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The purpose of this seminar is twofold. First, the seminar aims to introduce and explore together core literature and issues within contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS), drawing primarily upon contributions from sociology, anthropology, political science, history and cultural studies. Critiques of these approaches will also be explicitly examined. Second, the seminar aims to provide an opportunity for students to actively relate the various theoretical and methodological approaches to their own work and intellectual interests, asking how interpretations of selected STS approaches might enhance and/or be enhanced by their own academic perspectives and experiences. Most seminars will begin with a short introductory lecture which contextualizes the seminar literature and authors. Reading and discussion are however the focus of the seminar, and participants will be expected to take turns leading the group in exploring themes and questions from the assigned readings. In addition, participants will be given informal opportunities for on-going assessment/critique of the content and structure of seminar in order to enable continued relevance to group interests and goals.

If the relative ontological status of a phenomenon is inextricably embedded in the conditions of production ...

the question on a meta-level becomes: How can we make a revolution that will be ontologically and

epistemologically pluralist yet morally responsible?

Susan Leigh Star
Ecologies of Knowledge

• Bijker, Wiebe, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor E. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989)
• Rochlin, Gene I., Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)

• Hess, David, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
• Latour, Bruno, ARAMIS or the Love of Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
• Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: the Construction of Scientific Facts, 2nd ed.(Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986).
• Searle, John, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Press. 1995).
• Traweek,. Sharon, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

First Week of Classes = WEEK 0 ! .. Introduction and Orientation (8/26 and 8/28)

WEEK 1: Understanding technical practice - the social construction of technology (SCOT) and its critics (9/1 and 9/3)

Part 1. [How] is technology socially constructed?

• Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E.Bijker. 1987. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other," in Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the History of Technology. (Henceforth referred to as SCOT) Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, pp. 17-50.
• Kline, Ron and Trevor Pinch, 1996. "Users as Agents of Technological Change: the Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States," Technology & Culture, 37:4, October, pp. 763-795.

Part 2. Critical voices on SCOT

• Buchanan, Angus. 1991. "Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology," Technology & Culture, 323: 365-76.
• Law, John. 1991. "Theory and Narrative ... : A Response." Technology & Culture, 323: 377-393.
• Sismondo, Sergio. 1993. "Some Social Constructions", in Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, pp. 515-53.
• Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1993. "Strong Constructivism - from a Sociologist's Point of View: A Personal Addendum to Sismondo's Paper," Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, pp.555-63.
• Winner, Langdon. 1993. "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology" in Science Technology & Human Values. vol 18, no 3 (summer), pp 362-378.
• Elam, Mark. 1994. "Anti Anti-Constructivism or Laying the Fears of a Langdon Winner to Rest." Science Technology and Human Values, vol 19, no 3 (winter): 101-106. (+Winner's response)

WEEK 2: Entering the Lab: approaches to understanding how scientific and technical knowledge is produced (9/10)

Part 1: The emergence of laboratory studies and the study of "technoscience"

• Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve. 1986. Laboratory Life: the Construction of Scientific Facts. Second ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press. chap. 1-3, 6 (160 pgs)
• Latour, Bruno. 1983. "Give me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World" in Knorr-Cetina & Mulkay, eds., Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London: Sage Publications, pp. 141-170.
• Taubes, Gary, "The (Political) Science of Salt", Science, vol. 281, 14 August 1998, pp. 898-907.

Part 2: Guest Lecture by Rogers Hall planned on laboratory studies and inscription devices: readings to come.

• Star, Susan Leigh. 1985. "Scientific Work and Uncertainty", Social Studies of Science, vol. 15, 391-427.

 WEEK 3: Large Technical Systems (LTS) and Technological Determinism (9/17)

Part 1. The LTS perspective on technological change and various critiques of the LTS approach.

