Michael Scroggins | University of California, Los Angeles (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Scroggins

I will answer the three questions about Knowledge Infrastructures out of order. 1) What are the m... more I will answer the three questions about Knowledge Infrastructures out of order. 1) What are the most urgent research questions to address about KI? Why? 2) Identify a KI whose survival is under threat. 3) How do KI spread information? Misinformation? Alone and in combination with other infrastructures? Question 1 and 3: I take these questions to address what Weber called the demands of the day. At this moment, the demand is to understand what knowledge does, its poetics and politics, when it circulates beyond the original context of its creation and intended use. As open science and open data policies gain more traction and carry ramifying sanctions, we can expect more scientific knowledge to circulate beyond the boundaries of science to unexpected effect.

Critique of Anthropology, Feb 23, 2023

Building on theory within anthropology and associated fields, I develop feralness as a lens for u... more Building on theory within anthropology and associated fields, I develop feralness as a lens for understanding the complexity of technological afterlives. Conceptual development proceeds through a case study of the relationship between Do-it-Yourself Biology (DIYbio), nonprofessional scientists experimenting with the established technology of recombinant DNA in new contexts such as garages and kitchens, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Absent the institutional controls of academia or industry, DIYbio has been perceived by the FBI as a potential threat to national security and is policed by the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. Though the FBI has tried to contain the spread and reach of DIYbio, it has, ironically, came to be one of the main instruments of DIYbio's global spread. In closing, I argue that feral technologies, those technologies with unexpected and potentially dangerous afterlives, are emblematic of the 21st century.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Oct 31, 2022

Critique of Anthropology, 2023

Communications of the ACM, 2020

Data scientists face challenges spanning academic and non-academic institutions.

Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 2020

In today’s anthropology, the word “culture” is conspicuous by its absence from anthropological di... more In today’s anthropology, the word “culture” is conspicuous by its absence from anthropological discourse. But the word is still alive outside anthropology, particularly in sociology and psychology, in ways anthropologists cannot ignore, as fields like urban poverty and education have been altered by the introduction of the culture concept. In this paper, I revisit the stakes of the debate over the analytic term “culture” within anthropology in the hope of revivifying the particularly anthropological take on “culture” that may help us answer more effectively those who still argue that poverty is reproduced through what poor people learn in childhood. I argue that the assumptions behind the marked term “culture” within the culture of poverty thesis are heir to two competing interpretations. In the first understanding, “culture” speculatively refers to what is embodied in individuals who perpetuate “a design for living” (Lewis, 1966) into which they have been socialized and reproduce it, causally and deterministically. In the second understanding, “culture” refers to what emerges as people interact with each other, their conditions and experiences, including those that had emerged earlier and can only be understood empirically as a product of everyday life. In what follows, I deliberately oversimplify a complicated intellectual history in order to throw the stakes of the culture concept into high relief. Culture’s circuitous career has been powerfully taken up by Trouillot (2003, pp. 113–115): he notes that it emerged from the Boasian tradition as an anti-concept designed to counter biological racism and social Darwinism, but today often underwrites unwarranted speculations on race and class. In the 50 years since the Moynihan report, as Trouillot laments, culture has only dug deeper into daily use as a bulwark against change, particularly change which might reshuffle the status quo in favor of those with lesser means. How did we get here? Looking back on the winding history of the culture concept within anthropology, Trouillot identifies the culture concept with “the Savage Slot (2003, 8–10)” that he argues was inherited by anthropology as the “savage or the primitive was the alter ego the West constructed for itself” (2003, 18). But an inheritance, like all gifts, can be refused. While critiquing the unfortunate fate of the culture concept within anthropology, Trouillot notes that particular strands of anthropological thought have critiqued the existence of “the Savage Slot” by inverting the assumptions from which it stemmed and turning its gaze back upon the tradition of Western philosophy from which it originated. Thus, the culture concept has been deployed within anthropology both to recapitulate “the Savage Slot” and to critique its existence in the hopes of moving Western thought beyond the tired dichotomy. The infamous struggle to define culture within anthropology and its ultimate abandonment as an analytical concept serves as an index to these disagreements and debates (see Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). However, this nuance was lost when the culture concept crossed out of anthropology into sociology, psychology, and policy debates, where the “the Savage Slot” reemerged with dire consequences for those caught in its gaze. Two debates starkly illustrate the contested interpretation of the culture concept: the classification of ethnographic artifacts within the nineteenth century Museum Anthropology and an exchange between Conrad Arensberg and Oscar Lewis over Lewis’ use of the term “culture of poverty” to describe the ebb and flow of urban poverty. The first case illustrates contested versions of the culture

