Ontography: Investigating the production of things, deflating ontology

In this postscript to the special issue of Social Studies of Science on the ‘turn to ontology’ in science and technology studies, I discuss a tension that runs through many of the articles in the issue. This is a tension between adopting a general philosophical ontology and pursuing empirical studies of particular historical and contemporary practices. The general ontology highlights multiplicity and difference and rejects the idea that, for example, an identical disease entity underlies different practical enactments of that disease in different clinical and research circumstances. The empirical approach investigates how particular identities and differences are negotiated and instantiated in specific circumstances. The two approaches are not necessarily incompatible, but the first settles questions of identity and difference through a ‘pre-theoretical decision’, while the second remains open to distinct resolutions of what counts as identity and difference in the practical settings studied. In this postscript, I argue that a commitment to a general philosophical ontology confuses investigations of specific practical ontologies. To avoid such confusion, I recommend ‘ontography’: historical and ethnographic investigations of particular world-making and world-sustaining practices that do not begin by assuming a general picture of the world. Such investigations avoid making sharp distinctions between epistemology and ontology and take a symmetrical approach to concerns about identity and difference.