Reiner Keller, Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms, VS Verlag, 2011
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17004
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Jan Cherlet
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Reiner Keller, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis. Groundwork for a Research Programme, VS Verlag, 2011
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Book Reviews
2011-06-27
2023-05-22
2011-06-27
2023-07-03
119-122
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Jan Cherlet
2011/06/27
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17004
119
Università di Bologna
2038-3460
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Reiner Keller, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis. Groundwork for a Research Programme, VS Verlag, 2011
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17004/15901
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                                                                   TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)          119



cerning the existence of significant ar-                        Reiner Keller
chaeological find in the area to be in-                   Wissenssoziologische
undated. The mobilization asking for                 Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung
the preservation of this archaeological              eines Forschungsprogramms
heritage was not successful, a failure             (The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to
that Bento investigates with a focus on              Discourse Analysis. Groundwork for a
the role of media in the construction of                    Research Programme)
scientific and technical objects. In the                  2011, VS Verlag, 360 pp.
final chapter, Marisa Matias examines
the controversy about the use of a ce-                            Jan Cherlet
ment factory in Souselas (a small town                       (Università di Bologna)
close to Coimbra) to incinerate indus-
trial wastes. Matias discusses the dy-                 Reiner Keller's work constitutes
namics through which the problem                   one of those “exceptions” that prove
arises together with the objects of sci-           that the academic scene is not yet as
entific controversy. She investigates as           global as we tend to think. Keller has
well how environmental policies and                developed a research programme for
citizens’ mobilisation enter the frame.            the sociological analysis of discourses
The author suggests that this kind of              and their effects. Thanks to its con-
studies can help in understanding the              creteness and practical applicability in
processes that confer existence (or                empirical research, the method has
non-existence) to public problems and              been harnessed by German scholars in
collective actors. Far from being just a           a wide range of disciplines – not only
sample of Science Studies research in              in sociology but also in history, peda-
Portugal, the volume edited by Nunes               gogics and educational science, linguis-
and Roque is an important exercise in              tics, political science, studies of reli-
self-reflexivity that points out the orig-         gion, criminology... That Keller's man-
inality of the Portuguese contribution             ual has reached a third edition in bare-
to the study of science and technology             ly six years can be taken as an indicator
in society, thus tracing a clear path for          of its success. Oddly enough, no Eng-
future developments.                               lish translation is available yet, and
                                                   while he is widely cited in Germany,
References                                         international publications referring to
                                                   Keller's work are still rare.
Gonçalves, M.E. (ed) (1996) Ciência e Democra-         Keller's research programme for
   cia, Venda Nova, Bertrand Editora.              discourse analysis – he prefers to call it
Gonçalves, M.E. (ed) (2000) Cultura Científica e
                                                   a programme since it includes both a
   Participação Pública, Oeiras, Celta.
                                                   theoretical framework and methodo-
                                                   logical tools – is grounded in the soci-
                      ***                          ology of knowledge but incorporates
                                                   insights from Foucault's work. The
                                                   proposed research programme origi-
                                                   nated in his own discourse research on
                                                   waste politics in Germany and France
120   BOOK REVIEWS



      in the early 1990s (mentioned in Keller      trary, the foucauldian tradition of dis-
      2010). There are some affinities with        course analysis, he maintains, is situat-
      Maarten Hajer's work on story-lines in       ed at an all too abstract level of macro
      the acid rain controversy (Hajer 1995).      analysis, focusing on grand discourses,
      Both scholars were interested in the         and is not really suited to empirical re-
      circulation of knowledge and discours-       search. Keller's programme tries to
      es concerning environmental conflicts.       find a middle way, by up-scaling the
      This affinity doesn't come as a surprise,    hermeneutic sociology of knowledge
      since the two collaborated at the Uni-       beyond the language-in-use level, while
      versity of München. Nonetheless, Kel-        maintaining the social constructedness
      ler went much further than Hajer in          of discursive actors, institutions, and
      developing a complete theoreticcal           discursive practices.
