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Publications (10 of 21) Show all publications
Coopmans, C. (2021). Learning from fakes: a relational approach. In: Steve Woolgar, Else Vogel, David Moats, Claes Fredrik Helgesson (Ed.), The imposter as social theory: thinking with gatecrashers, cheats and charlatans (pp. 77-102). Bristol: Bristol University Press, Sidorna 77-102
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Learning from fakes: a relational approach
2021 (English)In: The imposter as social theory: thinking with gatecrashers, cheats and charlatans / [ed] Steve Woolgar, Else Vogel, David Moats, Claes Fredrik Helgesson, Bristol: Bristol University Press , 2021, Vol. Sidorna 77-102, p. 77-102Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Imposters, as the contributions to this volume show, are promising?figures to think with. Such thinking can take multiple forms and deliver?various kinds of pay-offs for how we make sense of socio-material?relations, of society. This chapter is about non-human imposters.?The pay-off it aims to deliver comes from putting these ‘imitations?of something cared about’ at the centre of the analysis, as protagonists?rather than receptacles or intermediaries of the action. Doing this?allows us to let them teach us – chiefly about two things: (1) what, in a?given setting, is valued, and (2) how deception and its interception are?distributed across ever-changing socio-material alliances.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-181524 (URN)9781529213102 (ISBN)9781529213072 (ISBN)
Available from: 2021-11-30 Created: 2021-11-30 Last updated: 2022-03-31Bibliographically approved
Coopmans, C. & Tan, M. A. (2018). On ‘Asian’ Distinctiveness and Race as a Variable: The Case of Ophthalmic Epidemiology in Singapore. Science Technology & Society, 23(2), 252-270
Open this publication in new window or tab >>On ‘Asian’ Distinctiveness and Race as a Variable: The Case of Ophthalmic Epidemiology in Singapore
2018 (English)In: Science Technology & Society, ISSN 0971-7218, E-ISSN 0973-0796, Vol. 23, no 2, p. 252-270Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The notion that Singapore’s multi-ethnic population provides a unique and quintessentially ‘Asian’ assetfor its biomedical sciences initiative has been part of the discourse in local and international mediacoverage of that sector. It has also been highlighted by scholars as a feature of Singapore’s politicaleconomy. This article discusses how ‘racial/ethnic difference’ was initially central but then becameperipheral to one high-profile research programme: the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Disease (SEED)Study Programme. The case study is offered as an example of the flexible deployment and situationalenactment of racial/ethnic difference in biomedical science, by demonstrating how it gets entangledwith and disentangled from the creation of scientific capital and legitimacy, as well as complicates thenotion of ‘Asian’ science.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
SAGE Publications India, 2018
Keywords
ophthalmology, race, ethnicity, epidemiology, scientific capital, Singapore
National Category
International Migration and Ethnic Relations
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-151372 (URN)10.1177/0971721818762865 (DOI)000432125900005 ()
Available from: 2018-09-18 Created: 2018-09-18 Last updated: 2019-01-14Bibliographically approved
Coopmans, C. (2018). Respect for Numbers: Lively Forms and Accountable Engaging in Multiple Registers of STS. Science & Technology Studies, 31(4), 109-126, Article ID 56747.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Respect for Numbers: Lively Forms and Accountable Engaging in Multiple Registers of STS
2018 (English)In: Science & Technology Studies, E-ISSN 2243-4690, Vol. 31, no 4, p. 109-126, article id 56747Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper explores an episode of numbers appearing on a screen and being read/spoken, looked at and received as numbers, by people who work together to achieve a particular goal. The events happened in Singapore, in 2012-2013, as part of periodic reporting on diabetic retinopathy screening in the context of efforts to innovate such screening. I tell of two parties at odds over how to engage numbers accountably. This question of ‘engagement’, of what can and should be done with numbers to secure their participation in organizational affairs, is worked out in how numerical forms are performed and sustained as working numbers. Using three STS analytics to analyse the episode – Helen Verran’s(2001) work on number as a relation of unity/plurality, John Law’s (1994) work on modes of ordering, and Steve Woolgar and Daniel Neyland’s (2013) work on mundaneity and accountability – I argue that numbers are brought to life in very different ways, each mobilizing a certain recognition of what numbers are and what it takes to respect this. In the conclusion, I comment on the article’s use and juxtaposition of these STS analytics, using the metaphor of a kaleidoscope.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Tampere, Finland: Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies, 2018
