taken outside the STS perspective. By examining technoscientific objects
from a new perspective, STS can illustrate how a technoscientific object,
which is apparently the same for many heterogeneous actors, actually
takes on as many meanings as there are actors having to do with it.
    The swerve suggests considering objects and ideas in a new way, as
they can be perceived differently from how they are usually interpreted
by the current STS perspective or by the STS perspective as a whole.
However, the swerve encompasses more than just this, as it will become
clearer as this article develops. Nevertheless, this partial definition is all
we need for now to begin our argument.

    2. STS is now a consolidated academic field, with its own rules, theo-
ries, concepts and institutions: journals, conferences, doctoral pro-
grammes, undergraduate courses, handbooks, scientific societies, grants
and prizes. This is not wrong, of course; in fact, the opposite is true, as
the STS consolidation was necessary for their survival and development,
especially within national contexts where they are still weak, as is the case
in Italy. Indeed, we cannot maintain our research approach in a perma-
nent state of original effervescence; we cannot continue to be revolution-
ary forever, unless we want to disappear into the oblivion of a perhaps
exciting but inconclusive season.
    Yet, at the same time, we should adopt every possible strategy and
embrace all epistemological and methodological tricks to avoid becoming
self-referential, able only to speak among ourselves. Moreover, we should
not transform the original desire to change the way of looking at techno-
science into the dictatorship of a taken-for-granted STS approach. We
cannot advance by continuing to consume every new research object
simply by applying, mechanically and rigidly, a bag of sensitising concepts
and interpretative models and theories, or by assuming that our point of
view is the best by definition.
    We are now obliged to cope with this irreducible opposition: on one
hand, we must not repeatedly restart at point A, as if STS had never ex-
isted; on the other hand, we should not take for granted the STS perspec-
tive nor its theories, notions or methodologies.
    Each new research object has its own specificity but, for the most
part, poses the same questions as those implied by other similar objects in
the past. Let us think, for example, about neurosciences or synthetic bi-
ology ‒ two emerging technoscientific objects that are presently attracting
STS attention: should we completely disregard existing knowledge about
biotechnologies or nuclear power? Are big data or machine learning so
peculiar that we can forget all we learned about analogic scientific ar-
chives or about AI at the end of the last century? Can we look at the new
phenomena through research questions radically dissimilar from those of
the past? Is it enough to change our jargon – for example, using ‘engage-
ment’ instead of ‘participation’ – when technoscientific controversies are
analysed to arrive at new research problems?
Neresini                                                                   61
     To recognise that our research object is defined by questions much
like those posed about other objects studied in the past means both that
we must be aware that STS is a well-established research field and that
what is now under inquiry has a history resulting from an evolutionary
process. The swerve, then, can produce two effects: first, it can invite us
to exploit the theoretical and empirical heritage accumulated by STS
along its development; second, it can enrich our research with the histori-
cal depth that makes it even more interesting and full of theoretical impli-
cations, so that we are pushed to go beyond a mere descriptive level.
     However, the swerve should also produce a third effect, namely, keep-
ing us from becoming self-referential by taking for granted our point of
view, together with its epistemological and methodological armamentari-
um. Creating distance between our research and ourselves – even if only
by a measure of minutes – could, indeed, enable us to displace our per-
spective and illustrate that our viewpoint is neither obvious nor necessari-
ly open to the standpoint of other subjects with whom it could be very
relevant to interact. It is worth noting that dodging the bullet of self-
referentiality is not only a problem in our relationships with people who
appear distant from the STS perspective, such as the so-called ‘hard’ sci-
entists or laypeople; we are also experimenting to an increasing extent
with the difficulty of interacting properly within the field of social scienc-
es. In some respects, in fact, it has become easier for a sociologist to en-
gage with an anthropologist or a political scientist with whom an STS ap-
proach is shared rather than with another sociologist who is far removed
from STS. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, on the surface,
the two sociologists share the same vocabulary; however, if the first talks
about ‘network’, the second can easily recognise the word but understand
it from a completely different line of thinking and, hence, attach an alter-
nate meaning.

