Showing papers in "Social Studies of Science in 2006"
TL;DR: The authors argue that the current approach can more accurately be portrayed as an uneasy blend of "old" and "new" assumptions, and explore the social construction of public talk, the relationship between talk and trust, the search for the "innocent" citizen, and the pursuit of social consensus.
Abstract: Talk of public dialogue and engagement has become fashionable internationally, and particularly within Europe. Building especially upon recent British experience, this paper argues that ‘public talk’ (that is, talk both by and about the public) represents an important site for science and technology studies analysis. The relationship between ‘new’ and ‘old’ approaches to scientific governance is considered. Drawing upon a series of official reports, and also the GM Nation? public debate over genetically modified food, the paper suggests that, rather than witnessing the emergence of a new governance paradigm, the current approach can more accurately be portrayed as an uneasy blend of ‘old’ and ‘new’ assumptions. Eschewing a straightforward normative account, the paper explores the social construction of public talk, the relationship between talk and trust, the search for the ‘innocent’ citizen, and the pursuit of social consensus. Current initiatives should not simply be criticized for their inadequacies, ...
653 citations
TL;DR: The Chicago School of urban studies as discussed by the authors had close ties to the city for which it was named: its social scientists lived in Chicago, were affiliated with the University of Chicago, and made Chicago the object of almost all of their empirical research.
Abstract: How does ‘place’ contribute to the credibility of scientific claims? The Chicago School of urban studies (1918-32) had close ties to the city for which it was named: its social scientists lived in Chicago, were affiliated with the University of Chicago, and made Chicago the object of almost all of their empirical research. In order for this city to become a legitimate source of claims about urban form and process, Chicago is textually made to oscillate between two available authorizing spaces. As a field-site, the city of Chicago becomes a found and uncorrupted reality, the singularly ideal place to do urban research, and requiring the analyst to get up-close and personal. As a laboratory, Chicago becomes a controlled environment where artificial specimens yield generalities true anywhere, requiring of the analyst distance and objectivity. The distinctive epistemic virtues of both field and laboratory are preserved as complementary sources of credibility, and Chicago becomes the right place for the job.
242 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the stock ticker, the first custom-tailored technology adopted by financial markets, is examined and the authors show that the ticker generated temporal structures and modes of visualizing these structures, together with representational languages, interpretive tools and boundaries associated with access to financial data.
Abstract: Recent discussions of calculative agency in financial markets (a variety of socio-technical agency) have stressed that technology constitutes markets through standardization. This raises the question of additional agential features of financial technologies, which may go beyond, supplement and embed standardization and calculability. I propose here the concept of ‘generator’ as a way of capturing such features of socio-technical agency in financial markets. I use this concept for examining the stock ticker, the first custom-tailored technology adopted by financial markets. I show that the ticker generated temporal structures and modes of visualizing these structures, together with representational languages, interpretive tools and boundaries associated with access to financial data.
182 citations
TL;DR: An ethnographic study of the development of a mouse genome mapping resource organized around a database is presented, arguing that the use of databases in science, at least in this kind of project, is unlikely to produce wholesale change.
Abstract: Speculation on the implications of increased use of information and communication technologies in scientific research suggests that use of databases may change the processes and the outcomes of knowledge production. Most attention focuses on databases as a large-scale means of communicating research, but they can also be used on a much smaller scale as research tools. This paper presents an ethnographic study of the development of a mouse genome mapping resource organized around a database. Through an examination of the natural, social and digital orderings that arise in the construction of the resource, it argues that the use of databases in science, at least in this kind of project, is unlikely to produce wholesale change. Such changes as do occur in work practices, communication regimes and knowledge outcomes are dependent on the orderings that each database embodies and is embedded within. Instead of imposing its own computer logic, the database provides a focus for specifying and tying together parti...
160 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the world's most liberal regulations of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and human cloning have been proposed in the country of Israel, which is the only country in the world that allows such research.