Keywords
numbers, accountability, engagement, symmetry, STS theory
National Category
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-154421 (URN)10.23987/sts.56747 (DOI)000453308800007 ()
Available from: 2019-02-11 Created: 2019-02-11 Last updated: 2020-07-06Bibliographically approved
Rappert, B., Colombetti, G. & Coopmans, C. (2017). What is absent from contemplative neuroscience?: Rethinking limits within the study of consciousness, experience, and meditation. Journal of consciousness studies, 24(5-6), 199-225
Open this publication in new window or tab >>What is absent from contemplative neuroscience?: Rethinking limits within the study of consciousness, experience, and meditation
2017 (English)In: Journal of consciousness studies, ISSN 1355-8250, E-ISSN 2051-2201, Vol. 24, no 5-6, p. 199-225Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In conveying experiences of meditation, the question of what exceeds or should resist description has been a recurrent topic of commentary in a wide array of literature -- including religious doctrine, meditation guides (secular and religious), and contextual accounts written by historians and social scientists. Yet, to date, this question has not significantly informed neuroscientific studies on the effects of meditation on brain and behaviour, in large part -- but not wholly -- because of the disregard for first-person accounts of experience that still characterizes neuroscience in general. By juxtaposing perspectives from non-neuroscientific accounts on the tensions and questions raised by what is and is not expressed or expressible in words, this article paves the way for a new set of possibilities in experimental contemplative neuroscience.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Imprint Academic, 2017
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-153850 (URN)000402851400010 ()
Available from: 2019-01-14 Created: 2019-01-14 Last updated: 2019-01-17Bibliographically approved
Rappert, B., Coopmans, C. & Colombetti, G. (2016). Meditations on silence: The (non-)conveying of the experiential in scientific accounts of Buddhist meditation. In: Felicity Mellor, Stephen Webster (Ed.), The Silences of Science: Gaps and Pauses in the Communication of Science, 1st Edition (pp. 193-218). Routledge
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Meditations on silence: The (non-)conveying of the experiential in scientific accounts of Buddhist meditation
2016 (English)In: The Silences of Science: Gaps and Pauses in the Communication of Science, 1st Edition / [ed] Felicity Mellor, Stephen Webster, Routledge, 2016, p. 193-218Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This volume attends to an under-appreciated aspect of science communication: its silences.1 As discussed in the Introduction, one way of opening up silence as a phenomenon is to note that what counts as silence can vary across situations. Just when the absence of sound becomes treated as ‘silence’ varies depending on whether one is listening to the radio, working in an open plan office, at home enjoying a cup of tea before bed, or talking with a friend over the phone. Thus, the question ‘What is silence?’ needs to give way to questions like ‘Silent for whom?’ ‘When?’ and ‘In what manner?’ Silences are enacted in specific contexts and also help to define those contexts. Being produced through contingent and situated practices, silences come in many forms: what goes without saying, what is unspeakable, what has been censored, what is known but not sayable, and so on. Accordingly, to be silent can be recognized as a way of demonstrating deference or defiance, understanding or lack of understanding, giving or avoiding offence, as well as displaying or suppressing emotion. In this respect, silences are pregnant with possibilities. In this chapter we develop these points by exploring the struggle to render present what is considered silent in a specific context: the recent (renewed) attempts to scientifically demonstrate the effects of Buddhist meditation on the human brain and behaviour. Silence and meditation seem natural companions: through stilling the body and quieting the mind, people create the conditions for experiencing what is happening in the present moment. Yet silence, in various guises, also mediates accounts about meditation, which must grapple with how best to do it justice as a kind of practice. Efforts to convey what meditation ‘is’ face a number of tensions deriving from the idea that the best, and ultimately only, way of knowing it is through first-hand experience. By shifting the focus from ‘telling’ to ‘showing’, scientific approaches using brain imaging and other physiological methods have expanded the possibilities for conveying meditation experiences. In the process, these approaches invite, necessitate and shape particular forms of silence. Overall, we are interested in how silences work across and in the collaboration between the varied traditions that speak about