    3. For the swerve to be effectively implemented, it should be posi-
tioned not only at the beginning of our research but also during its fulfil-
ment, so as to ensure that we experience multiple benefits of its employ-
ment. What matters is that, just like each sudden shift made to avoid col-
liding with an obstacle, the process of implementing the swerve must be
swift and abrupt; only in this way can the resulting cognitive jolt be strong
enough to make us understand what we were risking: unconscious per-
manence inside STS commonplaces.
    Of course, unlike what might happen if we were driving a car or walk-
ing on a sidewalk when confronted with an approaching obstacle and did
not take quick action to keep from meeting it head on, without a hasty
implementation of the swerve, the impact would not be so violent; how-
ever, the consequences could be equally powerful: a quiet self-
referentiality, not even perceived because it is derived from an attitude
considered ‘natural’.
    Honestly, I have no idea how to make such a move with a sudden
62                                                              Tecnoscienza – 11 (1)

force. Maybe we could randomly disseminate alerts in our digital calendar
or rely on our capability to occasionally recall the need to swerve… I am
not sure ‒ we can all invent our own swerve methodology.
    Regardless of the approach, an effectively incorporated swerve should
produce highly remunerative results: spending only ten minutes should
suggest that maybe it would be better to invest at least ten hours to deep-
en the hints and the questions raised as a consequence of this initial move.
Ultimately, what can be gained will be more evident in the next ten
months, even more in the next ten years: reducing the risk of being
trapped in an STS taken-for-granted flatness.
    Another relevant aspect that the swerve can bring to light is that devi-
ating from a path implies having a trajectory. In other words, it is possible
to practice a swerve only after a research question has been developed
and a research object identified, so that our research can be oriented hav-
ing a direction. This will allow us to realise that the redirection intro-
duced by the swerve is something radically different from the changes of
direction derived from a casual wandering around what sounds vaguely
technoscientific. At the same time, it should be clear that having a re-
search trajectory has nothing to do with ‘trajectorism’, as it has been de-
picted recently by Appadurai (2013, 223):

      A deeper epistemological and ontological habit, which always assumes
      that there is a cumulative journey from here to there, or more exactly
      from now to then. […] Trajectorism is the idea that time’s arrow inevi-
      tably has a telos […]. Modern social science inherits this telos and
      turns it into a method for the study of humanity.

    A research trajectory is no more than the sense of direction drafted by
our question. Such a trajectory makes it possible to swerve but also to re-
turn to the path outlined for our journey after becoming cognizant that
the trajectory could be another one and that the path we are following has
already been trodden by others.

    4. The swerve, thus, is a lateral move in relation to our research direc-
tion, thanks to which we can gain an alternative position that makes more
evident the intrinsic processuality of objects and research questions. They
have a history that entrenches them in a specific context, even if it makes
them also fluid or, even better, shows that the stability of the first and the
relevance of the second emanate from the fact that we are deeply and
unwittingly plunged in the present, directly connected to the flow of
events, to the hic et nunc of everyday life. Once we access this alternative
viewpoint on our own research, we must measure the depth of its thick-
ness and, therefore, the need to deepen its analysis by drilling into the
layers that time has gradually deposited on it.

     5. Finally, the swerve is a plea for interdisciplinarity as well. In fact, it
Neresini                                                                   63
can help us to assume and cultivate an interdisciplinary attitude, provid-
ing the opportunity both to look at an object from a different perspective
and to consider the STS approach as one among many. Feeding this kind
of awareness is a useful premise on which to base transdisciplinary re-
search, i.e. to fulfil the hybridisation among heterogeneous viewpoints
and, hence, to acquire a new one, detached from what we tend to consid-
er obvious.
    In other words, the swerve can help us remain in the early wake of the
STS tradition, which has always been genuinely interdisciplinary and
sometime transdisciplinary too, while at the same time avoiding self-
referentiality.
     ‘The swerve’ ‒ ten minutes that could be well spent today, looking at
the next ten years.


    References

Appadurai, A. (2013) The Future as a Cultural Fact, London, New York, Verso.
