Science and Technology Studies (Kagaku-gijutu-shakaigaku STS) WORDMAP: For Navigating the Era of Technoscience (original) (raw)
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The technoscientific developments have shaped the world around us and at the same time are being shaped by society. We embark from academic studies about scientific and technological controversies and their public communication, originating from the field of Science, Technology and Society (STS), broadly influenced from the findings of the history of science and technology disciplines. At the same time, recent research has led to considerations regarding more participatory and deliberative procedures about decision-making affecting science and technology research and policies, especially when risk and uncertainty are prevailing. Literature is one of the various modes of communicating science and technology in the public domain. The public image of science and technology influences positive and critical considerations about their development and their role in everyday life. In our paper we consider open issues regarding public policy in the play of Henrik Ibsen called An Enemy of the people (1882). In the play, Doctor Thomas Stockmann is a popular citizen of a small coastal town in Norway, who discovers that the waters of the town’s new thermal baths were being polluted. The Doctor informs the authorities and suggests solutions to deal with the risks of causing diseases to the tourists using the baths. At the beginning he is supported by his environment and local media. However, the issue of repairing the baths has serious tradeoffs, and the Mayor of the town, who is the Doctor’s brother, considers that it could lead to the financial devastation of the town. At a town meeting the different positions are presented and the Doctor’s opinion loses its merit in the public. In this paper we shall attempt to examine the following issues in Ibsen’s play and in connection to recent developments in STS scholarship. We are interested in the way a scientific controversy reaches the public through media communication. Furthermore, we are focusing on the role of the media coverage in framing scientific data and the authority of scientists. In addition, we pay special attention to various modes of deliberative processes on decision making, more particularly for issues of public health benefit versus potential health risks. We believe that Ibsen’s play provides us with interesting insights on contemporary questions regarding science and technology policy.
Anthropology of Science and Technology
The anthropology of science, technology, and society (STS) has emerged alongside a number of closely neighboring fields of scholarship. Four features distinguish the anthropology of STS: (1) a detailed interest in the sciences and technologies themselves; (2) a global perspective, not just an account from Western Europe and North America; (3) multilocale or multisited ethnographic access to complex distributed processes such as the global chemical industry or global clinical trials; and (4) a concern with the powerful aesthetics of imaginaries. The task of translating legacy knowledges into public futures draws upon four kinds of genealogies: test drives and libidinal drives, protocols and networks, landscapes or ethical plateaus, and reknitting global moieties split by the cold war.
The Whole World is Becoming Science Studies: Fadhila Mazanderani Talks with Bruno Latour
Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2018
How to survive in this forest? How to keep it alive? Latour poses these questions in relation to the current global ecological crisis; but they are equally apt when applied to the “forest”––or to use Latour’s own metaphor, “biodiversity”––of STS. In his interview, Latour puts forward a particular vision for STS’s survival; a vision of STS as neither critical of nor ancillary to science, but where a tacit STS sensibility becomes integrated into science through education and collaboration. While Latour acknowledges the many differences of attitude and approach within STS, he also glosses over them, foregrounding as the defining feature of all those “infected” with STS the shared commitment to transforming science with the big “S” into something that can be studied empirically. The picture he paints is, unsurprisingly, a constructivist one, in which social and natural scientists, engineers, artists and politicians, “build worlds” together. A reflection by Fadhila Mazanderani follows t...
Talja, Sanna (2010) Science and Technology Studies
Introduction to theories of technology within STS: social shaping of technology (SST), social construction of technology (SCOT), actor-network theory (ANT), gender and technology studies, practice theory. Discusses the relationships between information sciences and STS.
Japan is often referred to as high-tech country and large parts of Japanese society are attributed with an allegedly high affinity to (new) technologies. Moreover, the Japanese government cultivates a technology-friendly image and emphasises technology-driven responses to urgent societal issues like environmental protection, energy security or demographic change. Surprisingly, research on technical artefacts and technology did not become established as a full-fledged sub-discipline of Japanese Studies like sociology, political science or history, particularly in the German-speaking academic community. While, in the past, various research projects have drawn attention to individual aspects of the history, economy or philosophy of technology as well as environmental science on Japan, technical artefacts were seldom examined as the main object of study. The nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima has given new relevance to the interrelatedness of technology and society in Japan and rise to various studies. Surprisingly, this does recently not converge into a coherent research field addressing technology issues as such. The shaping of knowledge, actions, thoughts, cultures and norms are not sufficiently analysed yet. Therefore, we propose to conceive social scientific and cultural perspectives on technology as a full-fledged field of Japanese Studies. Basically, we ask in which way technical devices shape everyday life in a modern society like Japan, and how, conversely, the social and cultural context influences technological development. We take the basic ideas of Science & Technology Studies (STS) as joint point of reference by focusing on the co-evolution and intersection of technology and society. While taking into account their physical characteristics, this transdisciplinary approach understands technical artefacts as socio-cultural phenomena. More precisely, technology development is viewed not as a “rational” process and artefact not as “neutral objects”. In contrast, it is perceived as a process where social actors with varying visions, values, and concepts of usage inscribing their ideas into product designs and reconstitute a specific social order during the construction of large technical infrastructures. This enables a critical analysis of the production and the usage of technical devices, technologies and socio-technical infrastructures as interplay with their cultural and social context. While exploring the manifold roles of knowledge and technology in modern societies, methods are employed from cultural studies, social as well as historical science. In this way, STS encourage a joint research program. Moreover, focusing on the geographic, cultural and societal locale of Japan facilitates the reflection of underlying principles, unchallenged narratives and explanations on technology. We take this as an occasion to launch a special issue on Japan and contemporary Japanese Studies. The authors of this special issue reflect in their contributions on different theoretical and methodological approaches which could be employed for STS research on Japan. They discuss these approaches by using case studies from their various disciplines. We draw on insights from a workshop on STS and Japan held at Freie Universität Berlin, Jan 2015, an STS panel at the triannual Japanologentag at Munich University, Aug 2015, and the international JAWS conference on Nature and Technology in Japan in Istanbul, Sep 2015. We aim at opening a discussion on “technical things Japanese” with a wider audience by launching this special issue.
Social Studies of Science, 2002
Might a rapprochement be desirable and possible between the more academic and the more activist wings of STS? What can each learn from the other? A promising trajectory for this purpose may be to reinterpret and extend research in the constructivist tradition, building on recent work that appears to constitute the beginnings of a reconstructivist scholarly tradition. Some of the necessary work would be explicitly prescriptive: given that technology and society are mutually and reciprocally constructing, how should technologies be constructed, which social groups deserve inclusion in which processes, and how should closure be reached? But other issues might be taken up by scholars motivated exclusively by curiosity, or by the intention of building a subfield: what factors slow or prevent the emergence of entire subfields of technoscientific endeavour, as arguably has occurred with `green chemistry', `alternative health', and alternatives to weaponry-oriented national defence?...
American Journal of Sociology, 1988
Oh, to be a scientist, now Nature's cupboard is open. Illuminating caverns of Earth and depths of Ocean; toying with the molecular Lego of Life; gazing rapturously on the Fourfold Force. Voyaging where no Man has gone before. And so it must be if young scientists are to be socialized and institutional prestige maintained. This image, neither "realist" nor "relativist" but "romantic," is the basis for many of our dealings with scientists. Less clear are the images employed by scientists in their laboratories, for it seems, on the basis of recent ethnographies, that most scientific work is boring, and not a little. There is a reason that professors do not spend a great deal of time in the lab, and it is not that they don't remember how.