Abstract: Israel endorses one of the world's most liberal regulations of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and human cloning. After an introduction to the technologies and their regulation in many Western c...
96 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the changing role of science in public discourse on race and racism, examining the contention that new biological accounts of human life (biologism) are transforming how differences between races and racism are defined.
Abstract: This paper explores the changing role of science in public discourse on ‘race’ and racism, examining the contention that new biological accounts of human life (‘biologism’) are transforming how dif...
89 citations
TL;DR: The governance of biotechnology should be understood as a series of acts of ‘demarcation’, through which the categories and entities enunciated in regulatory texts acquire a material foundation in bureaucratic practices and in the organisms these bureaucracies are expected to oversee.
Abstract: Since the late 1990s, the European Union (EU) has embarked on an effort to make fully traceable and identifiable every genetically modified organism (GMO) that travels through its territory. New regulations force market operators to record the presence of genetically modified material in foods and feed, and to pass this information along in every transaction, thus creating a continuous paper trail for every bioengineered organism as it moves through the EU market. This new regulatory regime represents a momentous change in the nature of biotechnology governance in Europe, for it enunciates as its fundamental unit a novel bio-legal entity - the ‘transformation event’ meant to identify the particular instance of genetic modification from which each GMO has been developed. This paper describes the processes through which this new regulatory entity acquires a concrete and material meaning and thereby becomes a viable object of governance. Two parallel developments are described in detail: the creation of inte...
78 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how representations of prospective use became designed in a novel healthcare technology for elderly people, and they support studies arguing that explicit investment in prospective use can improve the health of older adults.
Abstract: The present paper examines how representations of prospective use became designed in a novel healthcare technology for elderly people. The case lends support to studies arguing that explicit invest...
66 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors cast the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration.
Abstract: This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself.
63 citations
TL;DR: The paper suggests that this particular form of coordination through heterogeneity might be described, borrowing from Michel Serres’ work, as mutual parasitism, and that this metaphor might be useful in rethinking the role of science - research, or ‘evidence’ - in medical practice.
Abstract: Blood pressure is one of the key measurements taken in standard clinical examinations. Its importance has long been associated with the instrumental precision offered by the sphygmomanometer, which is supposed to have replaced other, more imprecise methods of blood pressure measurement, such as feeling the pulse with the finger. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a neurosurgical clinic, this paper explores the co-existence of the sphygmomanometer and the finger methods in practice. I argue that in neurosurgery these methods are both independent from and interdependent with each other: independent in the way they achieve different assessments of the patient’s blood pressure at the same time; and interdependent in the way the surgeon’s and anaesthetist’s measurements are dynamically linked with each other. The paper suggests that this particular form of coordination through heterogeneity might be described, borrowing from Michel Serres’ work, as mutual parasitism, and that this metaphor might be useful in rethinking the role of science - research, or ‘evidence’ - in medical practice.
51 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that over time, university research on transgenic crops has increasingly mirrored the research profile of for-profit firms, and that universities are often identified as places where research on the more minor crops and traits should occur.
Abstract: Private sector firms have dominated the research, development, and commercialization processes for transgenic crops. This has led to a narrow focus on a few commercially important crops and engineered traits, while minor crops and traits remain largely ignored. Analysts have decried this situation and called for more public-centered research regimes, such as research on minor crops and traits. Universities are often identified as places where research on the more minor crops and traits should occur. The burgeoning literature on the changing structure of the university toward an institution more aligned with private for-profit sector interests and orientations calls these arguments into question. Using time series data from 1993-2002 obtained from the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, we find that over time, university research on transgenic crops has increasingly mirrored the research profile of for-profit firms.
TL;DR: The first almost complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered at La Chapelle-aux as mentioned in this paper in 1908, and it was used as a model for an object that was both scientific and popular.
Abstract: This paper investigates an historical episode that involved an object that was both scientific and popular. In 1908, the first almost complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered at La Chapelle-aux...
