Exploring the knowledge practices of psychology: Reflections on a field study

The epistemic challenges of psychology

In their call for contributions to this special issue on psychology’s epistemic practices, Lotte Huniche and Estrid Sørensen (2019) pointed to a number of the contemporary challenges and dramas of psychology. Among the most recent dramas, the appearance of spectacular fraud cases has called the credibility of psychological research into question in the eyes of the public, and to date no reassuring answers have been given as to whether the few cases are rare exceptions or whether they represent a more widespread pattern of negligence. Another source of drama, although perhaps of a more simmering kind, is the ongoing struggles between quantitative and qualitative strands of psychology (Burman, 1997; Michell, 2003). Last but not least, the very position of psychology in society contributes to an ongoing sense of unease. Historically, psychology has been charged not only with helping but also with assessing, monitoring, and normalising individuals. For better or worse, psychology is thus profoundly implicated in the great project of governing the individuals of modern nation states (Rose, 2008). The inherent dilemmas of this position are enduring—or, as Sørensen and Huniche pointed out, they may in fact have become even more complicated as the definition of normality has become increasingly challenged. At present, individuals must “negotiate” their sense of normality and identity amidst intensified encounters with other nations and cultural groups, new technological opportunities for human enhancement, increasingly ambiguous gender roles, and increasingly troubled relations with our natural environment. It is little wonder that psychology—along with many other disciplines—finds it difficult to get its epistemic project into clear focus. The simple questions about what psychology should study and how and why it should do so seem to be as contested as ever.

The aim of this paper is not to solve the epistemological problems of psychology but rather, and much more modestly, to contribute to the discussion by offering a case study of psychological research practices among a group of psychologists working in a university department. The analytical strategy of turning to a specific group of people at a specific location is inspired by the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). For several decades, STS has made a point of studying how knowledge is constructed and contested at specific locations (Woolgar, Coopmans, & Neyland, 2009). Therefore, rather than speculating about the generalised logic of science (a favourite topic of non-empirical philosophers) or the generalised norms which may be presumed to govern science (a favourite topic of functionalist sociologists), STS scholars have studied the logistics and materialities of science as is it conducted in daily work practices (Knorr-Cetina, 1995). What I intend to do in this article is to make a similar pragmatic and materialist account of how a particular group of psychologists produce knowledge. Adopting the mindset of an anthropologist of science, I conducted a 2-month field study of a group of psychologists and investigated the group’s knowledge-construction practices. As a part of this study, I have identified what anthropologists call a cultural theme—that is, a broader topic which relates to many of the group’s practices and concerns (Spradley, 1979). In the case of the psychologists, I suggest that a key cultural theme is the attention to concepts and conceptual development. Drawing on my fieldwork, I explore this theme in some detail and across various types of practices in order to trace what concepts mean to these psychologists and how concepts and conceptual development are practised. I also compare the role concepts play for the psychologists to the strikingly different role that concepts seem to play for natural scientists. In making this comparison, I draw on STS scholars’ field studies of natural science practice.

Some readers may expect that my analysis will either begin or end with a clear, authoritative, one-sentence definition of concepts and conceptual development. These readers will be frustrated. What I offer is a performative rather than an ostensive definition of concepts (Latour, 1984; Law, 2002; Mol, 2002); I provide a description of how the actors in the field talk about concepts and perform concept-related practices. But I make no abstract claims about what concepts “actually” or “essentially” are. My account of the psychologists is therefore not a springboard for making universalistic claims. Instead, it is intended as a starting point for a conversation about a particular type of knowledge-construction practice and its possible relations to others.

In the second part of the article, I embark on such a conversation as I return more directly to the topic of psychology’s epistemological project. I relate my field study of the psychologists to ideas developed by three pragmatist authors: Bruno Latour, Vincianne Despret, and Ian Hunter. Each of these authors has studied knowledge-construction practices and offers a distinctly different view on what research practice is or should be. Finally, I draw the discussion together and discuss how my analysis may contribute to discussions of psychology’s epistemic project.

Method, empirical material, and approach

Ethnographic studies are not outcomes of following standardised methodological recipes such as experimental procedures or structured interview guides. Instead, ethnography depends on carefully negotiated practical and social arrangements which allow the ethnographer to visit specific sites, interact with informants, and learn from them. In this method section, I will therefore begin with a brief description of the specific arrangement upon which my account of the group psychologists is based. What is particularly important here is how I attempted to establish a position which was both sufficiently close to the psychologists to gain access to their practices and sufficiently distant to avoid simply adopting their perspectives. With this balancing act between insider and outsider views—a classic ideal of anthropology (Descola, 2005)—my aim was to produce a description which was fair and accurate in the eyes of the group but also accessible to broader external audiences, such as psychologists engaged with different kinds and styles of research or readers with an interest in epistemic projects and processes of knowledge construction.

