The jar and the footbridge. Humanities, nature and culture in the view of science and technology studies and biosemiotics

Tekstualia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (62) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Machtyl
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The One

The paper aims at juxtaposing two main disciplines: science and technology studies, on the one hand, and biosemiotics, on the other, from the methodological perspective (i.e. concerning epistemology and methodology) and the ontological one (concerning the object of research). Thus, the analysis concerns the opposition of naturalism and antinaturalism in reference to the huma-nities and sciences and nature / culture in reference to the field of study. Science and technology studies (Bruno Latour) and biosemiotics are of key importance in challenging two kinds of binarism: the humanities vs. sciences and nature vs. culture. The discussion further touches upon the question of how the human subject can know nature as well as the issue of discourse, language, reference and the scientifi c text. A critical perspective on science, proposed by both science and technology studies and biosemiotics, possibly anticipates a revolution.

scholarly journals Building Bridges

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
Stefan Laser
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
The One

This paper discusses three recent book publications devoted to a detailed description and reflection of methodology. These are three different contributions that focus on different disciplinary approaches to STS methods: sociology (via Meier zu Verl's monograph "Daten-Karrieren und epistemische Materialität" [Data Careers and Epistemic Materiality]), cultural anthropology (represented by Estalella's and Criado's edited volume "Experimental Collaborations") and, across these discussions, an interdisciplinary lens (brought in by Wiedmann et al.'s "Wie forschen mit den' Science and Technology Studies'?" [How to do research with 'Science and Technology Studies'?]). Based on these publications, a transformation of STS method reflection can be traced. We have now arrived at the gratifying state that the methods literature aims to build bridges to mediate between methodological ideals on the one hand and research realities on the other. At the same time, the field creatively reflects on the diverse effects of STS method practices.

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.

Disciplinary Translations

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-250
Author(s):  
Casper Bruun Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Research Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Knowledge Change ◽  
Technical Mediation ◽  
The One ◽  
Nonhuman Agency ◽  
Instructive Case

Early in his career, Bruno Latour’s limited readership consisted mainly of the research community in science and technology studies (STS) that he helped to inaugurate. Today the situation could hardly be more different. Latour is now subject to the “translations”—the processes by which ideas travel—that he has provided such powerful tools for analyzing. He has become a “mutable mobile”—eminently transportable but always changing as he goes—that in different contexts exists as a variety of conceptual characters or figurations. As the Latour network continues to see significant extensions and transformations, it offers an instructive case for understanding the potentials and dynamics of traveling texts and ideas—and of their relation to existing disciplinary formations—as ecologies of knowledge change. This article examines the reception and adaptation of Latour’s ideas in two quite different intellectual contexts: anthropology and literary studies. The proliferation of Latour figurations is shown to be a consequence of interactions between, on the one hand, existing disciplinary constellations of ideas, concerns, and practices, and, on the other hand, his own often ambiguous arguments on topics including theory and method, nonhuman agency and politics, and technical mediation.

scholarly journals The seven rules for hydrologists and other researchers wanting to contribute to the water management practice

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 843-864
Author(s):  
E. Mostert ◽  
G. T. Raadgever
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Research Utilization ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Water Management Practice ◽  
Specific Expertise ◽  
Made In

Abstract. This paper addresses the question how hydrologists and other researchers can best contribute to the water management practice. It reviews the literature in the field of science and technology studies and research utilization and presents the results in the form of seven "rules" for researchers. These are (1) Reflect on the nature and possible roles of research; (2) Analyse the stakeholders and issues at stake; (3) Choose whom and what to serve; (4) Decide on your strategy; (5) Design the process to implement your strategy; (6) Communicate!; and (7) Consider your possibilities and limitations. Key notions in this paper are that research always involves selection and interpretation and that the selection and interpretations made in a specific case always reflect the values and preferences of those involved. Collaboration between the researchers and the other stakeholders can increase the legitimacy and utilization of the research and can prevent that the specific expertise of the researchers is lost.

scholarly journals An introduction to Crafting Sustainability – exploring the interconnections between sustainability and craft

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Roger Andre Søraa ◽  
Håkon Fyhn
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Problems And Solutions

Sustainability has become a critical issue, calling for new conceptualizations of both problems and solutions. This special issue of the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies,  explore the concept of “Crafting Sustainability”. Sustainability is a hot topic in contemporary scholarly debates, with methodological, theoretical, and conceptual contributions from a wide array of research areas, also from Science and Technology Studies. Craft on the other hand has been less of a focal point, although all humans relate to craft on some level.