      framework – social theory is presuma-            The rest of the manual is organized
      bly his actual area of interest – and        in four large chapters. The first two de-
      published it in the manual under re-         scribe the history of – respectively –
      view.                                        the sociology of knowledge, and dis-
          In the brief introductory chapter of     course analysis. The third chapter,
      the manual, the author elicits that the      covering one third of the manual, de-
      research programme tries to reconcile        scribes Keller's research programme
      two traditions that have drifted apart       for Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse
      over the last decades: the sociology of      (WDA) – or somehow oddly translated
      knowledge on the one hand, and Fou-          in English: the Sociology of
      cauldian discourse analysis on the oth-      Knowledge Approach to Discourse
      er hand. For the former tradition Kel-       (SKAD). The last chapter of the man-
      ler takes the work of Peter Berger and       ual discusses the role that the SKAD
      Thomas Luckmann (1966) as reference          research programme can play with re-
      point, while for the latter he departs       spect to wider social questions about
      from Foucault's Archeology of                risk, social responsibility, science and
      Knowledge (1969). Berger and Luck-           technology in society, politics of identi-
      mann undertook an in-depth inquiry           ty, or “life politics” in general.
      into the social legitimisation, social in-       So, what does the SKAD pro-
      stitutionalisation, and subjective inter-    gramme look like? SKAD understands
      nalisation of “whatever passes for           discourses as “structured and structur-
      ‘knowledge’ in society”. This sociology      ing structures” that both reproduce
      of knowledge has in Germany evolved          and are reproduced by social practices.
      into an important interpretative cur-        Discourses          socially     constitute
      rent in the social sciences, known as        knowledge systems, orderings of reali-
      Hermeneutische         Wissenssoziologie     ty, institutional and material devices
      (hermeneutic sociology of knowledge).        (Dispositif), and power effects in the
      Keller believes that this tradition has      network of social actors. Keller empha-
      much to offer for the analysis of dis-       sises that the nature of discourses is
      courses, but he contends that it has         concrete and material, both in con-
      been focusing too much on the micro          struction as in effects. Therefore, he
      level of “language-in-use”. On the con-      distinguishes three principal dimen-
                                                             TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)          121



sions of analysis: (i) the discourse con-    cauldian macro level. Nonetheless, the
tent itself, (ii) the internal structuring   research programme heavily rests upon
of the discourse, (iii) the materiality of   the foundations of the sociology of
the discourse.                               knowledge, by assuming the social
    The first dimension contains those       construction of knowledge orderings,
utterances and pronouncements that           their social legitimisation and institu-
constitute instances of the discourse.       tionalisation. From Foucault's work
The researcher might try to distinguish      Keller has retained the key idea that
public discourses from specialist dis-       discourses have power effects and the
courses, look for discourse formations,      recognition that discourses are materi-
as well as minimal and maximal con-          alised in devices.
trasts in the discourses.                        His programme and concepts,
    The second dimension is the one          however, are more static than dynamic.
that structures the internal meaning of      They cannot explain how discourses
the discourses. In order to lay bare the     emerge, take over others, or become
internal structuring, Keller mostly re-      hegemonic. Nor do they throw light on
lies on concepts inherited from the          the dynamics through which hegemon-
hermeneutic sociology of knowledge.          ic discourse are challenged. Under-
He proposes to look for the following        standably, Keller admits that his pro-
elements in the discourse: the mean-         gramme does not pretend to be com-
ing-making schemes (Deutungsmuster),         plete.
