Steve Woolgar

Biographic Data

ID88670
NAMESteve Woolgar
GIVEN NAMESSteve
FAMILY NAMEWoolgar
SIGNATUREWOOLGAR S
AFFILIATIONSBrunel University of London
ORCID0000-0003-1465-3136
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS76
TOTAL CITATIONS1722
AUTHOR COUNT71
EDITOR COUNT5
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1975
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX16

  • The Return of the Nonhuman: The Reproduction of Anthropocentrism in Social Theory

    Open AccessEmma Dahlin, Steve WoolgarARTICLEEuropean Journal of Social Theory2026

    Despite decades of critique, anthropocentrism continues to shape the conceptual foundations of social theory. While numerous approaches have sought to unsettle the human as the privileged locus of action, relevance, and meaning, less attention has been paid to the mundane conditions under which anthropocentric assumptions are practically reproduced in theoretical work itself. This article examines how anthropocentrism persists through recurring d…

  • The Value of Strident Agnosticism: Dorothy Pawluch and the Endurance of Ontological Gerrymandering

    Open AccessSteve WoolgarARTICLEThe American Sociologist2022Cited by: 5References: 8

    This paper reflects on the origins and subsequent reception of the paper “Ontological Gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations”, published in 1985. It describes the circumstances of my turning up at McGill University as a Visiting Professor in Sociology and meeting Dorothy, then a graduate student and the TA assigned to an undergraduate course on Social Problems which I was asked to teach. The paper reflects on the twin benefit…

  • Enacting the 'consuming' brain: An ethnographic study of accountability redistributions in neuromarketing practices

    Open AccessTanja Schneider, Jonna Brenninkmeijer et al.ARTICLEThe Sociological Review2022References: 37

    The figure of the brain has continued to rise in prominence for at least 30 years. This development continues to raise important questions: in particular, to what extent and in what ways does the brain supplant the person as the presumed origin of human behaviour? Whereas it has previously been discussed in general terms, here we address this question through an ethnographic study of the experimental articulation of the brain in neuromarketing re…

  • The Imposter as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans

    Open AccessSteve Woolgar, Else Vogel et al.BOOKImposter As Social Theory2021

    The figure of the imposter stirs a captivating combination of emotions, from intrigue to suspicion and horror. But what insights can these troublesome figures provide into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge? Beginning with a critical overview of previous uses of the imposter in social sciences and humanities, this volume explores this question through a diverse range of empirical cases, including click farms, magicians…

  • The Imposter as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans

    Open AccessSteve Woolgar, Else Vogel et al.BOOKImposter As Social Theory2021

    Edited by expert scholars, this volume explores the 'imposter' through empirical cases, including click farms, bikers, business leaders and fraudulent scientists, providing insights into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge.

  • Imposter As Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans

    Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, David Moats et al.BOOKImposter As Social Theory2021

  • Imposter As Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans

    Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, David Moats et al.BOOKImposter As Social Theory2021

  • Witness and Silence in Neuromarketing: Managing the Gap between Science and Its Application

    Open AccessJonna Brenninkmeijer, Tanja Schneider et al.ARTICLEScience Technology & Human Values2020Cited by: 4References: 24

    Over the past decades commercial and academic market(ing) researchers have studied consumers through a range of different methods including surveys, focus groups, or interviews. More recently, some have turned to the growing field of neuroscience to understand consumers. Neuromarketing employs brain imaging, scanning, or other brain measurement technologies to capture consumers' (brain) responses to marketing stimuli and to circumvent the "proble…

  • STS as a Program of Ontological Disobedience: Koichi Mikami Talks with Steve Woolgar

    Open AccessKoichi Mikami, Steve WoolgarARTICLEEngaging Science Technology and…2018

    Is science and technology studies (STS) a luxury that our society cannot afford anymore? In this interview, Koichi Mikami tries to learn lessons from Steve Woolgar’s distinguished career on how the kind of sensibilities treasured within the field of STS and the type of critical engagement that its researchers aspire to might be best exercised in a changing landscape of higher education and academic research. Woolgar explains how he, at some key m…

  • Research note. Valuation Mishaps and the Choreography of Repair

    Open AccessClaes-Fredrik Helgesson, Steve WoolgarARTICLEValuation Studies2018

    This research note proposes that it is instructive to ask what happens when evaluative practices go wrong. It shows how a close study of mistakes and mishaps in evaluation - both in the process of their disclosure and subsequent management - provides important insights into ways in which evaluation practices contribute to performing and sustaining the relations of accountability involved. The note examines two cases: 1) the mistaken award of the …

  • Neuromarketing in the making: Enactment and reflexive entanglement in an emerging field

    Open AccessTanja Schneider, Steve WoolgarARTICLEBioSocieties2015

  • Neuroscience beyond the laboratory: Neuro knowledges, technologies and markets

    Open AccessTanja Schneider, Steve WoolgarARTICLEBioSocieties2015

  • Missing the (question) mark? What is a turn to ontology

    Open AccessSteve Woolgar, Javier LezaunARTICLESocial Studies of Science2015Cited by: 29References: 8

    Our introductory essay in this journal's 2013 Special Issue on the 'turn to ontology' examined the shift from epistemology to ontology in science and technology studies and explored the implications of the notion of enactment. Three responses to that Special Issue argue that (1) there is no fundamental qualitative difference between the ontological turn and social constructivism, (2) we need to be wary of overly generic use of the term 'ontology'…

  • Struggles with Representation: Could It Be Otherwise?

