ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2005

Returning the Kingdom to the King

A Post-Constructivist Response to the Critique of Positivism

Kristin Asdal
University of Oslo, Norway

abstract: Crying out for more science does not solve all problems; rather, it makes
it easy to shrug off responsibility for them. This is rightly pointed out by the
influential Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim in his critique of positivist
science. The critique of positivism in itself is to steer clear of problems that we all
ought to be addressing. In confronting Skjervheims critique of positivism with
post-constructivism, this article deals with social sciences circumvention of the
natureculture relationship.

keywords: actornetwork theory critique of positivism Bruno Latour

politics of nature post-constructivism science studies Hans Skjervheim
sociology of knowledge

Introduction
Not all problems are solved by calling for more science; on the contrary, calls for more science
make it easy for us to shrug off responsibility for problems that we have good reason to
address. This is rightly pointed out by the influential Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim
in his critique of positivist science ([1958] 1992: 145). In this article, however, the aim is to
demonstrate that the critique of positivism itself makes us avoid problems that we all ought
to address. I argue that the critique of positivism has helped reify, even legitimize, certain types
of nature and conceptions of science. The critique of positivism may serve as an excuse for the
social sciences to defend a room of their own thus not relating to natural science and the
politics of nature.
The critique of positivism is still an important challenge to the social sciences, and rightly so,
it has been argued (Mjset, 2003: 23). However, Mjset argues that the critique of positivism
should itself be challenged for the benefit of further improvement. This article follows up on
this notion. In confronting Skjervheims critique of positivism with the post-constructivist
author Bruno Latour, the aim is to address what Mjset in a different context has described as
social sciences circumvention of the natureculture relationship ([1998] 2002: 321).

An anti-positivist programme for distinguishing between the natural

and human sciences
In Norway, the critique of positivism is intimately linked with the philosopher Hans
Skjervheim, who was the first in the Norwegian post-war period to give a systematic and well-
considered philosophical critique of positivism (Tjnneland, 2003: 49). According to Jrgen

Acta Sociologica September 2005 Vol 48(3): 253261 DOI: 10.1177/0001699305056566

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Acta Sociologica 48(3)

Habermas, however, he was also important in the theoretical development on the international
scene. Skjervheim is credited for being the first to work through the problematic of Verstehen
in the social sciences what Anthony Giddens later spoke of as double hermeneutic
(Habermas [1981] 1984: 11012).
When the international debate on positivism and its critics was edited by Peter Halfpenny
and Peter McMylor in a three-volume English edition in the 1990s, part of Skjervheims early
work was included and classified under the subtitle The German Critics (Halfpenny and
McMylor, 1994). The positivist critique of Skjervheim should certainly be understood within
a German tradition of opposition to the unity of science thesis in which the stress was on the
distinction between the natural and the cultural sciences (ibid.: xiv). A crucial part of
Skjervheims anti-positivist programme was to explain and justify the fundamental distinc-
tion between the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the human sciences, on the other.
Moreover, his work underscores the distinction between people and animals, people and
nature. One of the most important differences between people and animals is that people have
language, writes Skjervheim in his best known essay Deltakar og tilskodar [Participant and
observer] ([1957] 2002: 20).1
Not only does this critique of positivism leave nature to the natural sciences, nature is also
conceptualized in a particular way as something out there independent of the theories
we have about it and the relationships we enter into with natural phenomena:
Natural objects are what they are, fully independent of what we as laymen, natural scientists, or tech-
nicians happen to think about them. Creating new theories about nature does not mean that nature
about which we create these theories changes as a result of these theories. Of course, on the basis
of these theories we can technologically intervene in natural processes and thus create a change, but
all these interventions are exogenous, they are in a way external. (Skjervheim [1964] 2002: 93)
Human and social sciences are different, it is argued. As humans we are not what we are,
independent of our theories. In contrast to the natural sciences, the social sciences entail an
internal relationship between their theories and what these theories are about. For Skjervheim,
theories about humans take part in constituting what people are (Gilje and Grimen, 1992: 20).
It is through this thesis that Skjervheim gives the social sciences their ontological basis. A
theory about society is thus not exogenous in relation to its subject, as it is with the natural
sciences according to Skjervheims thinking. The social sciences are an institution within
society in contrast to natural science, which remains external to its object.

A king without a kingdom?

