scholarly journals The Floating Ampersand: STS Past and STS to Come

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come

STS has become a discipline in the sense that it offers new ways to read and make sense of the world. It remains an amalgam, however, of two linked yet separate lines of inquiry, both abbreviated as STS. Science and technology studies refers to the investigation of S&T as social institutions; science, technology and society, by contrast, analyzes the external relations of S&T with other institutions, such as law or politics. This essay reflects on the implications of this ambiguity for institutionalizing STS as a field of its own, drawing on the author’s experiences in building STS at two universities.

scholarly journals Introduction: Talking STS

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadhila Mazanderani ◽  
Isabel Fletcher ◽  
Pablo Schyfter
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Talking STS is a collection of interviews and accompanying reflections on the origins, the present and the future of the field referred to as Science and Technology Studies or Science, Technology and Society (STS). The volume assembles the thoughts and recollections of some of the leading figures in the making of this field. The occasion for producing the collection has been the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of Edinburgh’s Science Studies Unit (SSU). The Unit’s place in the history of STS is consequently a recurring theme of the volume. However, the interviews assembled here have a broader purpose – to present interviewees’ situated and idiosyncratic experiences and perspectives on STS, going beyond the contributions made to it by any one individual, department or institution. Both individually and collectively, these conversations provide autobiographically informed insights on STS. Together with the reflections, they prompt further discussion, reflection and questioning about this constantly evolving field.

A Field of Its Own

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
University Administrators ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Graduate Degrees ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Innovative Work

This chapter presents science and technology studies (STS) as a new island in a preexisting disciplinary archipelago. As a field, STS combines two strands of work dealing, respectively, with the nature and practices of science and technology (S&T) and the relationships between science, technology, and society. As such, STS research focuses on distinctive objects of inquiry and employs novel discourses and methods. The field confronts three significant barriers to achieving greater intellectual coherence, and institutional recognition. First, it must persuade skeptical scientists and university administrators of the need for a critical perspective on S&T. Second, it must demonstrate that traditional disciplines do not adequately analyze S&T. Third, it has to overcome STS scholars’ reluctance to create intellectual boundaries and membership criteria that appear to exclude innovative work. A generation of scholars with graduate degrees in STS are helping to meet these challenges.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of information society conceptualizations from an STS point of view

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Aibar
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social

Science and Technology Studies (STS) have developed over the last four decades very rich and deep analysis of the interaction between science, technology and society. This paper uses some STS theoretical and methodological insights and findings to identify persistent misconceptions in the specific literature on ICTs and society. Technological deterministic views, the taken-for-granted image of technological designs, the prospective character of many studies that focus mainly on potential effects, a simplistic view of uses and users, and an uncritical distinction between the technical and the social, are discussed as some of the most remarkable theoretical flaws in the field.

scholarly journals ST(&)S: Martyn Pickersgill Talks with Sheila Jasanoff

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 320
Author(s):  
Martyn Pickersgill ◽  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Distinct Mode ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Contested Meanings ◽  
And Training

In this interview, Sheila Jasanoff and Martyn Pickersgill discuss the contested meanings of STS, defined as either “science and technology studies” (often associated with European origins) or “science, technology, and society” (commonly seen as originating in the US). The interview describes how Jasanoff entered STS, and the ways in which she sought to bring together different traditions within the field. Jasanoff underscores how her intellectual and professional journeys were shaped through a mix of institutional context and personal choices, and reflects on the role she has played in shaping STS networks, programs, and departments. Jasanoff remains excited about the future of STS, yet also highlights the need for disciplining within the field. For her, STS represents a distinct mode of researching, approaching, and engaging with the world. This distinctiveness, Jasanoff argues, needs to be carefully cultivated and reproduced through creative but rigorous teaching and training.  A reflection by Martyn Pickersgill follows the interview.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of information society conceptualizations from an STS point of view

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182
Author(s):  
Eduard Aibar
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social

Science and Technology Studies (STS) have developed over the last four decades very rich and deep analysis of the interaction between science, technology and society. This paper uses some STS theoretical and methodological insights and findings to identify persistent misconceptions in the specific literature on ICTs and society. Technological deterministic views, the taken-for-granted image of technological designs, the prospective character of many studies that focus mainly on potential effects, a simplistic view of uses and users, and an uncritical distinction between the technical and the social, are discussed as some of the most remarkable theoretical flaws in the field.

Thickening Transregionalism: Historical Formations of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Thought Style ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article offers an overview of science and technology studies (STS) in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on historical formations of science, technology, and medicine in the region, loosely defined, though research using social science approaches comes within its scope. I ask whether we are fashioning an “autonomous” history of science in Southeast Asia—and whether this would be enough. Perhaps we need to explore further “Southeast Asia as method,” a thought style heralded here though remaining, I hope, productively ambiguous. This review contributes primarily to the development of postcolonial intellectual history in Southeast Asia and secondarily to our understanding of the globalization and embedding of science, technology, and medicine.

SSK at Large

Entanglements ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Tosoni ◽  
Trevor Pinch
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Flip Flop ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Harry Collins

The chapter addresses the popularization of the main acquisitions of social constructionist sociology in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), done by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch in the volumes of their Golem trilogy, dedicated respectively to science, technology and medicine. The polemical target of the trilogy, the "flip-flop" understanding of science, technology and medicine, that induces the public to oscillate from an unconditioned trust in scientist, engineers and medics as god-like figures, to a complete skepticism and distrust and vice versa. The chapter also addressed the reasons behind the harsh confrontations between constructionist sociologists of science and scientists occurred in the '90s, known as "Science Wars", and some events connected to the confrontations, like the famous hoax by Alan Sokal.

Situating Technology: Confrontations over the Use of Sonar among Turkish Fishermen and Marine Scientists

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ståle Knudsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Fishing Practices

AbstractSince its introduction in the Turkish fisheries in 1980, use of the fish finder device sonar has been a controversial issue among fishermen and between fishermen and scientists. Most fishermen claim that sonars scare away or kill fish while local marine scientists contend that sonars have no such effect. What can study of this conflict tell us about the use of advanced technology in regions of the world far away from the metropolitan production of such technologies? In this ethnographic approach to a study in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) the fishermen's use of and the scientists' research on the sonar are surveyed. The article discusses the degree to which the adoption of sonar in the Turkish fisheries has resulted in a standardization of fishing practices—not only technologically, but possibly also in the way the fishermen perceive the hunt. Some theoretical arguments on how people relate to technology are reviewed and a phenomenologically inspired perspective advanced. It is argued that too much attention on finding the "Truth"—in this case whether the sonar is harmful to fish or not—diverts attention from more fundamental issues, such as what kinds of change sonar has brought to the social relations of production.

The ‘enigma’ of Richard Schultes, Amazonian hallucinogenic plants, and the limits of ethnobotany

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merlin Sheldrake
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Local Varieties ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
States Of Consciousness ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Subject

This story is about the twentieth-century ethnobotanist, Richard Evans Schultes (1915–2001), and his research on hallucinogenic plants. Ethnobotany can contribute directly to science and technology studies in that the discipline makes cultural ways of knowing its scientific subject. Ethnobotanists must learn about plants through people, and are not able to conceal their interactions with indigenous informants and other ethnobotanists. I focus on an ‘enigma’ that Schultes presented, concerning the peculiar ability of indigenous Amazonians to distinguish between local varieties of vine that he was unable to tell apart, notably those used to prepare the hallucinogenic beverage ayahuasca. The enigma describes a complicated and irresolvable question thrown up at the uneasy intersection between different ways of knowing about the world, and shows how modern scientific travellers might navigate – or fail to navigate – the uncertain passage between them. Together with Schultes’s accounts of his own non-ordinary states of consciousness elicited by ayahuasca, and his writings on the Victorian botanist Richard Spruce, I chart an epistemological gulf between Schultes’s modern scientific cosmology and that of his Amazonian informants. In describing his inability to learn about the ayahuasca varieties from Amazonians, Schultes’s enigma traces the very limits of the ethnobotanical discipline and reveals the fragility of the processes by which scientific naturalists might impose categories such as ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.

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