TL;DR: The authors analyzes conflicts and interactions associated with the regulation of GMOs in the US and the EU, using the example of Bt maize, a genetically modified crop, and links two analytical perspectives to account for how this happened.
Abstract: US (United States) and EU (European Union) approaches to the regulation of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are often explained using the ideas of 'sound science' and the 'precautionary principle'. These stereotypes, however, can be misleading. They can conceal conflicts within jurisdictions and important interactions between them. This paper avoids these ideas and instead analyzes conflicts and interactions associated with the regulation of GMOs in the US and the EU, using the example of Bt maize -- a genetically modified crop. It focuses on risk assessment as a standard-setting process, and explains changes in regulatory standards. In this case, public protest and trade conflict created an opportunity for a transatlantic network of critical scientists to challenge regulatory standards and for NGOs (non-government organizations) to press for higher ones. The paper links two analytical perspectives to account for how this happened. 'Regulatory science' helps explain what happens when the 'private' government-industry-academia network associated with risk regulation is opened up to greater public scrutiny. It also helps to explain how the context and content of regulatory science mutually shape each other. 'Trading up' helps to explain opportunities and pressures to raise regulatory standards associated with US-EU trade liberalisation and trade conflict.
TL;DR: The authors examined the interpretive flexibility of four institutions or tropes: "intellectual property", "the university", ''the inventor'' and ''the public interest'' in the context of post-1980 research universities.
Abstract: Contemporary polemics and scholarship tend to portray post-1980 research universities as exotic, abnormal, or ‘new’ because they embrace private intellectual property. This paper examines this sense of ‘newness’ by comparing two discourses - the university patent policy debates of 1910-39 and the Bayh-Dole debates of 1976-80 - and focuses on the interpretive flexibility of four institutions or tropes: ‘intellectual property’, ‘the university’, ‘the university inventor’, and ‘the public interest’. I argue that ‘intellectual property’ meant roughly the same thing in 1940 and 1980. However, ‘the university’ and ‘the university inventor’ changed subtly to accommodate a dramatic shift in the meaning of ‘the public interest’, which (by 1980) reflected the notion of a nationalized economy and a concern with federal deregulation. This suggests that the ‘newness’ of the contemporary research university has little to do with Merton’s norm of communism.
TL;DR: Charting the histories of these two objects of theory illuminates the complicated institutional and pedagogical factors that helped to produce a new subfield, particle cosmology, which today ranks at the very forefront of modern physics.
Abstract: Physicists in different branches of the discipline were puzzled by the problem of mass during the 1950s and 1960s: why do objects have mass? Around the same time, yet working independently, specialists in gravitational studies and in particle theory proposed that mass might arise due to objects’ interactions with a new (and as yet undetected) field. Although the questions they posed and even the answers they provided shared several similarities - and even though both proposals quickly became ‘hot topics’ in their respective subfields - virtually no one discussed one proposal in the light of the other for nearly 20 years. Only after massive, unprecedented changes in pedagogical infrastructure rocked the discipline in the early 1970s did a new generation of physicists begin to see possible links between the Brans-Dicke field and the Higgs field. For the new researchers, trained in different ways than most of their predecessors, the two objects of theory were not only similar - some began to proclaim that th...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years and found divergent and convergent trends in science news, reporting of controversy and evaluation of science.
Abstract: This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria (Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the early 1960s, declining into the 1970s, and rising again in the 1980s and 1990s. Media coverage in both countries shows similar swings in public appeal. The trends in the medicalization of science news, the reporting of controversy and the evaluation of science diverge in the two contexts. The paper concludes with speculative explanations of these results. Similarities and differences in these long-term trends point to common factors and specific differences at work on either side of the (former) ‘Iron Curtain’.
TL;DR: This paper used the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study to understand political consensus and found that neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for "getting along" within a structured disunity.