meditation. Unlike mere gaps that hinder the development of knowledge, we argue that the interlacing of what is said and what is not said about the experiential helps cohere different traditions. In doing so, silences are consequential in helping define notions of expertise and producing forms of scientific accounting. The next section begins by introducing some of the general complications associated with describing lived experience. The third section considers how such complications play out within Buddhist contemplative traditions, indicating how and why accounting (in words) for experiences of meditation is seen as problematic. The fourth section examines scientific and popular-scientific accounts of neuroimaging and other experimental studies on the effects of meditation, in particular by attending to the case of a Tibetan Buddhist meditator who has assumed a high prominence. In this examination, we focus on what is not present in write-ups of experiments and on the manner in which the lived experience of meditators is rendered present and absent in such accounts. The final section surveys how accounts of lived experience of meditation have been positioned within the fields of neuroscience and so-called ‘neurophenomenology’ in the last few years and how this might develop in future.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2016
National Category
Other Humanities
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-153851 (URN)9781472459978 (ISBN)9781315609102 (ISBN)
Available from: 2019-11-08 Created: 2019-11-08 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved
Rappert, B. & Coopmans, C. (2015). On conveying and not conveying expertise. Social Studies of Science, 45(4), 611-619
Open this publication in new window or tab >>On conveying and not conveying expertise
2015 (English)In: Social Studies of Science, ISSN 0306-3127, Vol. 45, no 4, p. 611-619Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article attends to the movement between disclosing and non-disclosing in accounts of expertise. While referencing discussions about tacit knowledge (‘experts know more than they can say’) and the politics of non-disclosure (‘withholding can help as well as harm the credibility of experts’), in the main it considers how experts move between conveying and not conveying in order to make their proficiencies recognized and accessible to others. The article examines this movement through a form that partakes in it, thus drawing attention to conventions and tensions in how authors make themselves accountable, and their subject matter available, to audiences. It thereby proposes to explore the possibilities of careful, and generative, non-disclosure as part of expert writing practices.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2015
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-153852 (URN)10.1177/0306312715595297 (DOI)
Available from: 2019-11-08 Created: 2019-11-08 Last updated: 2019-11-08Bibliographically approved
Coopmans, C. & Button, G. (2014). Eyeballing Expertise. Social Studies of Science, 44(5), 758-785
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Eyeballing Expertise
2014 (English)In: Social Studies of Science, ISSN 0306-3127, E-ISSN 1460-3659, Vol. 44, no 5, p. 758-785Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

‘Tacit’ and ‘explicit’ knowledge, and their relation to expertise, have a long-standing importance within social studies of science and technology. At the centre of the development of thinking about these topics has been the work of Harry Collins and Robert Evans. In this article, we bring to bear observations of the work of people involved in grading eye disease, and their seeming display of expertise, tacit and explicit knowledge, on three thrusts identified in the work of Collins, and Collins and Evans. These thrusts are the following: (1) a concern with the appearance of tacit knowledge in the activities of experts, (2) a commitment to studying expertise as ‘real’ and substantive rather than attributed, and (3) a commitment to promoting the recognition and fostering the management of expertise by providing analytical distinctions regarding expertise and its reliance on tacit knowledge. By considering what is involved in the work of grading eyes, we relocate the interest in tacit and explicit knowledge, and their bearing on expertise, in how expert knowledge is displayed and made recognizable in and through courses of action and interaction.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2014
Keywords
diabetic retinopathy, expertise, explicit knowledge, medical imaging, tacit knowledge
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-151379 (URN)10.1177/0306312714531472 (DOI)
Available from: 2018-09-18 Created: 2018-09-18 Last updated: 2019-01-14
Neyland, D. & Coopmans, C. (2014). Visual accountability. Sociological Review, 62(1), 1-23
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Visual accountability
