Asdal 2015 – What is the issue?¶

In brief

Asdal argues that documents do not just describe a reality but take part in modifying and transforming it, and proposes the term modifying work for this (p. 74) [U]. She shows this through a close reading of a single bureaucratic document, the Smoke Damage Committee's report on industrial air pollution (delivered 1958, annexed to a legislative proposition in 1960–61) (pp. 76–78, 90) [U]. Her reading is that the report turned pollution from a local controversy into an industrial issue that was made to belong to industry and to issue-experts rather than to affected publics (pp. 75, 84) [U]. From this she challenges the STS assumption that becoming an issue means being opened up: it may also mean being closed down (p. 87) [U].

Research question and main claim¶

Overarching argument: paperwork does not just describe a reality "out there"; documents also work upon, modify and transform that reality (p. 74) [U].
Questions she asks of the report: what kind of document it is, how to read it, and what it does to the issue (p. 76) [U]. Also: how documents – through rhetorical strategies, conceptual work and the relations the text enacts – modify objects and issues (p. 77) [U].
She also aims to offer a small set of tools for attending to documents (p. 74) [U].
Main claim about the case: the pollution issue was modified into an industrial issue (pp. 80, 87), and the report establishes the primacy of industry; industry, not the environment, emerges as the relevant object (p. 84) [U].
Claim about the concept issue: it is not enough to note that something becomes an issue; we must analyse how issues emerge, what kind of issue, and with what effect (p. 75), and to whom issues are made to belong (p. 88) [U].

Theoretical perspective¶

Written partly as a contribution to the debate on the turn to materiality (p. 74) [U]. Her position is that words and materialities, the material and the semiotic, must be handled together (p. 75) [U]. She refers to Haraway on the material-semiotic (p. 75) [U].
She names the Foucauldian tradition combined with actor-network theory as the key resource (p. 75) [U]. She argues that Foucault's discourse concerns practices, not only language (p. 86), and that the semiotic side of ANT – the inscription devices of the laboratory studies (Latour and Woolgar 1986) – has received too little attention (p. 75) [U].
She builds on the STS concept of issue (Marres 2005, 2007; Latour 2007), which she links to American pragmatism and Lippmann (pp. 75, 87) [U].
Governmentality studies (Foucault 2007) for the licensing scheme and new governable objects (p. 85) [U].
Conceptual history (Koselleck 2002) (pp. 82, 87) [U].
Rhetorical and pragmatic traditions in linguistics: Austin, Bakhtin, Miller, Wittgenstein (p. 88) [U]. Paul Veyne's reading of Foucault (pp. 86, 89) [U].

Empirical material and context¶

Case: an aluminium smelter in Årdal in western Norway, decided in 1947 and partly built by the German occupiers (p. 76) [U]. The smelter also produced large amounts of fluorine, which was not part of the production plan (p. 76) [U].
A 1949 letter from the local veterinarian describing fluorosis in livestock, from the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture (pp. 76, 89) [U]. Used as a contrast to the main document [T].
Main document: the report of the Smoke Damage Committee (Innstilling fra røykskadekomiteen), delivered to the Ministry of Industry in 1958 and annexed to Odelsting Proposition no. 24 (1960–61) (p. 90) [U]. It was placed as one of three attachments at the end of a proposition of more than 50 pages on a law about property rights between neighbours (p. 78) [U].
Also a 1955 memo from the smelter's manager to the Ministry of Industry, which never mentions fluorine (pp. 85, 89) [U].
The story is based on Asdal's earlier work in Norwegian (Asdal 2011) (p. 89) [U].
Country and period: Norway, roughly 1947–1961 [T – inferred from the dates given on pp. 76, 90].

Method¶

A practice-oriented approach (p. 74): close reading of one document, aiming to describe as accurately as possible what a text does and with what effects for the objects and issue at stake (p. 86) [U].
She does not look for a reality behind the text and does not address who the authors of the report were; she studies what the text enacts and how outside contexts play into it (p. 87) [U].
In practice she examines the document's placement, style of writing, order of chapters, which actors get the main roles, which concepts are used, and who is defined as having interests (pp. 78–84) [T – summary of the analysis].
The report is quoted in English in the article, while the original is in Norwegian (p. 90). Who translated: Not found in the text [T].

Key concepts¶

Concept	How the source defines or uses it	Page	U/T
modifying work	The work by which documents take part in modifying and sometimes radically transforming issues; the name Asdal proposes for her approach	74, 88	U
issue	STS concept (Marres) for a question that becomes contested and gathers a public; Asdal shows it can also work the other way	75, 87	U
non-issue	A question handled exclusively by issue-experts, excluding those with an interest	75	U
issue-experts (sakkyndige)	Norwegian term, literally issue-knowers; actors defined by knowledge of an object, not by interests	82–83	U
sakliggjort / Sache	Made into a sak; matter-of-factness, a focus on the relevant thing or object	87	U
material-semiotic	Words and materialities handled together	75	U
inscription devices	From laboratory studies; Asdal treats expert reports as inscription devices linked to bureaucratic and political machineries	75, 88	U
governable objects	Objects that become available for intervention once they can be named and to some extent quantified	84–85	U
enact	Used for what documents do: the report enacts weight and trustworthiness; documents enact, or take part in enacting, realities	77, 79, 87	U

How privacy and private data are understood¶

Topic not addressed. The article is about industrial pollution and documents [T].