Skjervheim has been described as a philosopher of praxis, and the way in which this form of
philosophy conceives society as a constructed normative community, an arrangement that can
also be reconstructed through the experience of the subjects, has been pointed out (Slagstad,
1998: 413). But how much room is left for practice, for action, given such a position and
critique? How much room for action can be given before it can be called technocratic, posi-
tivist or naturalist (Myklebust, 1999: 18)? One could argue that focusing exclusively on the
human subject and matters of language leaves little room for anything to act on and with.
It is perhaps in the introduction to one of the later editions of Skjervheims work that, unin-
tentionally, we have come closest to expressing this problem: Skjervheim moved the fence posts,
it is stated, or, rather, he moved the fence posts back to where they originally were before they
were put in the wrong place (Aarnes, 1996: 31). It is the fence posts of philosophy that are
referred to. Skjervheim brought back to philosophy that which had been stolen by positivism:
The pioneers of positivism pushed the limits of science, intoxicated by research and progress. Nothing
was to be foreign to science; in principle, it had a monopoly on all there was. This is how it came to

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 Asdal: Returning the Kingdom to the King

push philosophy out of its domain until philosophy was left, stripped, like a king without a kingdom.
(Aarnes, 1996: 31)

The author is surely right in his argument that Skjervheim reset the fence posts. But wasnt it
precisely the king without a kingdom that philosophy was left with? Didnt the king remain
without a kingdom? Today, this may be a serious point of contention in this version of the
critique of positivism: People stand alone without land, water, technology, even nature and
the material world. It is humans and humans alone, who remain in Skjervheims oceans.
Nature remains a given and left to the natural sciences along with a view of science based
on natural science being a purely positivist discipline that describes what is.
Others have pointed out that Skjervheim and the philosophical critique of positivism only
marginally dealt with natural science, its practices and epistemologies (Mjset, 1991: 175). Nils
Gilje and Harald Grimen are among those who have problematized this aspect of Skjervheims
critique of positivism further. In linking up with the linguistic turn in philosophy, they pointed
out that, from this perspective, it is no longer equally unproblematic to operate with a radical
division between language and experience. Rather, it is more the case that language and
theories are like lenses behind the eyes, they argue (Gilje and Grimen, 1992: 21). And they
add: In other words, we always see something as some thing with respect to nature, too. It
thus becomes problematic to distinguish between perception and interpretation, between the
language of observation and the language of theory. Data are always simultaneously theory
and thus a hermeneutic problem arises also within the natural sciences. Nature is not simply
what is, divorced from our theories about it. To a great extent, nature is what it is by virtue
of our theories and paradigms, they conclude, and point out that there are thus key aspects
to the philosophy of science that Skjervheim does not capture.
Post-constructivist authors, however, pick up from another angle. What unites post-
constructivist writers is their wish to discuss politics, nature and science all at the same time.
They reject the assumption of access to unmitigated nature. The problem, though, is not that
we are unable to transcend our encapsulated social reality, but rather that we have never been
within such an exclusively social reality to begin with (Rouse, 2002: 69). It is not a question of
seeing humans as above nature, but rather as co-partners in various relations with various types
of nature. It is thus another way to approach this issue than the hermeneutic perspective I
touched upon above.
Post-constructivist authors and studies in the tradition of actornetwork theory, as
developed by Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and Madeleine Akrich, conflict with the
perspective of science as a cognitive process, one that takes place in a separate world inde-
pendently of politics and interests. The type of empirical studies of scientific practice that this
has given rise to has instead attempted to explore the material aspects of science, and the
practical, interested and committed work that must take place to produce facts. Our theories
about science are not consistent with how science works in practice, it has been argued. The
aim has been to show how reality is created, i.e. made, through such practices. Neither nature
nor natural science is something given. Instead, science comprises various forms of practices
which produce new realities and new sources of power (Latour, 1988: 40). Bruno Latours well-
known method of following the actors must be seen in this connection as a philosophy of
praxis which not only includes the action of humans, but also a desire to look into what these
different actors do, instead of simply accepting what it is said that they do (Latour, 1987: 15).
Instead of empirical research exploring how natural science produces facts, we have been
content with the scientists own theories about their activities, the argument goes. As Latour
writes:
Social scientists have gone on cherishing what they attacked, but they never went, with their methods
and principles, with their queries and interests, to ask questions inside the very heart of atomic

