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APRIL 29, 2026

Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay by Michael Callon (first Qualitative Methods Assignment):

I have some trouble understanding the article as I’m still learning how research articles are written in the social sciences, so will have my raw notes and my note corrections here as I dissect it.

For the purpose of dissecting the article, I’m adding the assignment question here:

b) Which of the following philosophical concepts do the authors use in the article? How do they use it?

Ontology
Epistemology
Hermeneutics
Phenomenology
Pragmatism
None of these?

Actors are anyone and anything that can influence a situation
Problematization
Interessement
Mobilization
Enrollment
Dissidence
Epizooty?
Generalized Symmetry
urbi et orbi

It seems like there was a case where 3 scientists were trying to communicate the decline of the scallop population in an area. The author wants to focus on the sociology of translation.
Starts off with saying the sociologists are not open to discussing sociological topics/they believe they know sociology best. Secondly, sociologists believe that that their sociological insights are certain. And thirdly, they tend to categorize individuals (actors) into specific archetypes of intentions and work.

Why is this important?
These biases can cause the field to miss out on new perspectives and misrepresent work both in terms of certainty and intentions. Since the reading is about the sociology of translation, I’m guessing it’s important to understand the general view of sociologists before diving in.
To ensure these biases are removed, sociologists should make room for all views and perspectives. Don’t define/fix an actor’s identity as identities are also studied in the process. They should speak about opposing topics in the same tone. Essentially, don’t just copy the subjects uncritically. The researcher should not impose their belief, biases, and judgements when approaching/addressing/studying a situation even though they are inherently part of the system they study.
Situation: 3 researchers came back from Japan with knowledge of how to increase scallops. Two places in France struggle from overfishing scallops. One place is overfished year round due to the type of scallop being available year round and the other only during its season.
Translation:
- Problematization: Create/Identify a problem and be a part of the solution?
- Interessement creation? -> create connections or solidly define relationships between actors in order to establish the interconnectedness of the problem at hand.
  Without these relationships, lurking or even confounding variables can be used to explain different aspects of the phenomenon?
  After interessement is established, the details need to be refined. They needed to understand how to get the scallops to anchor or do they even anchor? They need scientific colleagues for that. The fishermen did not know this information.
- with relationships established, representation matters in the sense that sampling is a key factor in testing a hypothesis.
- the sampling also determines the efficiency of the device (instrumentation). (how many scallops can the collector collect and what sample does it capture)
- In establishing these connections between the actors, the researchers become the pipeline by which the experiment is conducted. They also become the representatives for the actors themselves. Data replaces the relationships and represents them.
- The full transformation is that systems existing in the world are defined by a small sample of the population that define the relationships within systems using small samples of the populations within the systems and represent these relationships through symbolic means (data, graphs, math, etc).
- But in representing the actors and translating the relationships they’ve observed, they must understand that translation does not always hold and they may not be representing the actors or the relationships objectively.
- The problem is that the fishermen’s commitments can change and that the larvae may not anchor which can cause controversy and break the enrollment established by the researchers and bring into question the representativity of the researchers themselves.
- The ultimate problem/idea is about translation. At the core of this study’s creation (interessement -> mobilization -> enrollment -> dissidence), there is the idea that key observations in the world are translated into a result by Constantine definition and displacement (replacing using other symbols) of the original systems and actors. This translation can inaccurately capture or define actors or actors can change to no longer fit the definitions. In this sense, translation can spark controversy when the actors do not participate in the narrative created for them. Translation is an important aspect of research methodology.
- Pragmatism?

The article I read was “Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay” by Michael Callon which was about the process of defining an experiment by problematizing a phenomena, identifying social actors, defining these social actors and their relationships to one another, and defining the researchers as spokesmen of this problem and these definitions. The problem at hand was that fishermen were over fishing scallops at St. Brieuc Bay. Three researchers studied a Japanese technique for farming scallops that could potentially resolve this overfishing problem that involved the scallops anchoring to nets. They hypothesized that the scallops of St. Brieuc Bay would also anchor to the nets. The researchers follow four key steps problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization.

I feel that the author mainly focuses on ontology which is the study of what exists and what things are. He attempts to define the exact identities involved in the overfishing situation, their relationships, how their relationships can be impacted, and how the researchers position themselves to be the essential piece to solve the issue of overfishing. He uses it throughout the article as the article itself is the formation and solidification of identities, relationships, and how they are bound to change.

I honestly believe it was very helpful for me to read and understand scientific research from the lens of ontology. The author breaks down observation, identification, and ultimately the formation of a research question and project into manageable pieces. I was able to see the gradual change in a logical process of defining and translating a phenomena to a research question that is testable empirically, which is not something you typically learn or see just by reading research articles. In this sense, I found it super helpful.

Source:
Callon, Michel 1986, “Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay”, in J. Law (ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge?, London, Routledge, 1986, pp.196-223