Abstract: Using the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study, this paper challenges standard approaches to understanding political consensus. Neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for ‘getting along’ within a structured disunity. Structure derives from commitment to a socio-technical network, while disunity arises from the interpretive flexibility and varied practices contained within this network. The Cairo Consensus is then explored through a central site of production: international demographic surveys. These surveys help to build a stable network, and thus facilitate consensus, by helping to establish epistemic communities, producing standard representations of Third World fertility, and standardizing political discourses of legitimacy and accountability.
TL;DR: This essay considers the appearance, in the 1970s, of the term ‘end-to-end’ in computer science discourse, and how the term became a point of contention within disputes about how to build a packet-switched network.
Abstract: The term ‘end-to-end’ has become a familiar characterization of the architecture of the Internet, not only in engineering discourse, but in contexts as varied as political manifestos, commercial pr...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce the history of a unique museum of nuclear energy, the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the "Exhibition of the Achievements of the People's Economy" (VDNKh) in Moscow, from its inception in 1956 to its closing in 1989, and propose that the pavilion's exhibitions on nuclear energy not only reinforced a vision of the country's scientific and technological potential, but also contributed significantly to the Soviet political vision.
Abstract: This paper introduces the history of a unique museum of nuclear energy, the Pavilion for Atomic Energy at the ‘Exhibition of the Achievements of the People’s Economy’ (VDNKh) in Moscow, from its inception in 1956 to its closing in 1989. The analytical goal is to unpack the kind of social order that was implicit in the way visitors to the pavilion were envisioned. The paper proposes that the pavilion’s exhibitions on nuclear energy, staged as pivotal to technical progress, not only reinforced a vision of the country’s scientific and technological potential, but also contributed significantly to the Soviet political vision. Based on archival documents and published material, the paper traces shifts in the pavilion’s tasks, and attempts to convey how these shifts mirror changing concepts of the intended visitors. Moreover, the paper explores how this historical case study speaks to contemporary museum theory, and how this may qualify our understanding of the role of the popularization of science and technolo...
TL;DR: In this paper, the importance of understanding the fundamental nature of tacit knowledge and its transfer mechanization has been highlighted, highlighting the need to understand the transfer mechanism of tacit weapons knowledge.
Abstract: Post 9/11 concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction have highlighted the importance of understanding the fundamental nature of tacit weapons knowledge and its transfer mechani...
TL;DR: This paper explored the continued citation in review papers of a research result that is widely rejected by experts and showed how the value of this result as an example of pharmacogenetics leads commentators outside the core set to ignore its controversial qualities and use it as a resource for expectation-building, but in the process producing a representation of AD pharmacogenetic that resembles an "alien science" (an inaccurate picture an outsider conveys of a scientific topic based on the literature, rather than interviews with the scientists involved).
Abstract: This paper takes Harry Collins’ concept of the ’core set’ and combines it with emerging work in the sociology of sociotechnical expectations to explore the continued citation in review papers of a research result that is widely rejected by experts. The result in question, a putative pharmacogenetic link between carrying the APOE4 allele and reduced response to the anti-Alzheimer’s disease (AD) drug Tacrine, was first reported in 1995. Since then it has been widely cited, helping to create expectations about pharmacogenetics or ’personalized medicine’. To the majority of clinicians and researchers specialized in AD (the core set) this result is of little value – both scientifically defunct and ethically risky – although some supporters continue to suggest that the value of the result has been masked by commercial interests. This paper shows how the value of this result as an example of pharmacogenetics leads commentators outside the core set to ignore its controversial qualities and use it as a resource for expectation-building, but in the process producing a representation of AD pharmacogenetics that resembles an ’alien science’ (an inaccurate picture an outsider conveys of a scientific topic based on the literature, rather than interviews with the scientists involved).
TL;DR: The ways that provers go about working on proofs provide the context for continuing that work and for discovering the reasoning that a particular proof is then seen to require, according to the paper's central claim.