Economy and Society, 2017

Abstract Drawing on anthropological theories of play, deep play and games, as well as sociologica... more Abstract Drawing on anthropological theories of play, deep play and games, as well as sociological interaction theories of risk, this paper develops a theory of consequential games. This paper suggests that in the United States much expert or entrepreneurial activity can be seen as a competition over creating the rules of games that others must play. In turn, whatever peril lies in these consequential games is the province of the saps that have to play, and whatever reward or prize comes from the game is captured by the expert or entrepreneur. The perspective that this paper advances, in turn, renders domains of life often seen as discrete (say private equity investing and biotechnological tinkering) comparable and in fact similar types of phenomena, all caught up in the crazy apocalyptic vitality that is contemporary capitalism.

Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2017

Theoretically, this article seeks to broaden the conceptualization of ignorance within STS by dra... more Theoretically, this article seeks to broaden the conceptualization of ignorance within STS by drawing on a line of theory developed in the philosophy and anthropology of education to argue that ignorance can be productively conceptualized as a state of possibility and that doing so can enable more democratic forms of citizen science. In contrast to conceptualizations of ignorance as a lack, lag, or manufactured product, ignorance is developed here as both the opening move in scientific inquiry and the common ground over which that inquiry proceeds. Empirically, the argument is developed through an ethnographic description of Scroggins' participation in a failed citizen science project at a DIYbio laboratory. Supporting the empirical case are a review of the STS literature on expertise and a critical examination of the structures of participation within two canonical citizen science projects. Though onerous, through close attention to how people transform one another during inqui...

Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2020

We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years... more We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years, to data-intensive science. Drawing on a fifteen-year corpus of research into multiple domains of data-intensive science, we use a series of ethnographic vignettes to offer a snapshot of the varieties and valences of labor in data-intensive science. We conceptualize data-intensive science as an evolving field and set of practices and highlight parallels between the labor literature and Science and Technology Studies. Further, we note where data-intensive science intersects and overlaps with broader trends in the 21st century economy. In closing, we argue for further research that takes scientific work and labor as its starting point.

The FITS file format has become the de facto standard for sharing, analyzing, and archiving astro... more The FITS file format has become the de facto standard for sharing, analyzing, and archiving astronomy data over the last four decades. FITS was adopted by astronomers in the early 1980s to overcome incompatibilities between operating systems. On the back of FITS' success, astronomical data became both backwards compatible and easily shareable. However, new advances in astronomical instrumentation, computational technologies, and analytic techniques have resulted in new data that do not work well within the traditional FITS format. Tensions have arisen between the desire to update the format to meet new analytic challenges and adherence to the original edict for FITS files to be backwards compatible. We examine three inflection points in the governance of FITS: a) initial development and success, b) widespread acceptance and governance by the working group, and c) the challenges to FITS in a new era of increasing data and computational complexity within astronomy.

Applied Anthropology Unexpected Spaces, Topics and Methods, 2015

This chapter discusses the organization and research activities of the FAIR Money collective. The... more This chapter discusses the organization and research activities of the FAIR Money collective. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the collective's organizing principles, then narrates a history of the FAIR Money collective from its inception three years ago to the present day. A second section presents a synopsis of FAIR Money's research on predatory lending in Silicon Valley. The final section closes with a brief reflection on the history of practicing anthropology with unexpected consociates. This chapter will be of interest to practicing and applied anthropologists and those interested in alternative forms of organizing inquiry.

