What Is "Factification"?

In writing my Ph.D. dissertation in the history and sociology of science (U.Penn., 2005), I decided to introduce the word "factification" to refer to an important process in the history of knowledge production that is analogous to commodification in the material economy. At the urging of my very sensible advisors who wisely counseled that I not embarrass myself too badly with a clunky neologism, I toned down my usage of this term and have since used it only in informal conversations and in one conference paper, which I am in the process of turning into an article or chapter for publication. In the meantime, I keep seeing so many examples of "factification" all around me that I decided it might be worth setting up a blog to catalog some of these instances and create the possibility for discussion with other people, whether scholars or not, about this important process. In my informal experience with using this term so far, some people have really liked the term and have seen examples of it in their own reseach or lives, while others have found it distasteful. Actually, I intend the clunkiness of the term to be usefully provocative, much as for the word "commodification," which has now come into widespread use.

So what exactly is "factification"? Think of it this way: People throughout history and in diverse cultures have had experiences of the natural world and have known things based on those experiences. Think of farmers. Or fishermen. Or hunters and gatherers. Or mining prospectors. Or people who simply know and love a particular place, through long residence or frequent travel there. Over time, however, many human experiences with their associated knowledge have been transformed, rendered, or converted into new kinds of modern fact that make sense for an increasingly globalized modern science. This process is factification. Sometimes this process seems to work smoothly, but often it doesn't. The facts of science are different: cosmopolitan, aspiring to universality, commensurable with other facts from other times and places. Scientific facts are meant to be depersonalized, particular, and objective. Scientists produce them all the time--indeed, modern science would arguably not exist without them--but on some occasions they start producing whole new classes of facts, and that is when the process is visible as factification.

Another way to thank about factification is to use Marx's terminology of "use value" and "exchange value." Just as material things can have use value, which commodification turns into exchange value, so too can experiences and knowledge that have an epistemic use value be converted into modern facts that can be circulated within global science. In the process, of course, a transformation is involved--some things are lost, other things are gained--and the modern fact that results is somewhat different. This process is most visible not in the laboratory, where architecture, practices, and social conventions are designed to make modern facts, but in the messy complex worlds of the field, understood more broadly to include not just the scientist's field site but also the clinic, the shop floor, the marketplace--indeed, anywhere that scientific and everyday knowledge come into regular contact.

Factification is not the same as making a fact. Just as we would not usually call the mundane everyday making of an industrial product (a computer, for example) an act of commodification, so too is much of the scientific fact-making that goes on today relatively routine and unremarkable. However, there are many instances when we might wish as historical and social analysts--or for those wishing to act in resistance--to draw attention to the process of making modern facts out of some experiences and everyday knowledge of them that were not so before, either historically or in the present day. On such frontiers for scientific knowledge--new places, new objects of study, etc.--there is likely to be some pre-existing experience and knowledge at risk of being displaced or obscured. In such cases, the use of the term "factification" is warranted. Naming this process is crucial to recognizing its importance and clarifying a discourse of critical analysis around it.

So far, I have avoided giving any specific examples. I wanted this blog post to remain a general description. In the future, however, I intend to post instances on this blog from time to time, to show the relevance of this term to the analysis of both historical and present-day developments. Readers are also encouraged to contribute their own examples and critical analysis in the comments. Many examples are close at hand--for just as capitalism tends toward the commodification of everything, so too does science tend toward the factification of everything. Indeed, the two processes have been symbiotic, even if in frequent tension and sometimes open conflict. Modern facts are powerful and sometimes can become useful allies in the struggle for a more just, egalitarian, and sustainable world, but they can also have quite the opposite effect, if not properly critiqued, scrutinized, and, if necessary, deconstructed.