Having attended graduate school when constructivism reigned supreme in sociological accounts of science, and then rebelling against it later, I was struck by a recent post to the Penn HSS blog on the rise of neo-institutional sociology of science:
[C]onstructivist sociology of science offers case-based analysis celebrating contingency and locality, favors archival and ethnographic methods, emphasizes agency over structure, and often focuses on issues related to epistemology and knowledge. Neo-institutionalism, on the other hand, searches for patterns over time and space, is more enthusiastic about using statistical and quantitative methods, emphasizes how structure can constrain actors, and returns in part to a sociology of scientists and organizations that was more characteristic of the pre-constructivist, Mertonian era.
Hmmm. Doesn't sound like a bad thing.
[To the tune of David Pack, "Think Of U (Song 4 Kaitlyn)," from the album "The Secret Of Movin' On".]
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