We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years... more We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years, to the field of data-intensive science. Drawing on a fifteen-year corpus of data from multiple scientific disciplines on data-intensive science, we develop both a field guide to the invisible work of data-intensive science and a simple observational protocol intended as an aid to researchers studying data-intensive science. We conceptualize data-intensive science as an evolving field and highlight parallels in the labor literature and Science and Technology Studies, noting where data-intensive science intersects and overlaps with broader trends in the 21st century economy. In closing, we look towards changes in scientific labor on the near horizon, discussing how artificial intelligence and machine learning have begun to alter labor in industry. We also speculate on how the new technology will alter scientific labor and argue for the need to continually document and make visible the ev...

Contests and prizes along with the compulsion to make winners and losers are ubiquitous features ... more Contests and prizes along with the compulsion to make winners and losers are ubiquitous features of contemporary capitalism in the USA. Combining the anthropological literature on traps and trapping, Simmel’s work on competitive relationships, film criticism, and a rereading of management consulting logic, we develop a theory of prizes as organizers and enforcers of competitive relationships. We argue that contests are traps, funnelling both the wary and unsuspecting into competitive relationships through the lure of material and symbolic rewards. Empirically, our argument proceeds through paired case studies. The first case examines how a straightforward (if technically daunting) educational project designed to teach newcomers the basics of laboratory techniques is transformed into a competitive project when a potential prize is introduced. The second case examines how people spontaneously organize and compete with each other around the promise of an amorphous and fictitious prize ...

Critique of Anthropology, Feb 23, 2023

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Oct 31, 2022

Critique of Anthropology, 2023

Communications of the ACM, 2020

Data scientists face challenges spanning academic and non-academic institutions.

Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 2020

Economy and Society, 2017

Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2017

Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2020

Applied Anthropology Unexpected Spaces, Topics and Methods, 2015

We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years... more We apply the concept of invisible labor, as developed by labor scholars over the last forty years, to the field of data-intensive science. Drawing on a fifteen-year corpus of data from multiple scientific disciplines on data-intensive science, we develop both a field guide to the invisible work of data-intensive science and a simple observational protocol intended as an aid to researchers studying data-intensive science. We conceptualize data-intensive science as an evolving field and highlight parallels in the labor literature and Science and Technology Studies, noting where data-intensive science intersects and overlaps with broader trends in the 21st century economy. In closing, we look towards changes in scientific labor on the near horizon, discussing how artificial intelligence and machine learning have begun to alter labor in industry. We also speculate on how the new technology will alter scientific labor and argue for the need to continually document and make visible the ev...

People Before Markets, 2022

When we think about how innovation happens, we’re at a bit of a loss to understand it because our... more When we think about how innovation happens, we’re at a bit of a loss to understand it because our common-sense notions of innovation owe so much to Silicon Valley hype and propaganda. When we imagine innovation, we often think about strong personalities, aggressive and spectacular disruption, and ruthless profit-seeking. Scroggins suggests that much meaningful innovation actually happens beyond attempts at dispruptive innovation and attraction of venture capital where innov- ation is narrowly seen as a driver of economic activity (see pp. 00–00, 00–00, and 00). Instead, innovation tends to emerge from stable, rather boring groups of people working outside of job markets and for-profit corporations, on projects that are of personal or group interest, valuable to the people working on them for intrinsic, seem- ingly self-evident reasons. To show this, Scroggins describes two paths both taken in the same Silicon Valley do-it-yourself biotechnology laboratory. A neoliberal approach tried to use the democratization of a technology, in this case synthetic biology, as a lever to implement the classic disruptive strategy of entering low-end and opening new markets. The alternative approach proceeded on a slower and more deliberate path, without market forces and the promise of funding. What separated the alternative from the neoliberal approach is, according to Scroggins, its constant focus on community over commodity, and process over product.