A “Middle Voice” from the South

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This is a reflection on Traweek’s work on epistemic authority in relation to Kaleidos—Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography in Ecuador.

STS as a Lens to Study Disciplines and Interdisciplinarity

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. In this essay responding to Traweek's Bernal lecture, Sørensen draws on her critical understanding of academic disciplines to discuss how STS may develop the field’s understanding of disciplines, interdisciplinarity, and itself.

Cartographies for Feminist STS

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. In this essay responding to Traweek's Bernal lecture, Subramaniam explores Traweek’s mentorship in her own work as a feminist STS scholar in biological sciences.

“I Prefer the Map”

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This essay comprises Traweek’s acceptance speech, delivered on Monday, August 17, 2020 at the virtual joint conference of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), and revised and submitted for publication in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society on Sunday, September 20, 2020. In this essay, Traweek explores “certainty” in academic ways of knowing.

Working at the Edges of Institutions During their Transformations

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This essay is a commentary on Traweek’s work from the perspective of Sandra Harding with respect to their shared backdrop of the science wars, the value of standpoint theory and of Traweek’s ‘meshworks,’ and their work in different non-US/European STS contexts.

The Value of the Map and the Place of STS

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner, for her distinguished contributions to the field of STS. In this essay responding to Traweek’s Bernal Lecture, I explore the continuing relevance of her work for Japan’s STS community. Even though this community has grown rapidly since the beginning of the 2000s, I argue in this essay that her work, produced more than three decades ago, encourages us today to reflect how we may want to relate ourselves to the local organization of science and the politics of epistemic authority in the country.

Searching for how Epistemic Power is Made, Appropriated, Circulated, and Challenged

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This is an edited transcription, which accompanies the full audio file also available in this issue of the journal. The interview supplements the text of Traweek’s 2020 Bernal lecture. In this interview, Traweek discusses her research, academic career, the many influences on her life, and her thoughts on STS—in the past and in the future.

Carbon-Responsive Computing: Changing the Nexus between Energy and Computing

While extensive research has gone into demand response techniques in data centers, the energy consumed in edge computing systems and in network data transmission remains a significant part of the computing industry’s carbon footprint. The industry also has not fully leveraged the parallel trend of decentralized renewable energy generation, which creates new areas of opportunity for innovation in combined energy and computing systems. Through an interdisciplinary sociotechnical discussion of current energy, computer science and social studies of science and technology (STS) literature, we argue that a more comprehensive set of carbon response techniques needs to be developed that span the continuum of data centers, from the back-end cloud to the network edge. Such techniques need to address the combined needs of decentralized energy and computing systems, alongside the social power dynamics those combinations entail. We call this more comprehensive range “carbon-responsive computing,” and underscore that this continuum constitutes the beginnings of an interconnected infrastructure, elements of which are data-intensive and require the integration of social science disciplines to adequately address problems of inequality, governance, transparency, and definitions of “necessary” tasks in a climate crisis.

Langdon Winner’s Intellectual Trajectory and Political Engagement: A Latin-American Perspective from Ecuador

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Langdon Winner was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Sharon Traweek. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This response to Winner’s Bernal lecture considers his legacy beyond the US. The author traces Winner’s influence in Ecuador and Latin America more generally through a tracing back of Winner's politea which draws on Plato’s technē as a model for understanding inherently political artifacts.

Technopolitics in a Twilight Civilization

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Langdon Winner was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Sharon Traweek. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. The following paper describes the significance of several recurrent figures in Winner’s writings about autonomous technologies, and their importance in generating better readings of his corpus, including his Bernal Prize lecture.