On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment

Author(s): Michel Callon and John Law

Source: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12, No. 4, Theme Section: Laboratory Studies (Nov.,
1982), pp. 615-625
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284830
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 NOTES AND LETTERS
* ABSTRACT

A way of treating interests which differs from those of both Woolgar and Barnes
is here recommended. This third 'enrolment' or 'networking' theory approach
notes that actors attempt to enlist one another in a variety of different ways,
including the transformation of imputed interests. Some of the strategies
adopted in this process are considered. Overall, it is suggested that interests
should not be imputed to actors as background causes of action, but rather that
they should be seen as attempts to define and enforce contingent forms of social
order on the part of actors themselves.

On Interests and their Transformation:

Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment

Michel Callon and

John Law

The recent debate between Woolgar, Barnes and MacKenzie' once

more demonstrates (were any such demonstration necessary) the
importance of the notion of social interest for the social study of
science. It also admirably explores two possible positions in rela-
tion to this concept. The choice at present on offer is (roughly) this.
On the one hand, there is the Edinburgh approach, which
unselfconsciously uses a language of naturalism to ask us to
understand why scientific culture grows in the way in which it does,
by postulating the operation of background interests. The pro-
tagonists of this method readily agree that interests are theoretical
constructs reflexively imputed to data, but argue that there is
nothing obnoxious about this imputation so long as it is understood

Social Studies of Science (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), Vol. 12 (1982), 615-25
616 Social Studies of Science

that there can be nothing final about this (and all other) ex-
planatory attempts. On the other hand, there is the
ethnomethodological preoccupation with the essential reflexivity of
discourse, and, accordingly, in this context, with the methods by
which interest explanations are mounted such that they achieve the
status of being descriptions of putative, externally existing, in-
fluences on knowledge. Woolgar actually considers how MacKen-
zie imputed interests in the course of his study of the different ap-
proaches adopted by Pearson and Yule to the correlation of
nominal variables, but it seems clear from his text that the imputa-
tion of interests by scientists themselves would be an equally ap-
propriate focus of study. Perhaps it is a pity that he did not adopt
the latter course which might have resulted in a less acrimonious
debate, for at least one thing is clear to us (as it is to Barnes): the
two approaches are directed by different (dare we say it?) interests
and are, at least in some respects, accordingly incommensurable.
In this Note we want to avoid a commentary on the relative
merits of these two positions. Our aim is, rather, to suggest that
there is (at least) a third way of considering the 'problem of in-
terests'. We will attempt, in the short space available, to indicate
the promise of this third 'enrolment' or 'networking' theory,3 by
showing how it can be utilized for a simple empirical case. We will
not attempt to explore it fully or to argue its superiority to existing,
well-established views.

Imputing Interests

We start with Woolgar's observation that 'scientists... can be seen

to be constantly engaged in monitoring, evaluating, at-
tributing... the potential presence or absence of interests in the
work and activities both of others and themselves'.4 This is right.
We have much data exemplifying such accounts, and present here a
few representative examples drawn from some work that Law has
done with Rob Williams on a project about the effects of a polymer
called DIVEMA on pinocytosis.5 Though the scientific details of
this work are not relevant here, it is important to know that it in-
volved collaboration between a British group of biochemists
('Chinatown') and a German team of polymer chemists
('Stiftung'). Stiftung synthesized the DIVEMAs and sent them to
Chinatown for study of their pinocytic effects. Here is Watt, the
Notes & Letters: Callon & Law: Enrolment 617

head of Chinatown, explaining to Williams early on in the project

why it was that DIVEMA in particular was chosen for study:

... we could have chosen all sorts of polymers to do this experiment with, but
having chosen one that other people have done things with will in fact make it
much easier to get it published. You can start by saying 'so and so has said this,
etc., etc., and it's interesting to find out whether DIVEMA does so and so.' 6

And here is Gladstone, the head of Stiftung, talking (primarily to

Watt) at a joint meeting of the two teams which took place towards
the end of the project, when the scientists were discussing where to
place a final draft of the paper:

It would be easy to get it into the journal here in Stiftungburg, or Fundamenta

Polymer. 'B' published some papers in this. It's not uninteresting. On the other
hand the special effect - especially if you would like to keep your title - the
people in the other area would be interested. So Cancer Quarterly sounds good
to me.7