Arguments and findings¶

Because the report is national in scope and commissioned by the state, it enacts both weight and trustworthiness (p. 77) [U].
Earlier historical accounts read the report as the origin of Norwegian pollution policy and environmental awareness (Lange 1998); Asdal proposes another reading (pp. 77, 82) [U].
The veterinarian's letter and the report are not two descriptions of the same issue from different angles; each establishes the issue in its own way (pp. 77, 79) [U].
Turning controversies into an everyday affair: placement as an attachment and a reporting style normalise the issue. Local stories are included, but only after pollution has been framed as a general problem of all industrialised countries (p. 78) [U]. Pollution is even made potentially positive, an expression of national development (pp. 78–79) [U].
Re-timing and re-locating: handling moves from the courts after the damage to a national expert office before the damage (p. 79) [U]. At the same time the issue is moved into national industrial policy; lifting an issue to the national level can also delimit it (p. 80) [U].
Industry as the collective good: the chapter on air pollution in Norway is organised around named companies and their histories; the report's phrase about our first aluminium factory ties industry to a shared history (p. 80) [U].
The licensing scheme only covered new facilities; existing industry was exempt (p. 82) [U]. The new office can therefore just as well be read as an extension of industry as an environmental awakening (p. 82) [U].
From stakeholders to issue-experts: the Ministry of Industry initially suggested the members, and the committee included two industry experts, included as people with knowledge rather than interests (p. 83) [U]. The affected parties were defined as actors with an interest (p. 83) [U]. Reading the report as scientification misses this, since neither vitenskapelig nor ekspert is an important concept in it (p. 83) [U].
New governable objects: the report names and describes fluorine and its harms in a way that had not been common in official documents, laying a foundation for later intervention (p. 85) [U]. The text thus also points towards another story (p. 85) [U].
The document's reach depends on how it is attached to a political machinery (p. 86) [U].

Limitations the source itself mentions¶

She has not addressed who the authors behind the report were (p. 87) [U].
The later effects depend on future modifying work; following the document further could be part of an extended approach (p. 86) [U].
A more targeted criticism of both Latour and Foucault is that they are too optimistic about how much can be grasped through close readings of text (p. 86) [U].
The aim is not to propose a new translation of issue, but to analyse the work of modifying issues (pp. 87–88) [U].

What the source does not cover¶

Privacy, personal data or digital technology [T].
Contemporary government documents; the case ends around 1961 [T].
How the report was received by contemporary readers, beyond its later place in historical accounts [T].

Possible relevance for the thesis¶

Method: the article gives concrete reading tools (placement, style, chapter order, main characters, concepts, who has interests) that could be tried on NOU 2022:11 [T].
Asdal uses enact about what documents do (pp. 77, 87) [U]. The research question uses the same verb, so the article may help pin down what enact means in the thesis [T].
Asdal links the genre of sakkyndige utredninger directly to today's Official Norwegian Reports (NOU) (p. 82) [U]. This makes the article relevant for reading NOU 2022:11 as a genre [T].
The distinction between interested parties and issue-experts could be used to ask who sat on the committee behind NOU 2022:11, and in what capacity [T].
The point that becoming an issue can mean being closed down (p. 87) could be a counterpoint to the STS understanding of issues as being opened up (Marres, Latour; p. 87) [T].

Connections to other sources¶

Marres 2007 – cited explicitly as part of the STS literature on issues; Asdal says her analysis suggests close to the opposite interpretation (p. 87) [U].
Marres 2005 – Asdal cites Marres's 2005 doctoral dissertation No issue, no public (p. 89), which is not the same text as the 2005 chapter in the source list; the connection is thematic [T].
Latour & Woolgar 1986 – Asdal cites Laboratory life (1986) for inscription devices (pp. 75, 90) [U]. Whether this is the chapter Rebekka uses must be checked [T].
Foucault 2007 – Asdal cites Security, territory, population (2007) for governmentality (pp. 85, 90) [U]. That this is the source list's Foucault 2007 is assumed from year and citekey [T].
Asdal et al. 2023 – same first author, published later; not cited [T].

Key quotes¶

“Paperwork does not simply describe an external reality ‘out there’: Documents also take part in working upon, modifying, and transforming that reality.” (p. 74)

“Turning something into an issue might also imply that it becomes, in certain important ways, a non-issue; a question to be handled exclusively by certain issue-experts, excluding persons or groups with an interest.” (p. 75)

“Hence, importantly, industry was not conceptualized as a stakeholder, but rather an expert on industry.” (p. 83)

“That something is transformed into an issue may also imply that it is being closed down.” (p. 87)

“As this paper has sought to demonstrate, one of the sites that modify issues is documents, including how these documents become attached to state machineries.” (p. 88)

Open questions for Rebekka¶

Does Asdal's use of enact match how you use the word in the research question, or does your use come from elsewhere?
Which of the reading tools (placement, style, chapter order, main characters, concepts, who has interests) seem most useful for NOU 2022:11?
In your documents, is privacy opened up as a contested issue or closed down into a matter for issue-experts – or both?
Who are the sakkyndige on the committee behind NOU 2022:11, and is anyone positioned as having knowledge rather than interests?
Asdal reads a historical document whose effects are known. What changes when the document is from 2022?