    Steve WoolgarCHAPTERRepresentation In Scientific…2014

    "Struggles with Representation: Could It Be Otherwise?" published on by The MIT Press.

  • Representation In Scientific Practice Revisited

    Catelijne Coopmans, Catelijne Coopman et al.BOOKRepresentation In Scientific…2014

    Representation in Scientific Practice, published by the MIT Press in 1990, helped coalesce a long-standing interest in scientific visualization among historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science and remains a touchstone for current investigations in science and technology studies. This volume revisits the topic, taking into account both the changing conceptual landscape of STS and the emergence of new imaging technologies in scientific p…

  • Visualization in the Age of Computerization

    Annamaria Carusi, Aud Sissel Hoel et al.BOOKVisualization in the Age of…2014

    Digitalization and computerization are now pervasive in science. This has deep consequences for our understanding of scientific knowledge and of the scientific process, and challenges longstanding assumptions and traditional frameworks of thinking of scientific knowledge. Digital media and computational processes challenge our conception of the way in which perception and cognition work in science, of the objectivity of science, and the nature of…

  • Why Govern?—Is, Ought, and Actionability in Mundane Governance

    Steve Woolgar, Daniel NeylandCHAPTERMundane Governance Ontology And…2013

    Chapter 4 builds on the analysis of accountability, classification, and ontologically moral constitution of governable people and things, by considering the place of evidence in mundane governance. It focuses on the work of a local authority in constituting evidence of the recycling habits of the local population. Evidence, the ‘facts’ of recycling, cannot be separated from its morality; the move to constitute metrics for the actions of the local…

  • Mundane Governance: Ontology and Accountability

    Steve Woolgar, Stephen William Woolgar et al.BOOKMundane Governance Ontology And…2013Cited by: 6

    What is to be made of the outcry when newly issued recycling "wheelie" bins are discovered to contain microchips for weighing and evaluating householders' rubbish? The angry accusations that speed cameras are generating excessive income for the government? The consternation at the measures taken by airports to heighten security in the wake of the increased threat of terrorist attacks? These increasingly widespread reactions to ordinary events and…

  • Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts

    Bruno Latour, Steve WooIgar et al.BOOKLaboratory Life2013Cited by: 619

  • The wrong bin bag: A turn to ontology in science and technology studies

    Open AccessSteve Woolgar, Javier LezaunARTICLESocial Studies of Science2013Cited by: 210References: 13

    There is in science and technology studies a perceptible new interest in matters of 'ontology'. Until recently, the term 'ontology' had been sparingly used in the field. Now it appears to have acquired a new theoretical significance and lies at the centre of many programmes of empirical investigation. The special issue to which this essay is a contribution gathers a series of enquiries into the ontological and reflects, collectively, on the value…

  • Technologies of ironic revelation: Enacting Consumers in Neuromarkets

    Tanja Schneider, Steve WoolgarARTICLEConsumption Markets & Culture2012Cited by: 11References: 37

    Neuroscience is increasingly considered a possible basis for new business and management practices. A prominent example of this trend is neuromarketing – a relatively new form of market and consumer research that applies neuroscience to marketing by employing brain imaging or measurement technology to anticipate consumers’ response to, for instance, products, packaging or advertising. In this paper, we draw attention to the ways in which certain …

  • Does STS Mean Business

    Open AccessSteve Woolgar, Catelijne Coopmans et al.ARTICLEOrganization2009

    In recent years Science and Technology Studies (STS) has been subject to various uses and transformations, especially as STS has been appropriated within new contexts, including management studies and business schools.1 This paper examines the nature and consequences of these moves whereby STS comes into contact with Organization and Management Studies (OMS)2 and of the shifts of STS into business schools and into business and man-agement environ…

  • What happened to provocation in science and technology studies

    Steve WoolgarARTICLEHistory and Technology2004

    Science and technology studies (STS) is an important and often controversial interdisciplinary field which has proved to be provocative and influential. But has its institutionalization and influence occurred at the expense of some of its provocative power? This paper considers the fate of provocative ideas associated with STS as they become appropriated and transformed by new social institutions and audiences. It aims to sketch a preliminary fra…

  • Marketing ideas

    Steve WoolgarARTICLEEconomy and Society2004Cited by: 8References: 7

    There is a pressing need better to understand the relative merits of emerging ideas and their contexts of generation. However, it is important to point out that the enterprise is needlessly disadvantaged if we unthinkingly adopt certain implicit assumptions about the nature of ideas. This short paper aims to clarify the consequences of our reliance upon such assumptions. It sets out to do this by positing three broadly differing perspectives on t…

  • Virtual Society?: Technology, Cyberbole, Reality

    Steve WoolgarBOOKVirtual society?2002

    This book investigates the precise effects on society of the new and much vaunted electronic technologies (ICTs). All aspects of our social, cultural, economic, and political life stand to be affected by their continued massive growth, but are fundamental shifts already taking place in the way in which we behave, organize, and interact as a direct result of the new technologies? The contributors to the volume argue that their transformative effec…