About SUBSTANce
The research center aims to overcome the split between traditions for research and intervention that establish standards, and those that critically assess the impact of standards on people's everyday lives.
Taking off from theories as diverse as phenomenology, activity theory, critical psychology, and post-structuralism, we explore the idea that standards and subjects shape each other - and that, since this is a fundamental process, critical social science is part of it, too.
Our projects investigate the micro-practices in which subjects and standards create each other - in how children and young people deal with norms and resources (such as toys), in the use of self-tracking devices (sports-watches, self-tests etc.), and - in collaboration with two municipal institu-tions - in interventions for young drug users. Finally, we also look at research practices, not least our own.
Standards are generalized models of and for practice, in certain limited aspects.
Any tool embodies a standard - for its production and its use. Since our minds are built with tools, people and standards shape each other. There are continuous processes of relay and transformation between objectivity and subjectivity - between standards and subjects.
We understand each other and ourselves through standards. Cultural-historical development keeps setting new standards with which we grasp and shape, cultivate our lives. Alongside this, we keep constructing new communities and ethics.
Standardization is when that process is deliberate and used as governance. Then standards are en-forced as abstract, that is, across and irrespective of different cultures, situations, and persons. This happens as technological innovation, as trade and social exchange, and as power - these aspects are intertwined.
Since standards are used in governance, and because they are abstract, a gap can open up between their ideal presuppositions and the concrete situation. This means that even if they make practices visible, they may also do the opposite. Understanding their actual consequences is a constant effort, and so is the cultivation of conditions, communities, and ways of living, that they require.
Modernity and standardization are closely related. All through modern times, science has contribut-ed ever new standards and standardizations, transforming human life. Some sciences have defined norms for human life - human bodies, thoughts, emotions and social relations - mostly in order to design the good and healthy life.
For just as long, philosophers and human and social scientists or researchers have discussed what this entails. How can we understand the concrete totalities that the specific and abstract standards ignore but become part of? How do people handle them? What kind of power is wielded with them? How precisely do the form us when we think we only make use of them?
Such questions have not worried the standardizing sciences. On the other hand, the critics have mostly refrained from intervening. There is an abyss between the two kinds of science. We need to bridge that gulf. Psychology has special potentials for this - because we have always had troubles with wanting to include both kinds of science.
This way we might give a modest contribution to a more reflexive modernity - to better knowing what we are doing when we make ourselves with standards.