My first contact with the group took place in 2011 when I received a phone call from associate professor Morten Nissen from the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen. Nissen explained that he and a group of colleagues were developing a research application, which they called SUBSTANce, a portmanteau of “subjects” and “standards.” The core of the project would be three empirical subprojects investigating how the development of standards by psychologists (e.g., notions of “normal development”) would interact with subjectivity in various fields. The three subprojects would focus on drug rehabilitation, primary schools, and self-tracking. In addition to these topical areas, Nissen wanted the project to include a number of cross-cutting activities, including a small work package on science studies, which he invited me to be responsible for. “You could do science studies on us,” as he termed it. With little hesitation, I accepted the invitation.

To explain why Nissen thought of calling me and why I quickly accepted his invitation, some further context is needed. Nissen and I have known each other, although only tangentially, since I was a student and he was a young teacher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen in the 1990s. Nissen continued to work in the psychology department, where he later attained the position of associate professor. Over the years, he conducted a substantial amount of empirical work on drug rehabilitation and youth projects in Copenhagen, and he has established himself as a prolific writer in theoretical fields such as critical psychology and cultural-historical activity theory (Nissen, 2012).

My own trajectory, by contrast, has taken me away from psychology. In the 1990s I was writing my Master’s thesis in psychology and I was affiliated with the social psychology group in the department, which was at that time a hub for the critical and Marxist theories of psychology that Nissen would continue to pursue. I, however, became interested in the field of STS to the degree that it quickly overshadowed my interest in psychology. I remained in the Department of Psychology to write my PhD dissertation, but it became increasingly clear to me and to others that I defined myself as an STS scholar. As a consequence of this, I cut my ties with the field of psychology after the dissertation, and since then I have been employed at interdisciplinary departments of three different Danish universities doing research in the field of STS.

Given this background, it was clear that when Nissen invited me to join the SUBSTANce project, he was inviting an outsider but also someone whom he knew had a background knowledge of the type of psychology that he and his colleagues in the SUBSTANce project were working with. From my perspective, the opportunity to “do science studies” on this group of psychologists was very welcome. My sense was that I had some useful basic knowledge of psychology as well as the department but that I had been away from the field long enough to have a partial outsider’s view. I also felt that a field study of psychologists might add something new to STS, where the bulk of studies have focused on natural scientists, technologists, medical practitioners, and, more recently, economists, while almost no attention has been given to the knowledge practices of the so-called softer social sciences.

The field study was conducted in December 2012 and January 2013. During that time, I arrived every day ¹ at a hallway in the psychology department where Nissen and the members of the SUBSTANce group had their offices. I shared a room with a research assistant next to Nissen’s office and I was invited to participate in all internal SUBSTANce meetings and daily lunches, as well as a number of social events. During the time of my field work, I conducted elaborate interviews with all the SUBSTANce researchers ² and engaged in a large number of informal conversations. My field observations also included participation in four comprehensive research seminars organised by the SUBSTANce group. ³

My field data were registered in several different ways. The formal interviews were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed in full. Whenever possible, I collected documents (often electronic) or took photographs which related to the practices I observed. My informal conversations and observations were documented through daily field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) where I attempted to describe the events and conversations in a detailed and straightforward manner. In addition to these records, I wrote a series of reflexive field notes, in which I developed preliminary interpretations of my observations, evaluated my own position as participant observer, and developed focus points and strategies for the subsequent collection of data. The overall theme of my account—the peculiar role played by concepts in the psychologists’ research practices—emerged in some of my first reflexive field notes where I grappled with the difference between my informants’ research practices and the accounts of other types of research practice in the STS literature (a point to which I will return later). I followed this theme in subsequent conversations and interviews with my informants, and I gradually systematised my understanding of concepts and “concept work” by noting any kind of material or activity related to the development, negotiation, distribution, or use of concepts.

The analysis of the material, which was initiated with the writing of my reflexive field notes, was later followed up by a systematic reading of all notes, interview transcriptions, and collected documents. In the first round of analysis, I searched for any kind of statements or observations which would speak to the steps, procedures, or rationalities informing the psychologists’ knowledge production. In subsequent rounds of analysis, this material was organised and condensed into the account which I present in the following section.

To validate my account, I have discussed my analysis with the SUBSTANce group on several occasions. A preliminary analysis was presented and discussed immediately after the field work period in January 2013. In August 2017, an earlier version of the present text was thoroughly discussed with four SUBSTANce group members in a 2-hour meeting. Before this meeting, the text was distributed to the group, and a number of comments were received by email. This process resulted in a few aspects of the account being revised and clarified, but in general my informants accepted the text as a fair description of their work.