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Acta Sociologica 48(3)

physics, biology, cosmology, ecology, engineering, geology, and so on. Everything has been studied
by social scientists [. . .] everything, that is, except laboratories, executive rooms, computers, engineers,
and weapon systems. The periphery is studied the margin, not the centers; the social, not the natural
and the technical; the soft, not the hard. (1991a: 6)
One of the arguments stemming from these empirical studies of scientific work is that scien-
tific practices are far more transparent and heterogeneous than the philosophy of science has
postulated. Another is that, to the degree that science works, it is not through a unique form
of reasoning or instrumental rationality, but through the work performed to produce the facts
and to introduce new objects created by science.
Interestingly enough, Latour later formulated the laboratory approach and the actor
network theory, in direct contrast to the established dichotomies of the philosophical critique
of positivism:
But what I want to stress now is this: in spite of the vast number of borderline cases, so far, political
philosophy itself has not reconsidered the boundary between the social and natural sciences. There
is, social theory insists, a real, useful, and important difference between those who deal with the
human and those who deal with the non-human. The newspapers may be filled with counterexam-
ples happily conflating technical, scientific, ethical, and political issues, ranging from the rain forest
to the ozone layer hole gaping over the Antarctic; but this is not a reason, sociologists argue, to
abandon the dichotomy between society and nature. Some, like Jrgen Habermas, devote most of
their efforts to making this dichotomy stronger, not weaker. (Latour, 1991a: 45)2
Before Latour continues with this form of critique, he gives this dichotomy a certain justifi-
cation by referring to its historical necessity, or, in any case, to its usefulness:
Originally, they had good reasons for maintaining this dichotomy; it was a way of defending them-
selves, in the nineteenth century, against the arrogant, triumphant, and reductionist belief in positivist
scientific method. If departments of history, sociology, literature, and art wanted to survive against the
growing departments of chemistry, physics, and biology, they had to safeguard their borders against
invasions. The human was their realm. To you Nature, but to us Culture! was their battle cry. (ibid.)
It is precisely this kind of demarcation that Aarnes refers to in his Skjervheim introduction.
Latours argument is that this form of criticism is outdated. His book, We Have Never Been
Modern, from 1991 is an attempt to do away with this kind of dichotomization. In practice,
humans and non-humans, nature and culture are indivisible, tightly woven entities that we
misguidedly try hard to separate through our single-discipline theories, he argues.

From laboratory studies to political ecology

In 1999, Bruno Latour published Politiques de la Nature. Comment faire entrer les sciences en dmoc-
ratie a book that even in its title refers to environmental debates or political ecology. But a
number of his earlier works, including Nous navons jamais t modernes (1991b), see todays
environmental crises as reasons for rethinking the distinction between nature and society.3 In
other words, how can we address problems of this type if we continue to see the world around
us as fundamentally split in two, where those labelled cultural or social scientists have a choice
of only two alternatives: either leave the field to natural science and take their conceptions of
nature for granted, or go to the opposite extreme and argue that environmental problems are
social constructions and can thus be reduced to the interested parties, the social power
struggle, that lies behind the scenes.
What Latour attempts to do is insist on not excluding objects, the material, natural objects,
while struggling to keep his balance in order not to fall into one of the two well-worn paths
described above. The philosophy of science has long shown that we have no direct access to
nature, but this does not justify the social-constructivist argument, writes Latour in Politiques
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 Asdal: Returning the Kingdom to the King