• Hughes, Thomas P. 1983. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930. John Hopkins University Press. (introduction, chapter 2, epilogue).
• Law, John. 1991. "Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations," in John Law, ed., A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London, Routledge: 1-23.
• Rochlin, Gene I. 1991. "Iran Air Flight 655 and the USS Vincennes: Complex, Large-Scale Military Systems and the Failure of Control," in Todd R. La Porte, ed., Social Responses to Large Technical Systems. Dordrecht, Kluwer: 95-121. (Note: a shorter and somewhat modified version of this is included as Chapter 9 of: Gene I. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. )

Part 2. Assessing the issue of technological determinism.

• White, Lynn, Jr. 1979. Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press: l-38.
• Hilton, Ronald. 1963. "Technical Determinism: The Stirrup and the Plough," Past and Present 24 (1963), 90-100.
• Hayter, H. 1939. "Barbed Wire - A Prairie Invention," Journal of Agricultural History: l89-207.
• Smith, Merritt Roe and Leo Marx (ed). 1995. Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. MIT Press. Selected text divided among the seminar participants for comment......

WEEK 4: Actor-network theory ... (9/24)

Part 1. Exploring the actor-network approach to technical practice.

• Callon, Michel. 1987. "Society in the Making: the Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis," in Bijker, et al. SCOT: 83-106.
• Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press (Intro plus chapters 2, 3, 6).
• Johnson, Jim (a.k.a. Bruno Latour. 1988. "Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: the sociology of a door-closer," Social Problems, vol. 35, no.3, June, pp.298-310.
• Law, J. 1987. "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion" in Bijker, et al. SCOT: 111-134.

WEEK 5: Part 1: .... and its further development (10/1)

• Amsterdamska, Olga. 1990. "Surely you are joking, Monsieur Latour!" in Science, Technology & Human Values, vol 15, no. 4: 495-504.
• Akrich, Madeleine. 1992. "The De-Scription of Technical Objects," in Bijker & Law, Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, pp. 205-224.
• Lynch, Michael. 1993. Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action (New York: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 3. "The rise of the new sociology of scientific knowledge," pp. 71-116.

............... Part 2. Narrative and Discursive Approaches: The Rhetoric of Technology

• Balfour, Danny L. and William Mesaros. 1994. "Connecting the Local Narratives: Public Administration as a Hermeneutic Science." Public Administration Review 54, no. 6 (Nov-Dec): 559-564.
• Hajer, Maarten A. 1993. "Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain in Great Britain." In Frank Fischer and John Forester, eds., The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham NC: Duke University Press: 43-76.
• Reprise on Paulson (Week 0).

Week 6. Cultural Studies, Ethnographies and Ethnomethodology (10/8)

• Czarniawska-Joerges, Barbara. 1992. Exploring Complex Organizations: A Cultural Perspective. Newbury Park, CA, Sage: pp. 21-39, 159-185.
• Hess, David. 1997. "Critical and Cultural Studies of Science and Technology," in Hess, Science Studies: an advanced introduction. New York: New York University Press, chap. 5, pp. 112-147.
• Lynch, Michael. 1993. Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action (New York: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 1 "Ethnomethodology," pp. 1-38.
• Louis, Meryl Reis. 1983. "Organizations as Culture-Bearing Milieux." In Organizational Symbolism, edited by Louis R. Pondy, Peter J. Frost, Gareth Morgan, and Thomas C. Dandridge, 39-54. Greenich CN: JAI Press.
• Traweek, Sharon. 1994. "Border Crossings: Narrative Strategies in Science Studies and Among Physicists in Tsukuba Science City, Japan," in Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture: 429-466.

Field work.....

• Rochlin, Gene I. and Alexandra von Meier. 1994. "Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective". Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 19 (1994), 153-187.
• Fischer, Claude S. 1988. "Reach out and Touch Someone: The Telephone Industry Discovers Sociability," Technology and Culture, vol 29, no 1 (January).