As the reader will notice in the following section, my account of the psychologists adopts the perspective and voice of an STS-informed observer. With this stylistic choice, I wish to emphasise my insider/outsider position as a visiting observer as well as my particular interest in understanding the differences between the SUBSTANce group’s work and the knowledge production of other fields and branches of research. In my view, the potentially interesting aspect of the SUBSTANce group is not that the group is typical or broadly representative of psychological research. It clearly is not. Rather, it might be interesting to consider whether this peculiar type of psychological research will or could have a role to play in future epistemological projects in psychology.

As an introduction to the group’s peculiar style of research and the role played by concepts, it should be noted that Nissen, the group leader, has a long-standing commitment to theoretical and meta-theoretical discussions within traditions such as critical psychology and cultural-historical activity theory. These interests were broadly shared by the group members, who were all participants in the International Society for Theoretical Psychology and who all pursued discussions in general theoretical psychology in addition to their interests in particular topical areas. The general metatheoretical interest of the group was also articulated in the SUBSTANce project description. According to this text, the empirical studies would not pursue traditional research aims such as isolating and documenting specific causal relationships. Instead, the aim of the project was to produce “reflexive-empirical problematizations”—that is, studies which would allow the researchers to explore and discuss how psychological science itself plays a role in the interchange between standardisation and subjectification (Nissen, 2011, p. 1). The aim of the project was thus to discuss the theories and practices of psychology in a way which would develop its “repertoires for reflection” (Nissen, 2011, p. 2). In the following section, I delve deeper into the peculiar knowledge practices of this “theoretical,” “meta-theoretical,” or “reflexive-empirical” psychology as I present my fieldwork-based account of the SUBSTANce group.

Visiting a group of psychologists: Knowledge practices on the ground

When someone with a background in STS visits a group of psychologists, she is likely to bring with her an interest in the extended practical and material process of knowledge construction. This analytical disposition is derived from a number of classic case studies in STS, where sociologists and anthropologists of science have studied the so-called chains of translation—the meticulous stepwise work through which scientists connect “matter,” such as samples, with instruments to produce data, which then, following several additional refinements and mathematical operations, find their ways into scientific papers (Knorr-Cetina, 1995). When visiting a group of psychologists, such as the SUBSTANce group, an STS scholar might quickly find indications that he or she has come across yet another case of a chain of translations. At one point in time, the psychologists seem to connect with some kind of external “matter” (they do, for instance, to talk to youngsters in a drug rehab facility). At a later point in time, the psychologists produce papers where they present items which they refer to as “theoretical concepts.” An STS scholar might easily interpret the psychologists’ practices at these two points in time as two ends of a chain of translations. The next question would then be: What specific chain of translations connects “matter” with “concepts” in the case of the psychologists?

I will turn to this question shortly, but first I will introduce an example of a chain of translations in natural science. I will use this example to help bring the peculiarities of the psychologists into clearer focus. The example is taken from STS scholar Bruno Latour’s (1999) account of how a group of soil scientists went on an expedition into the borderland between the Boa Vista forest and the open savannah in the Amazonian province of Roraima. The aim of the expedition was to investigate if the rainforest was receding, or if the forest was advancing on the savannah. To explore this question, the scientists collected plants and extracted soil samples which they brought back to their laboratories. Later they transformed the material into various types of graphs, which were eventually used as the basis for a scientific publication arguing that the rainforest was in fact advancing on the savannah. Latour followed the expedition as an anthropologist of science. The aim of his investigation was to follow all the events between the scientists’ visit to the rainforest and the eventual publishing of the article. Latour describes a long series of carefully planned small steps, which together form a chain of translations. After arrival in the rainforest, the soil scientists began their work by measuring distances and laying out a grid on the ground. In the next step, they dug up soil samples, which they collected in small cardboard boxes, one for each cell in the grid. Following this, the cardboard boxes were loaded into a wooden frame and lined up in the same patterns as the grid on the ground, making it easy to detect variations in colour and texture across the various samples. With each of these small manoeuvres, Latour argued, some kind of matter was loaded into some kind of form. The empty cardboard box was the form into which soil was loaded, and in the next step, each box became the matter which was loaded into the wooden frame. Every step was carefully nested within the previous one, creating a long chain of translation which Latour was able to follow all the way back to the laboratory. One chain of translations is focused on soil, another chain is focused on plants, which are also sampled from the grid on forest ground. At a certain stage, concepts appear as yet another element which functions in the same way as the empty cardboard boxes waiting to be filled with matter and prepared for their subsequent translation into other forms. In Latour’s account, these concepts are late-comers. They arrived when the scientists were out of the jungle and back in their laboratories. At this time, the scientists had preserved their collected plants, identified their species, and collected them into dossiers. These dossiers then served as the basis of (i.e., were loaded into) certain concepts, such as “a population of plant species X,” which again may be “loaded into” subsequent entities such as theories or institutions. To sum up, Latour argued that the work of natural science consists of a long series of standardised steps where matter is loaded into form. In this process, the entities which Latour and the natural scientists refer to as “concepts” only arrive at a very late stage in the chain of translations. Concepts, in this case, are well-established, conventional forms into which the previous steps and materials can be summarised. Finally, it should be noted that the scientists are the masters of the chain translation; they carefully operate and control the process, every step of the way.