These excerpts (and much other data besides) suggest:

(1) that, at least to some extent, interests are articulated and ex-
plored in terms of choices between courses of action;
(2) that the scientists have a conception of their own interests:
this relates to a wish to publish a joint paper describing their work
on DIVEMA and pinocytosis.
(3) that the relative value of these choices is determined in part
by an exploration of the imputed interests of other actors.
(4) that the latter exploration is conducted in part in terms of 'in-
dicators' that are taken to index imputed other interests. Claims
about the world, in other words, channel and guide 'value'. Their
'interests' are not simply desires. They are built out of actively con-
structed constraints that are recognized as limiting available op-
tions.
(5) that the above processes are mutually interdependent.
There are many questions raised by such depictions of interest
(or 'interest maps', as we shall call them), and in the present con-
text we will simply duck most of them - for instance, how they are
formed, or their analytical status.8 Other than proposing that they
are ubiquitous - that all actors are constructing interest maps all
the time - we want at present to note only this: such maps are
reductionistic simplifications of a complex social world. They at-
tribute relatively stable interests to other actors whilst ignoring
618 Social Studies of Science

endless complexities in their motives, aims and actions as practical-

ly unimportant. These, then, are working maps and not (as if such
a thing were possible) full representations of reality. Yet, at the
same time, they are not static, for they are reflexively related to ac-
tors' conceptions of their own interests. As more 'data' about the
social world are produced and made relevant (and we shall consider
the nature of such data below) so their conceptions of the interests
of both themselves and others are liable to change.9

Transforming Interests

If we might be permitted a loose metaphor, what we have so far

described can be seen as an attempt to determine the relative
'marketability' of different fields of work - and then, having
chosen one such field, to establish which journal or journals would
be most likely to 'buy' the DIVEMA work. The aim of the scien-
tists has been to determine the most 'interesting' option available.
In the pursuit of its constructed interests Chinatown has now,
however, to persuade the journal referees that the contents of the
paper are so 'interesting' that they should be published. Somehow
or other, then, the authors have to latch on to, and act upon, the
imputed interests of the readers. Analytically their position is little
different from a politician who uses argument and persuasion to in-
sist that it is in the 'interests' of this or that social group to vote in
this or that way. This parallel may be extended a little further.
There are many contributions to knowledge (just as there are many
politicians), each claiming to speak for the interests of readers (or
voters). Though the competitive element may not be experienced as
such by the scientist (and is certainly not as acute), analytically at
least, the scientist is sometimes in competition with his or her peers
for scarce journal space, particularly if publication in high status
journals is sought.
Elsewhere one of us has presented an analysis of the first
paragraph of the DIVEMA paper, albeit posed in slightly different
terms,10so we will not discuss this in detail here. Its purpose is,
however, quite simple: the paper can be seen as an attempt to
transform the interests imputed to an audience. The first paragraph
starts with the general and leads in the direction of the particular.
The argument is that those interested in chemotherapy should be
Notes & Letters: Callon & Law: Enrolment 619

interested in DIVEMA, which is thought to have chemotherapeutic

qualities, and (accordingly) in the way in which this is taken up by
cells. The paragraph acts, then, as a kind of 'funnel of interests'.
At the start it is wide - designed to 'catch' a broad range of
general interests. It then proceeds to concentrate and specify these
by means of a series of transformations, or 'translations', in which
different claims, substances or processes are equated with one
another: where, in other words, what it is in fact unlike is treated as
if it were identical.11 The outcome (it is hoped) is that many in-
terests are identified, attracted and transformed in such a way that
other actors value and utilize the research reported in the paper:
they become provisionally 'enrolled' in the scheme of the authors,
and fall into line.