classifications, the structuring of exter-       Moreover, I believe that the re-
nal phenomena, narrative structures,         search programme is designed for the
models of action, and models for the         sociological analysis of political dis-
involved actors.                             courses, whereas it has little to say
    Discourse has also a material di-        about the data collection. Keller refers
mension – on which Keller insists very       to standard data collection methods
much. In fact, the third dimension is        such as interviews, ethnography, etc.,
constituted of: the actors that repro-       but at various points he also invokes
duce the discourse, the actors that are      the Grounded Theory Method and the
subjects of the discourse, the address-      work of Anselm Strauss (Keller 2005,
ees of the discourse, the receivers of       2010). That he invokes the Grounded
the discourse, the platform from which       Theory Method seems odd since Kel-
the discourse is disseminated, the ma-       ler's programme includes various pre-
terial devices (Dispositif) that incorpo-    conceived theoretical dimensions, con-
rate and/or reproduce the discourse,         cepts and categories – yet this inevita-
the practices that reproduce the dis-        bly conflicts with the central idea in the
course, and the practices that are pro-      Grounded Theory Method that the re-
voked by it.                                 searcher should collect empirical data
    Therefore, SKAD is a research pro-       without any theory in mind.
gramme for the sociological analysis of          In conclusion, the manual offers
discourses that maintains the middle         two valuable components. First, Keller
ground between the socio-linguistic          rigorously sketches the double theoret-
micro level of analysis and the fou-         ical grounds in which his research pro-
122   BOOK REVIEWS



      gramme is rooted: the sociology of                               Philip Vannini
      knowledge, and foucauldian discourse                  Material Culture and Technology
      analysis. Second, he delivers a number                in Everyday Life. Ethnographical
      of very user friendly tools and concepts                        Approaches
      for the analysis of empirical data. The                    2009, Peter Lang, 254 pp.
      success of his research programme in
      German academia can be taken as a                                 Paolo Magaudda
      guarantee for its applicability in a                            (Università di Padova)
      whole spectrum of issues, varying from
      global environmental controversies,                       The book edited by Philip Vannini
      over science and technology in society,               – one of the more eclectic and prolific
      to social identity politics.                          emergent scholars in the intersection
                                                            between culture and technology – is a
                                                            very useful step to fill a gap in the on-
                                                            going process of interconnection be-
      References                                            tween different perspectives on the so-
                                                            cial studies of technology. This gap
      Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The So-          consists in the partial lack of dialogue
          cial Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the   between, on the one side, the science
          Sociology of Knowledge, London, Penguin           & technology studies and, on the other
          Books.                                            side, the material culture studies and,
      Hajer, M.A. (1995) The Politics of Environmen-
          tal Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and       more in general, the context of cultural
          the Policy Process, Oxford, Clarendon.            studies intended in their broader sense.
      Keller, R. (2005) Analysing Discourse. An Ap-         Indeed, while these two areas of con-
          proach From the Sociology of Knowledge, in        temporary social sciences have hardly
          “Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Fo-
          rum Qualitative Social Research”, 6(3), Art.
                                                            found explicit convergences, at a closer
          32, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:01-        look they reveal a common feeling on
          14-fqs0503327.                                    the fact that social relations, technolo-
      Keller, R. (2010) WDA/SKAD – An Interpretive          gies and objects are strictly interwoven
          Approach to Discourse and Politics of             with each other and, also, that at their
          Knowledge, Proceedings of IPA2010 “In-
          terpretative Policy Analysis conference”, 23-     junction it is possible to find a crucial
          25 June 2010, Grenoble.                           dimension for the development of con-
      Foucault, M. (1969) L'archéologie du savoir, Par-     temporary world. However, in spite of
          is, Éditions Gallimard.                           this, it is pretty hard to find scholars
                                                            that are effectively committed to de-
                                                            velop these connections and links.
                                                            Philip Vannini and some of his col-
                             ***                            leagues certainly are among these few
                                                            scholars.
                                                                As the editor recognizes in his in-
                                                            troduction, the boundaries between
                                                            these fields – STS and material culture
                                                            – have remained solid more as the re-
                                                            sult of accidental scientific practices,