Abstract: Discussions of mathematical problem-solving and heuristic reasoning have typically examined how proofs that are already known might be found. This approach has at least three problems: first, prove...
TL;DR: It is argued that secrecy enabled different readings of the patent in different places and thus acted as a spatial–epistemic tool in the exercise of power.
Abstract: What makes knowledge dangerous? How does secrecy operate to help produce knowledge that is dangerous or otherwise? What happens when ‘nothing happens’? This paper addresses these questions through a case study in the history of chemical weapons research in the UK. It focuses on the publication and subsequent treatment in 1975 of a newspaper article reporting that the patent on the chemical warfare agent, VX, was available in a number of public libraries. Within 10 days, copies of the patent had been withdrawn, a government review of declassification procedures was announced, and in Parliament the Minister for Defence announced that the Government had never patented VX. The implication was that nothing, or nothing worth worrying about, had happened. This paper draws on recently declassified documents to trace the modifications of position that occurred in order for the Minister to arrive at this announcement. I argue that secrecy enabled different readings of the patent in different places and thus acted a...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an ethnographic exploration at the interface of Peruvian agricultural development NGOs and highland peasant communities, who are encouraged to leave subsistence farming and produce instead for wider markets.
Abstract: Southern non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now act as important intermediaries in the transfer of agricultural science and technology for the development of Third World food production and markets. This paper presents an ethnographic exploration at the interface of Peruvian agricultural development NGOs and highland peasant communities, who are encouraged to leave subsistence farming and produce instead for wider markets. Following a methodology of symmetrical anthropology based in actor-network theory, I show how sociotechnical processes that underpin agricultural development rely on constructions of 'traditional' and 'modern' categories of practice in order to perpetuate efforts to change the peasant production methods. Yet as peasants appropriate and reinvent development's technologies and resources, NGOs are pressured to further control the 'discrepant' responses and behaviours of peasants. Focusing on a number of NGOs and indigenous, Quechua-speaking communities in the southern Andes, I argue that the incorporation of peasants into markets is made problematic by both entrenched racial tensions and the creative capacity of peasants to circumvent the disciplining and social planning strategies of NGOs.
TL;DR: This paper describes the coexistence of two systems for classifying organisms and species: a dominant genetic system and an older naturalist system, through which they are complementary, contradictory and inclusive in different situations-sometimes simultaneously.
Abstract: This paper describes the coexistence of two systems for classifying organisms and species: a dominant genetic system and an older naturalist system. The former classifies species and traces their e...
TL;DR: In the early 1980s, Logo was introduced into mainstream education in both the USA and the UK as mentioned in this paper, where it became the material embodiment of a radical educational philosophy and a potential vehicle for the transformation of education.
Abstract: ‘Logo’ is the name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization. Developed in the USA in the late 1960s, it became the material embodiment of a radical educational philosophy and a potential vehicle for the transformation of education. In the early 1980s, Logo was introduced into mainstream education in both the USA and the UK. Within an increasingly conservative social and political context with different education policy priorities, Logo was gradually stripped of its radical potential, marginalized and, where it survived, remoulded as harmless to the mainstream educational system. This paper draws on empirical research that explored the evolution of Logo between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. The paper focuses on the social processes involved in the initial development and evolution of Logo. It shows that these processes were heavily contested. Logo was the product of complex social, technical, political and economic decisions, an...
TL;DR: In this article, the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sought my help as a rebuttal witness for the defence in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a trial scheduled to begin early in the autumn of that year, which would be the first case to test the eligibility of 'intelligent design theory' (IDT) for inclusion alongside the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution in high school biology classes.