With this image in mind, let us return to the psychologists. In the process of my fieldwork, I found it a good starting point to look for a chain of translations in the same way as Latour and other STS scholars have described the chains of translations involved in natural science practice. Actually finding a well-ordered chain or sequence of steps, however, turned out to be surprisingly difficult in the case of the psychologists. As soon as I began to observe the group more closely, I realised that their knowledge practices had at least three peculiar features which set them apart from natural sciences. These peculiarities could all be related to the role played by concepts.

First, it struck me that concepts did not arrive at the late stage of a translation process as the final summation of a long series of translations. In the case of these psychologists, concepts came into play almost immediately; when the psychologists were in contact with a field such as a school or a treatment institution, they would, for instance, comment on the “subjectivity” or the “self-reflection” of the people they encountered. Second, concepts were not the scientists’ exclusively owned tools; a significant part of the concepts were shared with and used by therapists, social workers, school teachers, and other professional practitioners who worked in institutions of various kinds. Third, the psychologists in the SUBSTANce project seemed to presume that concepts require a special kind of effort—an effort they alluded to when they said that concepts needed to be “clarified” or “reflected upon.” Concepts, in the case of the psychologists, were therefore not merely well-established, conventional forms such as the classification system for plants.

In my further explorations of the peculiar role that concepts played for these psychologists, I came to realise that concepts were entangled with other kinds of practices in important ways. One of these entanglements goes to the very core of how this group of psychologists thinks about the world. The psychologists I investigated all shared the fundamental view that linguistic concepts play an organising role in all social practices (Langemeyer & Nissen, 2004). Essentially, this means that language is an important communicative device which connects our actions with those of others and that language helps us keep our thoughts and emotions together. However, the psychologists also make the more radical claim that the linguistic concepts (styles, patterns, discourses) come to us like specific cultural-historical products or devices which strongly influence the ways we are able to feel, think, and act in relation to the situations we find ourselves in. What this means is that particular conceptual ways of thinking or acting are crucial to the (re-) production of particular psycho-social problems and as a consequence that the introduction of new concepts may open opportunities for positive change. The basic assumption is thus that psycho-social problems of all sorts are profoundly entangled with concepts and that the development and introduction of new concepts may contribute to alleviating problems. As an example, one of the SUBSTANce researchers described to me how he introduced the Heideggerian notion of Stimmung to the employees of a rehab facility. With this notion, he addressed the simultaneously cognitive and emotional relation between a subject and his/her immediate surroundings. The researcher brought up this topic to engage the employees in a discussion about the different locations and rooms in which they held talks and therapy sessions with the users of the rehab facility (M. Bank, personal communication, December 14, 2012). Concepts are therefore not the end points of descriptions (as in the case of the natural scientists) but rather the starting points of interventions. From this it follows that the psychologists in the SUBSTANce group could be described as unabashed constructionists. Where some natural science disciplines have reacted with shock and anger to the suggestion that they construct their own objects of study (Latour, 1999), the psychologists I studied considered their own complex entanglement with psycho-social problems to be assumed knowledge of the field. They share this assumption of entanglement with a large number of other psychologists, especially those inspired by cultural-historical psychology, but not with the entire field of psychology.

As I have indicated, the psychologists in the SUBSTANce project believe that the conceptual properties of language ⁴ play a background-structuring role in all people’s practices, not unlike situations where physical infrastructure affords particular modes of action. However, among the psychologists themselves, concepts were also treated as explicit objects of attention and negotiation. When listening to my informants’ conversations, I would, for instance, hear them say “you must read theory X” or “that concept cannot be used in that way.” This suggests another crucial entanglement between concepts and other practices. Psychology students often affiliate themselves with particular theories or sets of theories during their studies, a tendency which intensifies if they become PhD scholars. Mid-career researchers have usually invested decades of work in studying particular theories and in discussing particular concepts through their own investigations and writings. When psychologists talk about theories and concepts, they often suggest combative relations. Theories criticise or attack other theories by questioning their premises, their data, or their implications. Theories also form strategic alliances, for instance, by “working within” or “drawing on” particular authors, traditions, or paradigms. When researchers use particular theories and concepts, they are thus positioning themselves in a contested and evolving landscape of theoretical battles, tensions, and alliances. ⁵ The individual profiles of researchers are therefore always relative to a broader conceptual discussion. One visible sign of the entanglement between theories and researcher identities can be found in the researchers’ offices, or more specifically on their overloaded bookshelves. The massive collections of books in each office represent substantial monetary investments, but far more importantly they indicate the enormous number of hours that have been spent reading these books. When researchers visit each other’s offices, they are able to sense their colleagues’ profile and theoretical allegiances by glancing at the titles on the bindings of the books and by noticing which books look particularly well-worn (M. Bank, personal communication, December 14, 2012).

