(quotes taken from adjacent essay)

Strong program theorists see "all characteristics of normal science [as] built through extramural social processes". However, it does not necessarily follow that "the Kuhnian distinction between normal and crisis science" is collapsed. For one can, without contradiction,  simultaneously acknowledge both the social construction of science and the empirical observation of a difference between normal and revolutionary scientific practice observed within that science. 

The distinction is indeed socially constructed but in no way because of this is it necessarily "collapsed" or rendered any less important. 

To substantiate this claim by way of analogy, it is noted that the scientific product itself being studied remains tenably differentiated from other modes of activity despite the fact that it is also socially constructed. There is not necessarily any collapse of the differentiation between science and, e.g., religion, merely because of the  acknowedgement of both separate arenas of human endeavour as both being socially constructed. The differentiation itself is social and socially real.

 Thomas Kuhn's theory of how the historian investigates normal science has been labelled "internal historicism" by the author of the most important interpretation of what Kuhn said and meant in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions, 19-24.) Normal science develops inside the scientific community identified with the paradigm. Social features of the community are important in the intellectual development of the paradigm, but, since these features are buffered from societal impacts external to the community, they are said to be internal. Furthermore, the historian can only see the rationality of the paradigm from the perspective of the community members themselves, i.e., the perspective internal to the community. Extramural social processes are important primarily in the jump from one paradigm to another. 

 Since the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, sociologists have begun to extend their explanation of paradigm shifts to normal science. The strong version of the social construction of science program claims that all characteristics of normal science are built through extramural social processes. One consequence of the strong version is to collapse the Kuhnian distinction between normal and crisis science, or, to put it more accurately, the distinction is also socially constructed. These characteristics include the facticity of scientific facts, the anomalousness of anomalies, the credibility of experiments and demonstrations, and fundamental theory and concepts of the paradigm. Extramural social processes by definition include activity by nonscientists, so the social construction of science program is claiming that "science" is not constructed by scientists alone, but by a host of groups, only a few of whom are scientists. These groups can include nonscientists, such as students, administrators, secular supporters, rival institutions, governments, and private parties having a special interest in the science.

 The major issues dividing practitioners of the social construction program concern the kind of social processes involved in social construction. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault, believed that all "knowledge" and intellectual discourse about knowledge emerged from societal processes of social control, that is, of power. The British school of social constructionists, on the other hand, see negotiation between competing social parties as the basic process of social construction. The contrast between the Foucaultian and British schools is between static and dynamic visions of social processes, or, equally telling, between archaeological and anthropological methodological models. The British School is a large group and includes Michael Mulkay, Steve Woolgar, Steven Shapin, Roy Wallis, Harry Collins, and David Edge, whose works are cited in Horus. They have examined a wide variety of contemporary scientific practices, instrument cultures, and historical episodes, from radio telescopes to vacuum pumps. On the outskirts of the British School is Bruno Latour, a French sociologist, who analyzes social processes of science construction through networks. He says, in a characterization that would not be rejected by the British school, "[the] two adjectives, 'objective' , 'subjective') are relative to trials of strength in specific settings." (Bruno Latour, Science In Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 78.)
 

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 References

 Mario Bunge, "A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (1991), 524-60. 22 (1992), 46-76;

 Stephen Cole, Making Science: Between Nature and Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992) [critical of the strong program in the sociology of science];

 David Edge, "Re-Inventing the Wheel," in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Incs., 1994;

 Jan Golinski, "The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory: Sociological Approaches in the History of Science," Isis 81 (1990), 492-505;

 Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);

 Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Introduction by Jonas Salk, with a new postscript and index by the authors ([1979]Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1986) [a seminal text];

 David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault:: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993);

 Robert Nola, "The Strong Programme for the Sociology of Science, Reflexivity, and Relativism," Inquiry 33 (1990), 273-96;

 Restivo, Sal, "The Theory Landscape in Science Studies: Sociological Traditions," in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Incs., 1994;

 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princteon: Princeton University Press, 1985) [another seminal text].

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