Worlding, Ontological Politics and the Possibility of a Decolonial IR

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Blaney ◽  
Arlene B. Tickner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article argues that attention to representational practices and epistemology, however important for expanding the boundaries of International Relations as a field of study, has been insufficient for dealing with difference in world politics, where ontological conflicts are also at play. We suggest that IR, as a latecomer to the ‘ontological turn’, has yet to engage systematically with ‘singular world’ logics introduced by colonial modernity and their effacement of alternative worlds. In addition to exploring how even critical scholars concerned with the ‘othering’ and ‘worlding’ of difference sidestep issues of ontology, we critique the ontological violence performed by norms constructivism and the only limited openings offered by the Global IR project. Drawing on literatures from science and technology studies, anthropology, political ecology, standpoint feminism and decolonial thought, we examine the potentials of a politics of ontology for unmaking the colonial universe, cultivating the pluriverse, and crafting a decolonial science. The article ends with an idea of what this might mean for International Relations.

Three Schools of Thought on Freedom in Liberal, Technological Societies

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 176-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katinka Waelbers ◽  
Adam Briggle ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Technological Culture

Are citizens of contemporary technological society authors of their own lives? With Alasdair MacIntyre (contemporary Aristotelianism), Bruno Latour (Science and Technology Studies) and Albert Borgmann (Philosophy of Technology), we discuss the shortcomings of traditional liberalism in terms of its ability to answer this question. MacIntyre argues that biological vulnerabilities and social interdependencies establish meaningful parameters within which reason and willing emerge. But MacIntyre ignores technologies as a third parameter. Latour defines humans as nodes in a socio-technical network, in which technologies are actors on par with humans. However, Latour adopts a purely external perspective, ignoring human intentions, desires, and reasons. Borgmann argues that although freedom of choice is severely restricted, sometimes one can still resist the rule of technology. But Borgmann denies the pluralism of modern societies. Although all three schools have their shortcomings, combined, they provide us with a valuable palette of insights on human agency in a technological culture.

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’.

scholarly journals Transforming Society Through Pilot and Demonstration Projects

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Marianne Ryghaug ◽  
Tomas Moe Skjølsvold
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Sustainability Transitions ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Current Energy

AbstractThis chapter introduces pilot and demonstration projects as a key mode of innovation within contemporary energy and mobility transitions. It argues that such projects are important political sites for the production of future socio-technical order. The politics of such projects are contested: on the one hand, they have been argued to remove political agency from deliberative fora in favour of private decisions, on the other hand they have been argued to constitute new democratic opportunities. This chapter situates a discussion on these issues within Science and Technology Studies (STS). The chapter further discusses the relationship between STS and some of the currently dominating approaches to sustainability transitions and argues how STS can bring new insights to the study of energy transitions and societal change. The chapter also provides basic insights into some key social and technical aspects of current energy and mobility transitions.

scholarly journals Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam Dunn Cavelty
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Circulation Of Knowledge

This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create more security; the other understands them as mere political tools in the hands of social actors without considering technological (im)possibilities. This article suggests a focus on a third understanding to bridge the uneasy gap between the two others: technology defined as an embodiment of societal knowledge. The article posits that in line with that, the study of cyberpolitics would benefit from two innovations: a focus on cybersecurity as social practice―enacted and stabilized through the circulation of knowledge about vulnerabilities―and a focus on the practices employed in the discovery, exploitation and removal of those vulnerabilities.

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