If concepts are heavily entangled with the organisation of everyday lives and problems as well as with academic careers and positioning, it is little surprise that psychologists tend to adhere to the same concepts for a considerable amount of time. This was indicated by a small bibliometric investigation I conducted as a part of my field study (Elgaard Jensen, 2019). I identified a particularly influential article (Dreier, 1999) and traced all the publications which quoted the first article in the following 15 years. By extracting key words from the full texts, I was able to assess whether words indicating theories, concepts, and problem fields changed over time. When comparing three consecutive 5-year periods, I found that roughly 80% of the terms had remained the same. ⁶ There was thus a strong tendency to maintain the focus on the same theories, concepts, and problem fields. One might say that the psychologists were engaged in the slow, gradual renewal of a conceptual repertoire ⁷ which was shared with both practitioners and other academic researchers.

As I have indicated, the epistemological project of the group of psychologists evolved around the peculiar features and functions of concepts. Concepts were inseparable from the researchers’ entanglements with practical and theoretical fields, but also from their personal sense of purpose and motivation. The issue of motivation was brought to the fore one day during a lunch break, when a PhD student expressed his frustration with the type of psychological research tradition he was becoming a part of. He suggested that it was all too theoretical, too abstract, and that no one would be able to use it. Responding to this, his colleagues gently suggested that he should adopt a longer-term perspective. As encouragement, one colleague mentioned that the Vygotskian notion of activity, which was a key interest of university psychologists in the 1980s, had been disseminated widely and was now a part of the theoretical vocabulary of several professions, including school teachers and occupational therapists.

The effort to search for motivation in longer-term perspectives was also a recurrent theme in my interviews with the researchers. Morten Nissen described how he had established an elaborate network within the field of drug rehabilitation over the last two decades and how he was often invited as a discussion partner for practitioners as well as for those who are developing new rehab policies at a municipal level. Nissen also mentioned that theoretical ideas were continually communicated to future psychologists in the department’s teaching programme and in many other types of professional training courses. In another interview, Jytte Bang emphasised that common-sense ideas about psychological phenomena only change very slowly. What people believe now is very much influenced by hundred-year-old psycho-dynamic theories. One should therefore be tough, fairly stubborn, and find motivation in the long term rather than expect quick results. Bang also emphasised another motivational aspect of long-term devotion to particular theoretical projects: those who keep working within particular paradigms will be able to collaborate with like-minded colleagues, go to the same conferences, and may have the opportunity to form reading circles which can be very lively and stimulating events which are also open to students. In the long run, Bang suggested, niche activities such as reading circles may be crucial for making working life bearable and for maintaining the sense that you are a part of something collective and important.

This something, as I have suggested, is the laborious work of gradually renewing the conceptual repertoire shared with academic colleagues, practitioners, and, in the last instance, the general population. To participate in this epistemic project, one must be willing to invest heavily in specialising in particular theories, do the hard work of relating new concepts to the ongoing tensions and battles within the larger theoretical landscape, and reflect on how a particular new (conceptual) way of describing the world might interfere (positively or negatively) with particular practices and practical problems currently influenced by other modes of conceptual thinking. None of this is easy; it is not enforced by powerful machines and lacks unequivocal economic and political support. For the psychologists, however, there is hope in the conviction that their concepts may not only be distant and irrelevant descriptions but also progressive ways of interacting with the making and remaking of social practices.

Pragmatist reflections

In my account of the psychologists’ knowledge practices, I have attempted to depict a particular mode of knowledge production—one involving multiple entanglements and the gradual renewal of a shared conceptual repertoire. In the following, my focus will remain at the level of “the mode of knowledge production,” as I compare the psychologists’ practices to a selection of ideas about knowledge production drawn from Bruno Latour, Vincianne Despret, and Ian Hunter.