2014 (English)In: Sociological Review, ISSN 0038-0261, Vol. 62, no 1, p. 1-23Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In this article, we draw attention to the way in which accountability relations are manifested in and through the use of visual evidence. Through their status as representations of what is the case, evidentiary visual images frequently provide a basis for giving accounts and for raising questions regarding distributions of accountability. At the same time, and in a similar manner to numbers (Munro, 2001), such images become part of organized relations of accountability that can be noted as having ‘hailing’ effects: they call for and prefigure a certain kind of response and dispersing of responsibility. Here we examine how the use of visual evidence is embedded in discursive and material practices that variously create or inhibit possibilities for questioning, or interrogating, this evidence. Drawing on elements of ethnomethodology and actor-network theory, we use ‘interrogation’ as the basis for depicting a three-part analytical schema focused on opening up, closing down and temporality to explore how visual accountability is worked out in surveillance, traffic management and breast screening images.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2014
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-153854 (URN)10.1111/1467-954X.12110 (DOI)
Available from: 2019-11-08 Created: 2019-11-08 Last updated: 2019-11-08Bibliographically approved
Coopmans, C. (2014). Visual analytics as artful revelation. In: Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael E. Lynch and Steve Woolgar (Ed.), Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited: (pp. 37-59). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Visual analytics as artful revelation
2014 (English)In: Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited / [ed] Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael E. Lynch and Steve Woolgar, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014, p. 37-59Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This chapter explores how relations between seeing and knowing are articulated in efforts to promote “visual analytics”: the practice of extracting insights from large datasets with the help of on-screen, interactive displays of trends, outliers and other patterns. The focus is on online seminars organized by a software vendor, in which experienced business users demonstrate their practices to a less experienced audience. The chapter discusses how the idea that visual analytics can “reveal” insights is both manifested and qualified on these occasions. The user practices on display convey to audiences the impression that specific insights inhere in data and can be visually apprehended. Paradoxically, the demonstrations simultaneously render such insights conditional and elusive. The chapter characterizes this paradox as “artful revelation,” and proposes that it is rhetorically powerful in helping to foster imaginaries of, and investments in, data-driven discovery.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014
Series
Inside Technology
Keywords
visual analytics, data visualization, software demonstrations
National Category
Social Sciences Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-151377 (URN)9780262525381 (ISBN)
Available from: 2018-09-18 Created: 2018-09-18 Last updated: 2019-01-14Bibliographically approved
Coopmans, C., Vertesi, J., Lynch, M. & Woolgar, S. W. (2013). Introduction; Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited. In: Woolgar, Stephen William;Vertesi, Janet;Coopmans, Catelijne & Lynch, Michael (Ed.), Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited: (pp. 1-14). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Introduction; Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited
2013 (English)In: Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited / [ed] Woolgar, Stephen William;Vertesi, Janet;Coopmans, Catelijne & Lynch, Michael, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013, p. 1-14Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

   A new series of essays that sets the bar for the study of representation in science in the twenty-first century. Chapters span a range of topics, including molecular modelling, nano-imaging, mathematical formalisms, and digital imagery in neuroscience, planetary science, and biology - as well as business data visualisation, economics diagrams and technology-mediated surgery.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013
Keywords
Scientific illustration, Visual communication in science, Representation (Philosophy), Image processing Digital techniques, Research Methodology, Science Methodology, Technology Methodology, Methodology, Vetenskap metodik, Vetenskapliga illustrationer, Digital bildbehandling, Forskningsmetodik, Visuell kommunikation
National Category
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-90896 (URN)978-02-6252-538-1 (ISBN)
Available from: 2013-04-08 Created: 2013-04-08 Last updated: 2019-01-14Bibliographically approved
Organisations
Identifiers
ORCID iD: ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-7619-5770

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