Abstract: In February 2005, the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sought my help as a 'rebuttal witness' for the defence in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a trial scheduled to begin early in the autumn of that year, which would be the first case to test the eligibility of 'intelligent design theory' (IDT) for inclusion alongside the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution in high school biology classes. As a rebuttal witness, my charge was to contradict the claims made by the plaintiffs' witnesses, all of whom were seasoned veterans of related trials involving creationism. However, I learned of their prior experience only once I started preparing for the trial.1 I decided to participate simply after having read the expert witness reports as filed by the plaintiffs' lawyers. These struck me as based on tendentious understandings of the nature of science that would not have survived scrutiny on an informed listserv such as HOPOS-L, let alone the peer review process of a relevant journal. My critical eye was clearly informed by knowledge gained from the science studies disciplines, since I am not a known advocate of or expert in either IDT or Neo Darwinism.2 I may be the first person to declare under oath that knowledge of the history, philosophy and sociology of science provides a better basis for evaluating the scientific standing of a field of inquiry than someone formally trained in science. However, I am not the first whose expertise conformed to this declaration. The testimony of Michael Ruse, a scientific amateur, was the intellectual centerpiece in the verdict delivered in McLean v. Arkansas (1982).3 It was based on a Popper-inspired criterion, according to which the proposed version of creation science failed to be a science by virtue of its reliance on unfalsifiable indeed, infallible Biblical pronouncements about nature. At the time, Ruse was criticized by fellow philosophers for having advanced a largely discredited conception of
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TL;DR: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (529 F. Supp. ED Ark. 1982) as discussed by the authors was the first case in which a judge relied heavily on Ruse's testimony when concluding that 'creation science' fell short of the following 'essential characteristics of science':
Abstract: More than two decades ago, philosopher of biology Michael Ruse testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Federal District Court case, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (529 F. Supp. ED Ark. 1982). The plaintiffs in that case challenged the constitutionality of an Arkansas law that had recently been passed by the state legislature. The law mandated that public (taxpayer-funded) schools that taught Darwin's theory of evolution would also be required to teach 'creation science' (a thinly secularized version of Fundamentalist Christian interpretations of Biblical Genesis). In his ruling against the defendants, Judge Overton relied heavily on Ruse's testimony when concluding that 'creation science' fell short of the following 'essential characteristics of science':
TL;DR: This research note explores the evolution of the computing team from an early vantage point: the mathematical team that finished the calculations that delivered the atomic bomb, based on Richard Feynman’s eyewitness account, Los Alamos from Below.
Abstract: It is well known that computers were once people rather than machines. While today the focus is often on the hardware, computing as a project bridges the social and the technical; the computing team is the exemplar. This research note explores the evolution of the computing team from an early vantage point: the mathematical team that finished the calculations that delivered the atomic bomb. While the outcome was deplorable, the computing team worked under adverse conditions, and they worked on the world’s largest mathematical problem of its day without computer hardware. Instead, Feynman and Frankel’s team at Los Alamos first relied on scientists’ wives, who volunteered for the project with pencil and paper, then on adding machines powered by the Women’s Army Corps professional female computers, and finally on more advanced calculators run by Special Engineering Detachment specialists (high school graduates with an aptitude for maths) assigned by the US Army. In a few short months, the team’s composition ...
TL;DR: The recent First Amendment litigation in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) raises many issues of interest to social science and humanities scholars as mentioned in this paper, including the scope afforded to Steve Fuller to present his STS perspectives; and the way the Court appears to have put this expertise to work.
Abstract: The recent First Amendment litigation in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) raises many issues of interest to social science and humanities scholars. This paper will focus on just two: the scope afforded to Steve Fuller to present his STS perspectives; and the way the Court appears to have put this expertise to work. The Court’s formal receptiveness to Fuller’s testimony reflects the symbolic significance of science–religion encounters and is inextricably linked to ongoing skirmishes at the margins of public science (Turner, 1980). The appropriation of Fuller’s evidence, in ways that appear contrary to his expressed intentions, is consistent with the peculiar reception of other STS scholarship in legal settings in recent years. Fuller’s intervention and the treatment of his evidence reinforce the need for more sophisticated approaches to courts, jurisprudential traditions, and legal rules and processes.