Enrolling Other Actors

Barnes correctly notes that talk of interests is not to be confused

with interests themselves.12 So far we have considered only the
former and have, as it were, treated in identical terms both 'real'
Napoleons and those souls in asylums who can persuade only
themselves that they are Napoleon."3 It is now, however, time to
distinguish the formal strategies of enrolment - the allocation of
initial value to the world and the subsequent attempts to transform
that value - from the success of those strategies. It is, unfortunate-
ly, the case that the attempts of the Chinatown-Stiftung authors to
enrol their chosen journal, Cancer Quarterly, were unsuccessful.
The DIVEMA paper was rejected in the following terms:

Our referees have advised me not to accept your paper for publication on two
grounds. Firstly, that your study is only of limited relevance to cancer and
secondly, from a scientific standpoint, 'not enough attention has been paid to
the possible limitations of the assay systems employed and, in view of this fact,
the conclusions drawn may prove somewhat premature'.14

Compared with a Napoleon in the asylum this ranks as a very near

miss. It is, if we might put it this way, a failure, but a failure with
honour. The rejection letter simply says 'this is not quite interesting
enough', and 'some of your transformations are not completely ac-
ceptable'. The attempted translation of interests has failed, but on-
ly just. Chinatown readily accepted this rejection:
620 Social Studies of Science

Watt: I think we thought [this paper] was distinctly weaker [than a later one]. It
lacked interest. That was the trouble...
Dover: It was sound but very dull. There was nothing interesting. There was
nothing that would compel anyone to read it, if you like, whereas the extra infor-
mation that we've collected is [of] interest.15

In other words, as a result of the rejection, Chinatown reworked its

conception of other actors' interests, their estimate of the value of
the DIVEMA paper to other actors, and to some extent their
estimate of the value or interest of the data therein reported.16 At
the same time they subtly reworked their conception of their own
interests. They still wished to publish this material, but decided that
the best way to do so would be to supplement it with further data
on the extent to which DIVEMA itself was taken up in pino-
cytosis. 17
Had Cancer Quarterly accepted the paper for publication it
would have been enrolled. The reductionist 'map of interests' and
the transforming 'funnel of interests' would have been workable
simplifications. Other actors would have behaved as anticipated.
But they did not. There are three things to notice about this failure.
The first is that Chinatown did not grow - did not acquire, as it
might have acquired, clients. It did not succeed in ordering a larger
sector of the social world in terms of its simplifications. It did not
successfully redefine other actors' interests. On the contrary (and
this is the second point) the world became, for Chinatown, a more
difficult and constraining place. Complexity was introduced, com-
plexity which overturned the simplification. A substantial rework-
ing of the 'map of interests' was necessary for the further pursuit of
practical action. The third (and perhaps most important) point is
that the actions of Cancer Quarterly may be analyzed in exactly the
same way as those of Chinatown. Cancer Quarterly had its map
and its funnel of interests - its conception of the actors in the
social world, their interests, and how their interests might be
transformed so that other actors would fall in with its schemes. It,
too, went about attempting to enrol others in the same kind of way.
The only difference is that it succeeded whereas Chinatown failed.
Cancer Quarterly's interests were not transformed by Chinatown,
but those of Chinatown were transformed by Cancer Quarterly.
The latter latched on to other actors' interests in a more workable
1
way when the crunch came.
Notes & Letters: Callon & Law: Enrolment 621

Playing with Interests

We have chosen the Chinatown example because it is simple,

relatively self-contained and easy to follow. It allows us to reduce
the process of enrolment and counter-enrolment to its elements. It
is important to be clear that this is simply a question of the 'packag-
ing' of scientific papers - the presentation of already established
findings. The very process of the construction of knowledge is itself
amenable to a similar analysis. 19There is a case for looking at all
social and cultural change in science in this way, Despite our use of a
small-scale example, this is not a new microsociology of science.
Callon has attempted organizational and science policy studies in
the same idiom,20 and Latour, using a similar approach, has ex-
amined the 'Pasteurization' of French agricultural practice.21
Again, though Pickering does not use the term 'enrolment', it is
clear that his recent studies on the construction of interests and
their transformation in the field of high energy physics follow very
similar lines. In these he treats exemplars as 'translations' between
a subject-matter and another field of discourse in a way that is con-
sistent with what we are proposing here.22In sum, the approach is
indifferently available to the great and the small,23 because it is
precisely about how it is that the small become big (or vice versa),
and why it is that some succeed while others fail.
It will by now be clear that it stands in sharp contrast to the posi-
tions outlined by both Woolgar and Barnes. Like Woolgar, we start
from the assumption that scientists (and other agents) engage in 'in-
terest work'. Unlike Woolgar, we are not concerned with the
general explanatory form of interest explanations.24Our aim would
not be to establish a general set of rhetorical rules for the construc-
tion of imputed interests, but to discover how it is that actors enrol
one another, and why it is that some succeed whereas others do not.
Accordingly, we would, as we have tried to show, treat the attribu-
tion and attempted transformation of interests as one strategy,
albeit an important one, by which actors attempt such enrolment,25
and one of our aims would be to identify regularities in such
strategies - indeed, as we have sought to do in outline here. Our
approach would be to distinguish between workable and un-
workable imputations and transformations of interests by consider-
ing the way in which such strategies operated upon the constructed
'interest maps' of those at the receiving end.
Our overall explanatory assumptions thus tend to be somewhat
622 Social Studies of Science