In Latour’s accounts of scientific knowledge production (Latour, 1987, 1988, 1999; Latour & Woolgar, 1979) he repeatedly used the metaphor of construction. Scientific facts, he argued, are constructed in much the same way as buildings or roads. A scientific fact is the result of meticulous work and is constructed out of all sorts of materials. By evoking the construction imagery, Latour pitted himself against the epistemological accounts of science that assume scientific facts to be “discoveries” or “insights” generated through logic or other kinds of cognitive manoeuvres. Latour, by contrast, built his account of science on anthropological studies of how scientists work in their laboratories. From these studies, he emphasised that laboratory work is organised around instruments, or inscription devices, which allow scientists to transform physical matter such as a cell into a piece of paper which contains a graph or a number. When matter becomes inscribed, the road is paved for a series of steps where one inscription is compared to other inscriptions or to external literature such as published papers. A cascade of small steps can be taken which eventually come together in a scientific paper containing statements that figure as end-points of a long series of translations. Summarising their account, Latour and Woolgar (1979) described a scientific laboratory as a factory of literary inscription. They also describe how one laboratory constantly competes with other laboratories and how this “fact race” includes heavy investments in ever bigger samples and ever more sophisticated instruments. A persuasive scientific fact is not one which “miraculously” corresponds to nature: it is one which is well-constructed in the sense that the statement of the fact in a scientific paper is backed by such large amounts of data and so many well-tuned instruments that no other laboratory is able or willing to counter it.

If we apply Latour’s construction imagery to the psychological knowledge practices, it is quite clear that a different game is being played here. The psychologists I have studied do not seem to compete with costly instruments or large sample sizes. A good construction for them consists, rather, of a close and trusting relationship with informants and collaborators who can provide rich and well-informed accounts of particular problem fields, which the psychologists can then relate to their theoretical sources of inspiration. This approach seems to work well for the individual or small group of psychologists, who are trying to connect a particular field with conceptual reflection. The problem, however, is that knowledge construction takes place in agonistic environments. Problem fields such as school systems or social institutions are swarmed by other authorities and experts who make alternative claims. The kind of cultural-historical psychologists I have studied are therefore up against many alternative modes of knowledge production which sometimes seem better at accumulating strength, resources, and larger amounts of data. Their competitors command a broad spectrum of instruments, such as surveys, testing, clinical trials, and international comparisons. All things being equal, cultural-historical psychologists are less likely to be convincing than these other modes of knowledge production, although cultural-historical psychologists may occasionally persuade others that their accounts and conceptualisations are more appealing than the dominating ones. The psychologists’ competitive advantage in these instances may be the claim to know the field better or more profoundly than their competitors. The question is, however, whether these occasional victories are enough for the cultural-historical psychologists and whether it is enough to justify their future existence as a type of psychology. If not, the remedy one could suggest from a construction perspective would be to figure out ways to gather strength and to transform the rather individual craft-like production of knowledge into something more similar to a factory of literary inscription. Larger amounts of data and more standardised analytical practices would undoubtedly increase the psychologists’ persuasiveness in an era when many institutional and political decision-makers have an expressed preference for quantifiable and “evidence-based” knowledge. The problem is, however, that psychologists such as those in the SUBSTANce group are likely to consider these kinds of investments and efforts to be completely out of sync with the theoretical competences they have meticulously developed, as well as a distraction from their key ambition of renewing conceptual repertoires. Another way to build strength—again thinking from a constructionist perspective—is to build alliances with other powerful actors (Latour, 1987). In playing this game, inspiration may perhaps be taken from researchers in humanistic health research, who have argued that the powerful, data-heavy, standardised knowledge-creating practices of biomedicine can only come to full fruition if their research projects include humanistic studies of how new diet and exercise regimens can be incorporated into people’s everyday lives (Callon, 1986; Jensen, Grønnow, & Jespersen, 2019; Jespersen, Bønnelycke, & Eriksen, 2014). With this argument, humanistic health researchers position themselves not as a fringe alternative but as a necessary partner for a powerful knowledge-production regime. In smaller ways, the SUBSTANce group may already be playing similar games with their efforts to communicate with municipal authorities or to influence “folk psychology.” The overall impression, however, is that the knowledge practices of the group are not enforced by powerful alliances.

Whereas psychological knowledge practices appear to be comparatively weak from a construction perspective, a more favourable evaluation may be derived from the account of science developed by Despret (2004, 2005) and related authors (Latour, 2004; Stengers, 2000). Despret’s interest is not in analysing who wins in science but rather to discuss what constitutes good science. Her project is thus a normative one. The notion of device is central to her argument: a device is the specific material and conceptual set-up through which an experimenter gains knowledge about the matter under study. It is a tangible construction which allows the research object to “speak” or the experimenter to speak on its behalf. In Despret’s view, a device is not a neutral instrument which registers what was already there. Devices, she suggests, are constructions which create and articulate a novel interactional event between the researcher, the object of study, and the material/conceptual arrangement between them. In a striking illustration of the difference between well and poorly chosen devices, Despret related the story of the renowned primatologist Thelma Rowell. Rowell had noticed that much ethological research is premised on research situations—devices—which imply a shortage of food. These devices tend to articulate aggressive behaviours between the animals. Rowell, however, devised an experiment where 22 sheep were given 23 bowls of food. The new device, the 23rd bowl, allowed the articulation of different and more generous behaviours than had been seen before (Despret, 2005).

The story of Rowell’s 23rd bowl illustrates Despret’s vision of good science. Ideally, research objects should be allowed to surprise scientists. If possible, the research objects (human or non-human) should be allowed to “talk back” and to requalify the research questions which were asked. To create this situation, a scientist should not assume a neutral or detached role. On the contrary, he or she must take a passionate interest in providing occasions for the research objects to articulate themselves. Finally, Despret argued that good research must also be interesting. It is not enough to isolate and describe an object. Good science must somehow engage with what a thing is in the fate or destiny of others as well. Good science is not merely about discovery; it is about the composition of a common world (Despret, 2004).

With Despret’s normative ideals as background, one could take a second look at the epistemological practices of the psychologists. It could be argued that the psychologists’ mode of knowledge production entails a relatively close connection with particular problem fields and with actors in the field who are trying to develop new practices. ⁸ The psychologists may therefore be well positioned to articulate many voices and counter-voices. One might also assume that the psychologists have a quite passionate interest in engaging with psycho-social problems and with generating positive change. It is therefore likely that they would be interested in “articulations” which would also be interesting to others. A more critical reflection, still based on Despet, might ask what kinds of conceptual discussions the psychologists would be interested in, given their simultaneous commitments to broader academic discussions? It is possible to imagine quite different versions of conceptual interest, which could be illustrated with an example from an adjacent field. Within sociology, Bourdieu developed critical studies of the underlying habitus and fields that, in his view, structure the actions of members of society without their knowing (Bourdieu, 1977). Bourdieu’s critics, however, have argued that his version of sociology is completely immune to contradiction from the people he writes about, and they have pointed out that Bourdieu overlooked the fact that ordinary people can also produce social critique (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). As an alternative to Bourdieu’s critical sociology, Boltanski and Thévenot developed a sociology of critique which explores how ordinary people justify and criticise courses of action. Arguably, Boltanski and Thévenot’s approach is far closer to Despret’s ideal of good science than that of their opponent.

The question is whether the psychologists’ interest in developing and discussing concepts is equally open to being challenged and surprised by their external collaborators and research participants. Furthermore, knowing that the psychologists aim to renew a conceptual repertoire which they share with external collaborators, one might also ask whether the external collaborators will be able to deploy these repertoires to the surprise of their own institutions. From a Despret-inspired perspective, these questions about the ability to generate surprise are key criteria for the success of the arrangements and devices which contribute to the epistemological project of psychology.

As a final perspective on psychological knowledge practices, I will draw on Ian Hunter’s (2006, 2007) analysis of what he called the “turn to theory.” From the 1960s onwards, the humanities and social sciences experienced a boom of “high theorising” carried forward by a number of different traditions, such as structuralism, post-structuralism, and phenomenology. Some authors have interpreted theorising as a logical progression in the history of ideas, while others have defined it as an effect of a particular phase of capitalist development. Hunter, however, analysed the boom in theorising as “one among a series of exercises in philosophical self-culture” (2006, p. 86) and argued that since antiquity, philosophers have submitted themselves to particular exercises for instance to control their anger, conquer their fear of death, or ascend to the vision of God. In a similar manner, Hunter argued that theorising is an exercise in abstention from empiricist and positivist forms of knowledge to gain insight into “sleeping structures” (Hunter, 2006, p. 87). This exercise includes the adoption of a sceptical attitude toward a given positivistic formalism and a willingness to suspend the commitment to “natural” forms of knowledge and experiences. Through this, it is believed that the theorist will be open to deeper insights. Hunter is obviously more than a little sceptical of academic self-fashioning and the attempts of the social sciences and humanities to impose their critical theorising on other disciplines and forms of knowledge, which the theorists deem to be incapable of comprehending themselves.

It may seem unfair to bring Hunter’s perspective in on the knowledge practices of the psychologists, especially as my account of their mode of working does not clarify the kinds of theorising which researchers develop with or “on” their collaborators and their practices. However, in a discussion of psychology’s epistemic practices, it is worth asking how the work with theorising and conceptualisation forms and creates a particular kind of academic persona and particular kinds of relations to other fields. To understand these relations and entanglements and the sharing of conceptual repertoires between university psychologists, students, collaborators, and other audiences, it may also be worth exploring how selves informed by psychological theories may be an integral part of the knowledge product which emanates from the department.

Conclusion

In this article, I have depicted the knowledge practices of a group of cultural-historical psychologists I visited for a 2-month period. I have described how these psychologists work with a repertoire of concepts which they share with practitioners and other external audiences, and I have emphasised the researchers’ conviction that concepts play a constitutive role in how psycho-social problems are created and changed. I have also noted the researchers’ insistence that the renewal of conceptual repertoires must be “reflected” not only in relation to academic traditions and debates but also in relation to the intended and unintended roles that concepts may come to play among practitioners. Finally, I have described how these psychologists invest heavily in particular theories throughout the course of their careers and how they sustain their motivation by focusing on the long-term opportunities for collaboration and dissemination of their concepts. In the discussion section which followed, I compared my account of the psychologists with the accounts of other research practices given by a selection of pragmatist authors. The aim of these comparisons was to tease out the peculiarities and the specific challenges of the type of work which the SUBSTANce group does. When comparing it with Latour’s constructionist view of science, I suggested that the cultural-historical psychologists in the SUBSTANce group may face a choice with regard to whether they will remain in a relatively weak situation in which they craft individual and fairly unique connections between concepts and practical fields or whether they will attempt to transform their mode of knowledge production to gather more allies and compete with other experts and commentators who are making claims about psycho-social problems. When comparing it with Despret’s notion of articulation, I suggested that the current mode of knowledge production seems well positioned to generate “good” science in Despret’s sense but that this goodness in the final analysis depends on the degree to which concepts are open to challenges from collaborators and the degree to which collaborators will be able to challenge their own institutions. Finally, when comparing it with Hunter’s notion of theorising as self-fashioning, I suggested that the creation of particular forms of academic selves and particular sceptical relations to other knowledge fields should be included in the collective self-reflection of the field. My conclusion, in the shortest possible form, is that the cultural-historical psychologists in the SUBSTANce group face tough competition, that they hold valuable epistemological assets, and that new forms of self-reflection may be called for. This does not add up to an easy epistemological project, but I hope that they nevertheless find it a project worth fighting for.

From a broader perspective, one might ask how this article’s description of the SUBSTANce group contributes to the discussion of psychology’s epistemic project. To answer this question, I will take a small step back. If we imagine psychology to be a vastly complex and distributed imbroglio of efforts, it almost goes without saying that any discussion about the epistemic project of psychology entails a dialogue between different parties which do not necessarily understand each other. The terms of this dialogue are not without consequence. Different types of dialogue emerge if participants define themselves as representatives of theoretical traditions, as belonging to topical fields, as positioned on one side of a quantitative–qualitative divide, or as something else. In this article, my choice of descriptive terms is inspired by the accounts of knowledge practices in STS. In this vein, I have described the activities of the SUBSTANce group as a particular mode of knowledge production. This mode is a complex whole which entails specific objects (e.g., “concepts”), specific practices (e.g., “reflection”), specific relations to practice fields, specific claims to authority, and specific configurations of researcher subjects. My suggestion is that attention to these kinds of pragmatic processes and conditions of knowledge production is a productive starting point for discussions about the epistemic project of psychology—and indeed a better starting point than defining differences within psychology in terms of theoretical allegiances or philosophical foundations. The potential contribution of this article is thus to present a type of description which may facilitate a dialogue between different parts of psychology by bringing attention to how different groups in practice construct knowledge, careers, and relations to their external collaborators and audiences.

A further set of questions one might raise, is how the particular practice of the SUBSTANce group contributes to the epistemic project of psychology. What is the specific contribution of this mode of knowledge production? What may other types of psychology learn from reading a pragmatist account of the SUBSTANce group?

There may be many answers to these questions, depending on which type or branch of psychology one might wish to compare to the SUBSTANce group. However, in my view, the key lesson to be learned from the group regards the handling of entanglement. In any kind of knowledge production, researchers will attempt to define and configure the relation between themselves and their fields of study. In some cases, researchers stage themselves as modest witnesses to natural phenomena (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985). In other cases, researchers cannot avoid, and have no intention of avoiding, some kind of complicated entanglement with their objects of study. In psychology, situations of entanglement are well known. Psychologists have time and again found themselves in situations where their theorising and conceptualisations interact in complex ways with how psychological problems are conceived and performed by other actors; classic examples of this include transference and counter-transference in psychotherapy or experimenter effects in social psychology. The key research question formulated by the SUBSTANce group in their project description speaks to the exact same theme: How do psychological standards interact with subjectivity? Accordingly, the SUBSTANce group can be seen as an example of a version of psychology which fully accepts and recognises the conditions of entanglement. The group and the broader network of cultural-historical psychology and critical psychology it grew out of have spent decades experimenting with how to construct knowledge, external relations, and researcher subjects in situations where mutual entanglement is not only unavoidable, but also the very means through which knowledge is created and interventions are made. This is precisely what I believe might be of value to others. The group has not developed the only or the optimal way to deal with entanglement, but it has developed one functional and fairly distinct way of handling entanglement. For other parts of psychology, whether embracing or avoiding entanglement, I propose the SUBSTANce group’s mode of knowledge production as a potential source of inspiration and productive contrast. The SUBSTANce group’s work—and my account of it—can thus be seen as a voice in a debate about how to understand and manage the conditions of psychological knowledge production.