de la nature ([1999] 2004: 68), addressing the social-constructivist position with an argument
about the historicity of natural objects: the subtext of the social constructivists is that nature
has not changed at all. The more we insist on the social constructivist argument with respect
to nature, the more we avoid addressing what has actually happened with the nature that we
have abandoned to science and the scientists (Latour, [1999] 2004: 52).
Latour questions not just our ideas of nature, but also our idea of being human. From
Latours standpoint, or more generally the standpoint of the actornetwork theory he helped
develop, a person cannot be understood as a free, autonomous being. We enter into relation-
ships with things and with natural objects and, more than that: This is how we become
human that is, not just through ethical reflections about being human, in relations with fellow
humans, as Skjervheims position seems to imply. What would a human be, responds Latour,
without elephants, plants, lions, cereals, oceans, ozone, or plankton? A human alone, much
more alone even than Robinson Crusoe on his island. Less than a human. Certainly not a
human (1998: 235).
Latours position therefore implies a confrontation with humanism, but not to substitute it
with a towering, superior nature or Nature in the singular definitive form. On the
contrary, Latours argument is that political ecology has nothing to do with Nature as such,
and political ecology has never been about nature unsullied by human hands. Instead, it is
about infinite ties or connections that always lead to human participation in one form or
another. Thus, for Latour, it is not about Nature, but about the complicated relationships
between beings: regulations, equipment, consumers, institutions, habits, calves, cows, pigs
and broods (1998: 229). Latour argues that this has in practice fallen within political ecology,
but has not been captured by its theory about itself.
In this way, Latours point of entry and objective are thus the same as they were with respect
to the philosophy of science: Instead of taking a point of departure in the theories from natural
science or environmental activism about their own activities, he looks into their actual
practices. He intends to show that nature, or science, with complete authority and
hegemony does not exist. For Latour, just as for his colleague Michel Callon, it is rather a
question of revealing this lack of hegemony and what they have chosen to describe as rich
confusion (Callon and Latour, 1992: 361), that is the various ways humans and non-humans,
objects, nature and people are intertwined.
Latours provocative standpoint is that if there is one aspect that the ecological movement
is forced to accept, it is that it has never had anything to do with Nature in its singular, defin-
itive form. Indeed, those who talk about the death of nature do not know how right they are,
according to Latour. There was never any Nature, but rather a number of various intercon-
necting ties, he argues, and brings it to its logical conclusion by arguing that political ecology
is what has finally separated us from Nature and that is not all. For Latour, it is precisely
these various kinds of relations with nature-objects that make political ecology an interesting
and important political strategy. Because what the environmental movement does, according
to Latour, and what he himself applauds, is to challenge our dead certainty about how we
should enter into relationships with non-humans. In practice, environmental activists do not
do this by defending Nature. It is always this invertebrate, this part of the river, this garbage
dump or that land regulation plan that is the object of concern, protection, criticism or political
protest (Latour, 1998: 2223).
This confrontation with science and nature in the definitive singular should be seen as an
attempt to democratize science and nature discussions, or, in other words: Latours objective
is to carve room for politics, where previous practices attempted to abandon politics by
referring to facts of nature or scientific facts (Latour, [1999] 2004: introduction and chapter I).
This is a crucial aspect of Latours programme, not least in his encounter with established, but
deeply problematic, environmental positions.
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Acta Sociologica 48(3)

To ascribe agency to natural objects and give various forms of nature a greater role in our
analyses and histories has been controversial leading to intense debate among sociologists
of science (see, e.g., Pickering, 1992: chs 1013). On the other hand, these thoughts immedi-
ately give associations to one of several well-established positions in environmental debates
and environmental histories: The idea of a superorganism, GAIA, or Mother Earth that in its
value and hierarchy stands above the human individual and sees the survival of the species
as more important than the individual is, in many peoples minds, the true bugbear of political
ecology. Latours confrontation with an absolute nature should be interpreted in this context.
His argument is twofold: First, the absolute does not exist. Second, even if it did, our ability
to capture it would depend on an expert power that would rise above politics and the popular
majority that is, an undemocratic solution not possible to live with. Thus Latours contri-
bution to the social sciences is to bring nature in in its plural, indefinite form at the expense
of Nature, but for the good of politics.

The critique of positivism expanded to apply to nature?

Post-constructivist works, represented here by Bruno Latour, argue in favour of taking far
more seriously what they also try to demonstrate empirically: that humans do not live and
breathe among human subjects alone, nor should we study them as such. Human interaction
is about encounters of a far more heterogeneous nature than with humans alone.
Would it thus be correct to say that post-constructivism is about expanding the critique of
positivism to also apply to encounters with nature? In one sense, this assertion makes sense,
not the least for a prominent post-constructivist author like Donna Haraway.
As I have touched upon already, the philosophical critique of positivism is concerned with
language and meaning. Even if Skjervheim had taken the hermeneutic problem in the natural
sciences into account, within his framework the crucial difference would still be that within
the natural sciences one is not in a situation of intersubjectivity, that the other is there both
as an object for me and as another subject with me (Skjervheim, 1959: 36). Haraways use of
the notion of articulation can be seen as exactly a kind of twist to move this aspect of the
critique of positivism and make it apply also for the ways in which we relate to and study
nature. As she argues: what we have tended to name passive nature has often turned out to
be social actors with agency. Thus Haraway, drawing on feminist theory, criticizes humanism
for exactly this reason; putting ourselves in the centre as the only ones with agency (1991: 297).
At the same time, such an equation could serve to obscure important differences. Authors
such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour both attempt to capture difference, that which is
something other than us. Haraway explicitly objects to claims that the challenge lies in
ascribing natural subjects in general and animals in particular status as human subjects
([1992] 1995: 84). When it comes to Bruno Latour, he has been previously criticized by
Haraway for almost the opposite: For giving natural objects too little room and power of
agency at the expense of an interest in how human actors, not to mention men, gather
resources and delegate competences and are thus always put in the centre of the networks that
are made the object of study (1991: 3312; 1997: 345).
There is another difference between the philosophical critique of positivism and the philo-
sophical critique of Bruno Latour which is important to underline for the purpose of the
argument of this article. Skjervheim is concerned with drawing the boundaries between the
social and the natural sciences, between nature and humans, philosophically, before doing
empirical studies. Latour and his post-constructivist colleagues urge us to be more radically
open on these matters. Instead of deciding beforehand who can have agency and who not, it
would be far more interesting to explore the ways in which agency can be achieved (Latour,
1987: 72). Thus, within this way of working one has been concerned with the ways in which
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 Asdal: Returning the Kingdom to the King

the apparatuses of science and technology take part in enabling agency. More than exploring
the human as opposed to the non-human, the issue is rather exploring the work it takes for
any entity, human or non-human, to have a stand, to be counted, to be represented, to be
connected with others. Thus the post-constructivist approach implies a more radically
empirical as well as historicizing approach, which also applies to nature and natural science,
than there appears to be room for in Skjervheims works.
In the introduction to this article I stated that my intention was to follow up on Mjsets
ambition of challenging the critique of positivism. However, my take on this might be
considered to be the complete opposite from what Mjset himself argues. In his article, he
presents seven theses, the seventh and final one of which is an invitation to follow up the
critique of positivism with a critique of constructivism (Mjset, 2003: 39). His argument for
doing so, however, is for the benefit of precisely what Latour and Haraway are arguing for;
to retrieve nature as something else, or more, than simply a social construction.
Here lies the reason I have chosen the label post-constructivism instead of constructivism.
The label is adopted from the philosopher Joseph Rouse (2002: 6078), who applies it to
authors such as Donna Haraway. I have expanded it to apply also to Bruno Latour (Asdal,
2003: 6074). I chose this label to avoid confusing the concept of constructivism with social
constructivism, that is, the assumption that everything can be reduced to the social or the
human. It is also an attempt to sidestep the somewhat futile debate between realism and
constructivism. Like Joseph Rouse, my position is that this kind of discussion has become void
of meaning. It is thus imperative to channel this discussion in another direction to allow room
to explore what the constructivist works themselves argue and what this can possibly mean
for the concrete studies of science, nature and politics.
In several essays, mainly in his later essays, Skjervheim himself took an interest in ecolog-
ical problems ([1971] 1996; [1979] 1996; [1991a] 1996; [1991b] 1996). He even argued in favour
of studying these issues, natural science included, more closely. In this respect, both the
critique and history of science were of importance, not the least, he argued, because technique
and natural science today has lost its innocence ([1991a] 1996: 202).
Skjervheim himself, however, did not really integrate these issues with any further explo-
ration of the practices or implications of natural science. Skjervheims critique of positivism
never developed into a non-positivist practice and may be said to have an unresolved relation
with empirical research (Brenna et al., 1995: 1023; Srb, 2002: 356; Mjset, 2003: 28). The
argument of this article has been that post-constructivist authors may serve as fruitful
resources for handling this challenge: taking nature and its problems into account within a
non-positivist sociology. The post-constructivist literature, however, should not be read as
ready-made tools or complete theories, but rather as ongoing experiments for exploring
natureculture relations more openly than either the critique of positivism or expanding
notions of the social allow for.

Notes
1. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the Norwegian are my own.
2. Although Latour formulates his project here in contrast to the critique of positivism, this does not
mean that actornetwork theory was developed in response.
3. See also Latour (1993), which is a criticism of the work by French philosopher Luc Ferry (1992) and
Latour (1995). A more recent version of the latter article is translated and published in Noel Castree
and Bruce Baum (1998).

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Biographical Note: Kristin Asdal (dr. art) is a senior researcher at the Centre for Technology, Innovation
and Culture, University of Oslo. Her publications in English include: The Problematic Nature of
Nature. The Post-Constructivist Challenge to Environmental History (History and Theory 42 (4): 2003)
and Re-inventing Politics of the State: Science and the Politics of Resistance, in K. Asdal, B. Brenna
and I. Moser (eds) Technoscientific Cultures: The Politics of Interventions (Liber/CBS: forthcoming 2005).
She has published extensively on knowledge traditions within Norwegian environmental politics,
including Politikkens teknologier. Produksjoner av regjerlig natur (Unipub, Oslo 2004) and Knappe ressurser?
konomenes grep om miljfeltet (Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1998).
Address: Senter for teknologi, innovasjon og kultur, Universitetet i Oslo, P.O. Box 1108 Blindern,
NO-0317 Oslo, Norway. [email: Kristin.Asdal@tik.uio.no]

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