This article discusses examples from an extended family of aphorisms, stories, and themes that have circulated widely in STS and remain associated with the formation and integration of the field. Drawing upon Harvey Sacks’s insightful remarks about features of everyday conversation, which he related to ancient practices in oral culture, we argue that familiar citation magnets in STS operate in many respects like proverbs, parables, and an extended family of neatly and memorably packaged viral articulations in ordinary language. After discussing the contingent production of proverbial truth, the article focuses on three well-known examples that combine memorable proverbs and themes with parables: Winner’s account of the low parkway bridges designed by city planner Robert Moses to show that technology has politics; Pinch and Bijker’s concise history of the bicycle to illustrate the social construction of technology, and Star and Griesemer’s viral two-word theme of ‘boundary objects’ as artifacts that sustain collaboration across organizational contexts. The discussion of these cases suggests that different elements of these examples become the focus of subsequent citations and applications, and that ambiguities about the origins and meanings of the cited items opens new avenues for critical reflection on practicing citational justice and the nature of STS as an affiliative discipline.

中文翻译：

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STS 的众所周知的经济性


本文讨论了在 STS 中广泛流传的格言、故事和主题大家族中的例子，这些例子仍然与该领域的形成和整合有关。借鉴 Harvey Sacks 关于日常对话特征的深刻评论，他将其与古老的口头文化实践联系起来，我们认为 STS 中熟悉的引文磁铁在许多方面都起作用，如谚语、寓言，以及普通语言中一个由整齐而令人难忘的病毒式发音组成的大家庭。在讨论了谚语真理的偶然产生之后，本文重点介绍了三个著名的例子，它们将令人难忘的谚语和主题与寓言相结合：获胜者对城市规划师罗伯特·摩西 （Robert Moses） 设计的低矮公园大道桥的描述，以表明技术与政治有关;Pinch 和 Bijker 的自行车简明历史说明了技术的社会建构，以及 Star 和 Griesemer 的病毒式两个词的主题，即“边界对象”作为维持跨组织环境协作的人工制品。对这些案例的讨论表明，这些例子的不同元素成为后续引用和应用的焦点，并且关于引用项目的来源和含义的歧义为对实践引用正义和 STS 作为附属学科的性质的批判性反思开辟了新的途径。