closer to those of Barnes than of Woolgar. There are, however, two

major distinctions between the present programme and that ad-
vocated by Barnes. First, our approach is more concerned with
social processes than has often been the case with the 'Edinburgh'
studies. In particular, we are concerned with the manipulation and
transformatibn of interests, since we see all social interests as tem-
porarily stabilized outcomes of previous processes of enrolment.
Though it may be that for any particular study this process can only
be traced so far before a 'backcloth' of prior interests has to be
taken for granted, our aim would be to avoid attributing any
special status to that backcloth.
This, however, leads to a second and more fundamental dif-
ference. In the 'Edinburgh' studies the category of social interest is
used to organize and structure the empirical material. It is assumed
- whatever the empirical problems encountered - that it makes
explanatory sense to impute directing interests. For us, however,
this is far from clear. The theory of enrolment is concerned with the
ways in which provisional order is proposed, and sometimes
achieved. One, but only one, of the ways in which such enrolment
is attempted is via the category of interests. Actors great and small
try to persuade by telling one another that 'it is in your interests
to.. .'. They seek to define their own position in relation to others
by noting that 'it is in our interests to...'. What are they doing
when they so attempt to map and transform interests? Our view is
that they are trying to impose order on a part of the social world.
They are trying to build a version of social structure. On this view
interests (and other categories such as desires, motives and wishes)
are not to be seen as background factors to be imputed by the
analyst. Rather they are attempts to define (and, most importantly,
to enforce) the institutions, groups or organizations that exist from
time to time in the social world. For us, then, the construction,
consolidation, erosion and destruction of social worlds and their
components is the focus of study. In the present context our con-
cern is thus with the fate of interests and social interest groups as
one important part of the (contingently) coercive entities that in-
fluence and structure action.
Notes & Letters: Callon & Law: Enrolment 623

* NOTES

The names of the authors of this article are in alphabetical order.

Jon Harwood, Bruno Latour and Rob Williams all contributed, in one way or
another, to the writing of this paper. We thank them - and, of course, the long-
suffering Chinatown scientists.

