SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM REVISITED - CONCE PTS FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES

German STS research has paid little attention to the empirical and the oretical contributions of symbolic interactionism. Therefore, this art icle aims to give both an overall view of the development of theoretic al concepts from E.C. Hughes and A.L. Strauss to the recent STS studie s of, for example, S.L. Star and J. Fujimura and a short introduction to some of the key concepts the latter have developed in their empiric al work in the domains of engineering work, molecular biology, and dis tributed artificial intelligence. Following this, some aspects of the special achievements of symbolic interactionism are discussed. Althoug h this is not a comparison of the STS-approaches, some comparative not ions with respect to different constructivist approaches from ethnomet hodology to laboratory studies to the actor-network approach appear in the concluding section.