WEEK 7: Complexity, Uncertainty and Risk (10/15)

• Shackley, Simon and Brian Wynne. 1996. "Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy - Boundary-Ordering Devices and Authority." Science Technology & Human Values 21, no. 3: 275-302.
• Clarke, Lee and J. F. Short, "Social Organization and Risk -- Some Current Controversies." Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 375-399. (See recommended list for Perrow's work)
• Sheila Jasanoff, "Bridging the Two Cultures of Risk Analysis," Risk Analysis, 13, No. 2 (April 1993), 123-129.
• Parker, Dianne, James T. Reason, Antony S. R. Manstead, and Stephen G. Stradling. 1995. "Driving Errors, Driving Violations, and Accident Involvement." Ergonomics 38, no. 5: 1036-1048.
• Selections from Rochlin, Trapped in the Net.

Other Readings and cases (to be divided up among the class)

• Funtowicz, Silvio O. and Jerome R. Ravetz. 1992. "Three Types of Risk Assessment and the Emergence of Post-Normal Science." In Social Theories of Risk, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding, 251-274. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• Five reviews of Diana Vaughan by different analysts. (Rashomon on Risk!)
• Helmreich, R. L. 1997. Managing Human Error in Aviation. Scientific American, p. 62-67.
• Weick, K. E. (1993). The Vulnerable System: An Analysis of the Tenerife Air Disaster. In K. H. Roberts (Ed.), New Challenges to Understanding Organizations (pp. 173-198). New York: Macmillan.

WEEK 8: User-oriented and feminist studies of technological practice (10/22)

Part 1. Interpreting technology from users' perspectives - three methodologies.

• Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. "The Consumption Junction: a proposal for research strategies in the sociology of technology," in Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, SCOT, pp. 261-280.
• Clarke, Adele and Theresa Montini. 1993. "The Many Faces of RU486: tales of situated knowledges and technological contestations," Science, Technology & Human Values, vol 18: 1, pp.42-78. OR
• Akrich, Madeleine. "User Representations: Practices, Methods and Sociology," in Arie Rip et. al., Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. London: Pinter, pp. 167-184.

Part 2. Guest lecture by Adele Clarke

• Clarke, Adele and Theresa Montini, 1993, "The Many Faces of RU486 Tales of Situated Knowledges and Technological Contestations", Science, Technology & Human Values, vol 18. no. 1 (winter), pp. 42-78.
• Clarke, Adele, 1995, "Modernity, Postmodernity & Reproductive Processes ca. 1890-1990 or 'Mommy, where do cyborgs come from anyway?'", in Chris Hables Gray et al, (eds.), The Cyborg Handbook, New York, Routledge, pp. 139-155.
• Clarke, Adele. 1998. Disciplining Reproduction : Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "The Problems of Sex". Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press: pp. 233-276.

WEEK 9: Technology and Politics (10/29)

Part 1. Perspectives on Technology & Politics

• Cozzens, Susan. 1993. "Whose Movement? STS and Social Justice," Science, Technology & Human Values, summer 1993, pp. 275-277.
• Haraway, Donna J. 1988. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies, 14, no. 3 (Fall): 575-599.
• Star, S.L. 1991. "Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: on Being Allergic to Onions," in John Law, red. Sociology of Monsters.
• Additional Selections from Trapped in the Net.

Part 2: The Greening of Networks and Systems: Distribution, Decentralization, or Deconstruction?

Special Guest, Prof. Ted Bradshaw, UC Davis

• Summerton, Jane and Ted K. Bradshaw. 1991. "Toward a Dispersed Electricity System: Challenges to the Grid", Energy Policy, January-February 1991.
• Yearley, Steven. 1995. "The Environmental Challenge to Science Studies" in Jasanoff, Sheila et al (eds), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. pp 457-479.
• Bradshaw, Ted K., 1998. "The Potential of Near-Zero Peak-Energy Housing in California" (working paper)
• Bradshaw, Ted K. and Edward Blakeley, 1998. "What Are the 'Third Wave' State Economic Development Efforts?" From Incentive to Industrial Policy" (working paper).

WEEK 10: FINALE: Feminist approaches (11/5)

• Haraway, Donna J. 1988. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies, 14, no. 3 (Fall): 575-599.
• Evelyn Fox Keller. 1995. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, Yale University Press. 139-176.
• Haraway, Donna J. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. New York, Routledge, 1997. "Race" (pp. 213-265).
• Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press. pp. 9-12, 136-162.