1. See Steve Woolgar, 'Interests and Explanation in the Social Study of

Science', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 365-94; Barry Barnes, 'On the
"Hows" and "Whys" of Cultural Change (Response to Woolgar)', ibid., 481-98;
Donald MacKenzie, 'Interests, Positivism and History', ibid., 498-504; Woolgar,
'Critique and Criticism: Two Readings of Ethnomethodology', ibid., 505-14.
2. Woolgar, 'Interests...', op. cit. note 1, 371.
3. It is not possible to discuss the notion of 'networking' in the present context.
For an outline elsewhere see John Law and Rob Williams, 'Putting Facts Together:
A Study of Scientific Persuasion', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12 (1982),
535-58; and Michel Callon, 'L'Agonie d'un Laboratoire Universitaire saisi par le
Demon de la Technologie' (Paris: CSI, Ecole National Superieure des Mines, 1982).
4. Woolgar, 'Interests...', op. cit. note 1, 371.
5. Further details of this study are to be found in Rob Williams and John Law,
'Beyond the Bounds of Credibility', Fundamenta Scientiae, Vol. 1 (1980), 295-315;
Law and Williams, op. cit. note 3; and Law, 'Luttes autour de la publication d'un
article dans un laboratoire de biochimie', Social Science Information, forthcoming
(1983).
6. Tape-recorded interview, 25 May 1978, tape 3/1.
7. Tape-recorded interview, 14 December 1978, tape 8/13.
8. For some discussion, though posed in somewhat different terms, see Law and
Williams, op. cit. note 3; and John Law, 'On Words and their Value' (discussion
paper, University of Keele, 1982). See also Michel Callon, 'Struggles and Negotia-
tions to Define What is Problematic and What is Not', in Karin D. Knorr, Roger
Krohn and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation,
Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Vol. 4 (1980) (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1981),
197-219, especially 206-13.
9. See Bruno Latour, Irreductions: Tractatus Scientifico-Politicus (Paris: STS,
Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, 1981); and Michel Callon, 'Boites
Noires et Operations de Traduction', Economie et Humanisme, No. 262
(November-December 1981), 53-59.
10. See Law and Williams, op. cit. note 3. This paper includes a reprint of the
first paragraph.
11. For a fuller discussion of the notion of translation see Callon, op. cit. note 8;
Latour, op. cit. note 9; and Michel Serres, La Traduction, Hermes III (Paris: Col-
lection Critique, les Editions de Minuit, 1974).
12. Barnes, op. cit. note 1, 492.
13. See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, L 'Anti-Oedipe, Capitalisme et Schizophrenie
(Paris: les Editions de Minuit, 1972).
624 Social Studies of Science

14. The first paragraph of a letter of rejection from Cancer Quarterly dated 10
February 1979.
15. Tape-recorded interview, 28 January 1981, tape 1A/141.
16. We qualify this suggestion because the Chinatown team had always doubted
that the DIVEMA results would be positive and thus very interesting: see Williams
and Law, op. cit. note 4, 298.
17. We are happy to report that this later paper has been accepted.
18. We are aware that there is a great deal more to be said about this success,
though this cannot be properly outlined here. Broadly, however, we would approach
the matter by noting that Chinatown's interests (a product of enrolment by
previously encountered others, and consequential self-definition) led them to accept
a rejection letter of this kind, however unwelcome, as the last word. Effectively
Chinatown was left resourceless in this interaction. Other resources (for example,
the use of violence), were almost literally unthinkable in the context of the 'facts'
and 'interests' generated by Chinatown.
19. See Law and Williams, op. cit. note 3.
20. See Callon, op. cit. note 3; and Michel Callon, Jean-Pierre Courtial, William
Turner and Serge Bauin, 'From Translation to Network: An Introduction to Co-
Word Analysis', Social Science Information, forthcoming (1983).
21. Bruno Latour, 'Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World', in Karin
D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay (eds), Science Observed (London: SAGE
Publications, forthcoming).
22. Though much of his work is important in this respect, see in particular, Andy
Pickering, 'The Role of Interests in High Energy Physics: the Choice between
Charm and Colour', in Knorr et al. (eds), op. cit. note 8, 107-38; and also Pickering,
'Exemplars and Analogies: A Comment on Crane's Study of Kuhnian Paradigms in
High Energy Physics', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 10 (1980), 497-502.
23. For further argument on the irrelevance of the 'macro' and the 'micro', see
Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, 'Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors
Macro-structure Reality and How Sociologists Help them to Do So', in Karin D.
Knorr and Aaron Cicourel (eds), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology:
Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1981), 277-303.
24. Woolgar, op. cit. note 1, 373.
25. It might be argued that given a choice between conformity and the guillotine,
it was in the 'interests' of the person presented with the option to opt for
conformity. We have no strong objection to such an extension of the term, but on
balance it seems to be a somewhat unhelpful redescription.
Notes & Letters: Callon & Law: Enrolment 625

Michel Calon is Maitre de Recherche at the Centre de

Sociologie de l'lnnovation at the Ecole des Mines de Paris,
where he teaches sociology of science and technique. He is
author of a variety of articles on this subject.
John Law lectures in sociology at the University of Keele. His
current work includes the development of laboratory studies
and the study of methods for creating socially coercive en-
tities. Authors' addresses (respectively): Centre de Sociologie
d'lnnovation, Ecole National Sup6rieure des Mines, 62,
Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006 Paris, France; Department of
Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Keele,
Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK.