scholarly journals Editorial

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-4
Author(s):  
Tarja Knuuttila ◽  
Sampsa Hyysalo

**Editorial** Science Studies 1/2007 is the first issue by its new chief editors Dr. Tarja Knuuttila and Docent Sampsa Hyysalo. The decision to appoint two editors-in-chief was motivated by the steadily increasing amount of submissions, as well as by the need to retain a good grasp of the range of focal areas that comprise science and technology studies. Tarja Knuuttila is a philosopher of science currently studying scientific modelling and representation especially in the context of computational science. Sampsa Hyysalo’s primary field is science and technology studies. He has studied change in professional and everyday practices by focussing on the development and appropriation of health ICTs. The change in its editors does not mark a great transition in the focus of the journal. Science Studies continues to be both an international and interdisciplinary journal welcoming contributions to the study of science and technology from different points of view and different disciplinary backgrounds whether philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological, educational or politicoeconomic. At the moment the journal receives contributions from all over the world, the most contributions coming from the US and from Northern European countries. The acceptance rate is 20,5 for the moment, but it will fall, since we are receiving an increasing amount of contributions. This shows that the interest towards Science Studies is steadily growing. As to our website, Science Studies is also happy to announce that it has digitized and published all of its articles from 1988 to 1997. The ten volumes which have been published comprise over 100 articles on Science and Technology Studies and represent one of the largest fully accessible online collections available today. We are committed to distributing the content of Science Studies to as broad an audience as possible at no cost. Moreover, we have decreased our moving wall from one year to six months, allowing for increased visibility and access to our most recent content. The present volume contains four full articles concentrating mainly on science and science policy. In “From Core Set to Assemblage: On the Dynamics of Exclusion and Inclusion in the Failure to Derive Beta Cells from Embryonic Stem Cells” Mike Michael et al. concentrate on a traditional STS-theme, that of experimenter’s regress. They contrast Collins’s core set model to an analysis in terms of assemblages in an attempt to show that scientific controversies need not end in the exclusion of the discredited faction of scientists from the core set. Rather, due to several reasons such as the ‘chronic uncertainty’ of stem cell research, the epistemically defeated faction can be rehabilitated because of the ‘social understandability’ of their strategies. ”Effects of ‘Mode 2’-Related Policy on the Research Process: The Case of Publicly Funded German Nanotechnology” by Andreas Wald and “Disentangling Transdisciplinarity: An Analysis of Knowledge Integration in Problem-Oriented Research” by Wolfgang Zierhofer and Paul Burger provide somewhat critical perspectives on the supposed advantages of Mode 2 policies and the very idea that transdisciplinary research, which is also referred to as Mode 2 science, represents a genuinely new model of knowledge production. Wald argues that nanotechnology research does not fit into the picture portrayed by Mode 2 literature, yet Mode 2-related policies are applied to it in the German context. As a result of this, policies are often considered harmful by the scientists. Zierhofer and Burger in turn seek to analyze the diversity of the supposed transdisciplinary mode of knowledge production in terms of various types of research objectives and related research instruments. Finally, Matt Ratto’s paper “A Practice-Based Model of Access for Science: Linux Kernel Development and Shared Digital Resources” presents a close-quarter analysis of Linux kernel development in order to build a model of access that would be apt for examining the increasingly distributed and digitally-mediated scientific work. This last paper is also a teaser for the next issue of Science Studies, which is a special issue on Free/Libre Open source software (FLOSS). Guest edited by Dr. Yuwei Lin and Prof. Lars Risan, Science Studies 2/2007 provides a set of highly interesting and in-depth studies on organization, work and development in FLOSS projects.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadhila Mazanderani ◽  
Isabel Fletcher ◽  
Pablo Schyfter

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.


Author(s):  
Михаил Андреевич Новиков

В отличие от визуального как компонента научных практик, исследование научных визуализаций – достаточно молодая, совсем недавно начавшая набирать обороты область эпистемологии. Несмотря на свой «юный» возраст, данная сфера исследований уже успела обогатиться разного рода подходами, концептами и самостоятельными выводами. На наш взгляд, книгу Питера Галисона и Лоррейн Дастон «Объективность» можно рассматривать в качестве труда, который и привносит очевидные новшества в понимание того, как производится знание, в том числе знание о производстве знания, и суммирует все достижения современной эпистемологии и истории науки, в первую очередь эпистемологии визуального, или Visual Science and Technology Studies. Исходя из этого, делается вывод, что, помимо изучения объективности, авторы изобретают новый способ говорения о науке. Визуальное в науке, со всеми возможными способами его практиковать, позволяет авторам, так или иначе двигающимся в русле прагматических подходов, избежать экстерналистских вариантов объяснений производства знания. Это достигается благодаря тому, что исследователи рассматривают не какие-то локальные визуализации, но работают с целыми ассамбляжами образов, исходя из предпосылки, что визуальное – неотчуждаемая часть науки. Чтобы разобраться с тем, что из себя представляет «Объективность», невозможно не обратиться к работам, которые также исследуют визуальное. Оказалось важным продемонстрировать, что современные исследования зачастую проводятся на стыке разных дисциплин, причем предполагается, что строгие дисциплинарные различия для данных исследований столь же реальны, как и пасторальные идеалы. Возвращая статус отчужденным научным компонентам, подобные подходы демонстрируют, что наука отнюдь не сводится к каким-то исключительно априорным или трансцендентальным пропозициям. Напротив, подтверждается, что наука делается здесь и сейчас и невероятно близка к нам, а это значит, что нельзя просто так пройти мимо любого из практикуемых ею элементов. Unlike the visual as a component of scientific practices, the study of scientific visualizations is a young field of epistemology that has only recently begun to gain momentum. Despite its “young” age, this field of research has already been enriched by all kinds of approaches, concepts, and independent conclusions. In my opinion, Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston’s book Objectivity can be considered as a work which, besides bringing obvious innovations in understanding how knowledge is produced, including knowledge about knowledge production, summarizes all achievements of modern epistemology and history of science, first of all, epistemology of the visual or VSTS (Visual Science and Technology Studies). From this it can be inferred that, among other things, in addition to the study of objectivity, the authors are inventing a new way of speaking about science. The visual in science, with all the possible ways of practicing it, allows the authors, moving in one way or another in the direction of pragmatic approaches, to avoid externalistic versions of explanations of knowledge production. This is achieved by the fact that the researchers do not look at some local visualizations, but work with whole assemblages of images, based on the premise that the visual is an inalienable part of science. In order to understand what Objectivity is, one must refer to works that also investigate the visual. It turned out to be important to demonstrate that contemporary research often takes place at the junction of different disciplines, with the assumption that strict disciplinary distinctions for this research are as real as pastoral ideals. By reclaiming the status of alienated scientific components, such approaches demonstrate that science is by no means reducible to some exclusively a priori or transcendental propositions. On the contrary, it confirms that science is done here and now, and is incredibly close to us, which means that one cannot simply pass by any of the elements it practices.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 335
Author(s):  
Pablo Schyfter ◽  
Donald MacKenzie

In a wide-ranging interview, Donald MacKenzie and Pablo Schyfter discuss the former’s entry into science and technology studies (STS), the trajectory of the field since then, and his perspectives on its character today. MacKenzie recalls his discovery of STS through political activism, and his subsequent experiences at the young Edinburgh Science Studies Unit. He reflects on the field’s development and defining moments of transition, divergence and accomplishment. In reflecting on the field’s abilities, MacKenzie also considers STS’s potential for activism and intervention, and the challenges that accompany attempts to influence those things that it studies. Most importantly, he discusses the moral obligations and responsibilities that accompany engagement with controversial topics, like his own work studying nuclear weaponry and financial markets. In his reflection piece, Schyfter focuses on the notion of obligations, and expands MacKenzie’s views to discuss methodological, epistemic and critical duties. Schyfter suggests that ultimately STS is obliged to pursue complication and enable useful discomfort.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben W. Brisbois ◽  
Andrés Burgos Delgado ◽  
Douglas Barraza ◽  
Óscar Betancourt ◽  
Donald Cole ◽  
...  

Abstract Political ecology pushes back against the apolitical and ahistorical ecologies frequently found in mainstream scientific accounts of nature and the environment, and has increasingly focused on how scientific knowledge is 'socially constructed.' In this article, we argue for political ecological engagement with the highly influential knowledge-to-action (KTA) movement in science about health and the environment. We introduce KTA using results of a survey conducted under the auspices of a Canada-Latin America-Caribbean 'ecosystem approaches to health' (ecohealth) collaboration, and then narrow our focus to a single illustrative ecohealth project, dealing with the health impacts of small-scale gold mining in southwestern Ecuador. We employ an ecology of knowledge framework for integrating insights from science and technology studies,illustrating the interacting actors, material artifacts, institutions and discourses involved in not only the generation but also the application of health-environment science. The origins of ecohealth research in the Americas reflect interacting epistemological and political factors, as sophisticated, complex systemic analyses of health-environment interactions occurred amidst increasing neoliberalization of knowledge production. Simultaneously, corporate actors such as large mining companies influenced both the distribution of healthdamaging environmental conditions in the Americas, and the ways in which they were studied. This analysis motivates our advocacy of specifically political ecologies of health-environment knowledge, in which inequitable power dynamics and non-human actors are foregrounded in studies of the social production and application of science. The political ecology of knowledge framework that we envision would allow for simultaneous consideration of how societal contexts influence scientific knowledge production, and how the resulting knowledge can be better applied to protect the health of communities facing environmental injustice. Key words: ecohealth; mining; praxis; science and technology studies; knowledge-to-action; Canada; Ecuador


2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 927-942 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lynch

This essay is a remembrance and also a reminder of Harold Garfinkel’s contributions to science studies. Garfinkel is best known as the founder of ethnomethodology, the sociological investigation of the production and coordination of ‘methods’ in non-scientific as well as scientific settings. In addition to studying the tacit organization of everyday activities, Garfinkel and his students also investigated practices in the natural and social sciences that elude formal methodological prescriptions and reports. Garfinkel’s work sometimes is acknowledged as a precursor to early ethnographies of scientific laboratories, but this essay argues that his conceptual and methodological innovations continue to have a pervasive, though often unacknowledged, place in science and technology studies and related fields.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Roger A Søraa

There is an increasing interest in Science and Technology Studies (STS), as the field experiences growth with respect to the scope of topics, methods and theories deployed to learn and uncover epistemic practices for scientific knowledge production, technological innovations, users and producers. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Basile Zimmermann

Abstract Chinese studies are going through a period of reforms. This article appraises what could constitute the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary sinology today. The author suggests an approach of “Chinese culture” by drawing from recent frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The paper starts with current debates in Asian studies, followed by a historical overview of the concept of culture in anthropology. Then, two short case studies are presented with regard to two different STS approaches: studies of expertise and experience and the notion of interactional expertise, and the framework of waves and forms. A general argument is thereby sketched which suggests how “Chinese culture” can be understood from the perspective of materiality.


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