Followed by an informal potluck in the evening .....

Assessment of what we've learned... to reflect, to sum up, and to have seminar participants critically relate what they have learned and read to their own disciplines and their own work..

WEEK 11: Postscript on Biotechnology (Scholz/Movassagh)

• Haraway, Donna J., 1997. "Mice Into Wormholes," in G. L. Downey and J. Dumit. Cyborgs & Citadels : Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Seattle, University of Washington Press. pp. 209-213.
• Gottweiss, Herbert, 1997. "Genetic Engineering, Discourses of Deficiency, and the New Politics of Population," in P.J. Taylor, S. E. Hallar and P.N. Edwards, eds. Changing Life: Genomes, Ecologies, Bodies, Commodities. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
• Krimsky, Sheldon, 1998. "The Cultural and Symbolic Dimensions of Agricultural Biotechnology," in Arnold Thackray, ed., Private Science: Biotechnology and the Rise of the Molecular Sciences, Philadelphia, U. of Penn. Press, 144-161.

Week 0

• Cowen, Ruth Schwarz. 1983. "How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum." Chapter 15 in Cowen, R.S., More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology, New York, Basic Books.
• Bijker, Wiebe. and John Law. 1992 "General Introduction," in Building Technology/Shaping Society. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, pp. 1-14.

Week 1

• MacKenzie, Donald and Graham Spinardi. 1995. "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons." American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 1: 44-99.
• Mackenzie, Donald A. 1990. Inventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Week 2

• Barley, Stephen R. and Beth A. Bechky. 1994. "In the Backrooms of Science: The Work of Technicians in Science Labs." Work and Occupations, 21(1) February: 85-126.
• Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: the World of High Energy Physicists. Harvard University Press.

Week 3

• Braun, Ingo and Bernward Joerges. 1994. "How To Recombine Large Technical Systems: The Case of European Organ Transplantation." in Changing Large Technical Systems, Jane Summerton (ed), Boulder, Co: Westview Press, pp. 25-52.
• Joerges, Bernward. 1988. "Large Technical Systems: Concepts and Issues." in The Development of Large Technical Systems, Renate Mayntz and Thomas P. Hughes (eds), Boulder, Co: Westview Press, pp. 9-36.
• Rassmussen, Wayne D. 1968. "Advances in American Agriculture: The Mechanical Tomato Harvester," Technology and Culture, (Winter): l43-l5l.
• Friedland, William and John Barton. 1976. "Tomato Technology," Society, (Oct./Nov.): 35-42.

Week 5

• Collins, Harry M. and Stephen Yearley. 1992. "Epistemological Chicken" in Andrew Pickering (ed), Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: pp 301-326.
• Callon, Michel and Bruno Latour. 1992. "Don't Throw the Baby out with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearley," in Pickering, see above, pp. 343-368.
• Collins, Harry M. and Stephen Yearley. 1991. "Journey into Space," in Pickering see above,pp. 369-389.

Week 6

• Atkinson, Paul. 1988. "Ethnomethodology: A Critical Review," Annual Review of Sociology, 14: 441-465.
• Fischer, Claude S. 1992. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1949. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Gusterson, Hugh. 1996. Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Nye, David E. 1991. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Week 7

• Vaughan, Diane 1997. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
• Medvedev, G. (1991). The Truth About Chernobyl Evelyn Rossiter, Trans. New York: Basic Books.
• Perrow, Charles. 1984. Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies. New York: Basic Books.
• Sagan, Scott D. 1993. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Rochlin and La Porte essays in Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.

Week 8

• Latour, Bruno 1996, ARAMIS or the Love of Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
• Thomas, Robert J. 1994. What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• von Meier, Alexandra. 1994. "Integrating Supple Technologies into Utility Power Systems: Possibilities for Reconfiguration", in Summerton, Jane (ed.), Changing Large Technical Systems .Boulder, Co: Westview Press, pp. 211-230.