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) (Henceforth "SCOT").

• 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).
• Searle, John, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Press. 1995).

First Week of Classes = WEEK 1 .. Introduction and Orientation (8/25/03)

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 SCOT, 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.

WEEK 3: Understanding critiques of STS – SCOT and its critics. (9/8)

• 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)
• Readings from Searle (TBA)

WEEK 4: STS and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (9/15)

• 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.
• Hess, Science Studies (1997). Ch. 4, "Social Studies of Knowledge" (pp. 81-111).
• Lynch, Michael. 1993. Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action. New York: Cambridge: pp.71-117.

WEEK 5: STS and Actor-Network Theory. (9/22)

• Callon, Michel. 1987. "Society in the Making: the Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis," in SCOT: 83-106.
• Law, John. 1987. "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion" in SCOT: 111-134.
• 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.
• 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 W. Bijker & J. Law, Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, pp. 205-224.

WEEK 6: Entering the Laboratory: "Technoscience" and the production of knowledge. (9/29)

• John Law and Annemarie Mol. 2001. "Situating Technoscience: an Inquiry into Spatialities." http:/www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc052jl.html
• Karin Knorr Cetina. 1992. "The Couch, the Cathedral, and the Laboratory: On the Relationship between Experiment and Laboratory in Science. In Pickering, Science as Practice and Culture: 113-138.
• Anne Galloway. 2002. "On Laboratory Studies and Ethnographies of Science."wd http://www.purselipssquarejaw.ort/theory/lab_studies.html
• Bruno Latour. 1999. "Give me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World." In Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader. New York, Routledge: 258-275.
• Bruno Latour. 1999. "Circulating Reference," Chapter 2 of Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press: 24-79.
• Stephen R. Barly and Beth A. Bechky. 1994. "In the Backrooms of Science: The Work of Technicians in Science Labs." Work and Occupations, 21, No. 1, February: 85-126.
• Gary Taubes. 1998. "The (Political) Science of Salt", Science, vol. 281, 14 August 1998, pp. 898-907.
  Optional but available from Prof. Rochlin.
• 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)
  

WEEK 7: Studies of Technology: Histories and Technical Determinism. (10/6)

• Emmanuel G. Mesthene "The Role of Techology in Society," and John McDermott, "Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals." 1997. Both from Albert H. Teich, ed., Technology and the Future, 7th ed. New York, St. Martin's Press: 65-92.
• Edward W. Constant, "The Social Locus of Technological Practice: Community, Systems, or Organization?" in Bijker et. al., SCOT, 223-242.
• Gene I. Rochlin, 1997. Trapped in the Net, Chapter 2, "Autogamous Technology": 15-34.
• Lynn White, Jr. 1979. Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press: l-38.
• Ronald Hilton. 1963. "Technical Determinism: The Stirrup and the Plough," Past and Present, 24: 90-100.
• Hayter, H. 1939. "Barbed Wire - A Prairie Invention," Journal of Agricultural History: l89-207.
• Merritt Roe Smith. 1994. "Technological Determinism in American Culture." in Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, Cambridge, MIT Press: 1-36.
• Robert Heilbroner. 1994. " Do Machines Make History?" and "Technological Determinism Revisited." in Smith and Marx, Does Technology Drive History: 53-78.

WEEK 8: Organizational Approaches: Sociological Studies and Large Technical Systems. (10/13)

• Bernward Joerges. 1988. "Large Technical Systems: Concepts and Issues," in Renata Mayntz and Thomas P. Hughes, eds., The Development of Large Technical Systems, Boulder, CO,: Westview: 9-36.
• Thomas P. Hughes, "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems," in SCOT: 51-82
• Thomas P. Hughes. 1983. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930. Baltimore, 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.
• G. I. Rochlin. 1994. "Broken Plowshare: System Failure and the Nuclear Power Industry." In Jane Summerton, ed., Changing Large Technical Systems, Boulder, CO, Westview: 231-264.
• Bernward Joerges. 1999. "High Variability Discourse in the History and Sociology of Large Technical Systems." in Olivier Coutard, ed. The Governance of Large Technical Systems. London, Routledge: 258-290.
  

WEEK 9: Organizational Structures: Complexities, Risks, and Altered Social Realities. (10/20)

• Gene I. Rochlin. 1997. Trapped in The Net. Chapters 7, 8, and 9.: 108-168.
• Judith Green. 2003. "The Ultimate Challenge for Risk Technologies." in Jane Summerton and Boel Berner, eds., Constructing Risk and Safety in Technological Practice. London, Routledge: 29-42.
• Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Vol. 1. 2003. NASA and U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., Chapters 7 and 8: 178-205. http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html (full report or get it in pieces.)
• The National Strategy for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets. 2003. The White House, Washington D.C. "Securing Critical Infrastructures": pp. 35-70. http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/Physical_Strategy.pdf
• Todd R. La Porte and Paula M. Consolini. 1991. "Working in Practice but Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of `High-Reliability Organizations'." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 1, No. 1: 19-47.
• L. Clarke and J. F. Short, "Social Organization and Risk -- Some Current Controversies." Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 375-399.

WEEK 10: Discourses, and Boundary Work (10/27)

• Maarten A Hajer. 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.
• Thomas F. Gieryn. 1983. "Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists." American Sociological Review, 48, No. 6 (Dec.): 781-795.
• . Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer. "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939." Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 387-420.
• Joan Fujimura. 1992. "Crafting Science: Standardized Packages, Boundary Objects and `Translation'." in A. Pickering (ed), Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 168-214.
• Simon Shackley 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.
• Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Starr. 2000. "Categorical Work and Boundary Infrastructures: Enriching Theories of Classification" and "Why Classifications Matter" in Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge MA, MIT Press: 283-326.
  

WEEK 11: Narratives,Ethnomethodology, and Cultural Studies (11/3)

• Reprise on Paulson (Week 0).
• Alexandra von Meier, Jennifer Lynn Miller, and Ann C. Keller. 1998. "The Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium: A Comparison of Three Narrative Contexts." The Nonproliferation Review: 20-31.
• Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges. 1992. Exploring Complex Organizations: A Cultural Perspective. Newbury Park, CA, Sage: pp. 21-39, 159-185.
• Hess, Science Studies (1997). Ch. 5, "Critical and Cultural Studies of Science and Technology" (112-147).
• Michael Lynch. 1993. Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action. New York: Cambridge:, Ch. 1, "Ethnomethodology": 1-38.
• Sharon Traweek. 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.
• Gene I. Rochlin and Alexandra von Meier. 1994. "Nuclear Power Operations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective". Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 19 (1994), 153-187.

 

WEEK 12: User-oriented and feminist studies of technological practice (11/10)

• Ruth Schwartz Cowan. “The Consumption Junction: a Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology,” in Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, SCOT, pp. 261-280.
• Judy Wacjman.  1995. “Feminist Theories of Technology.”  In Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch, eds., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies.  Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE: 189-204.
• Madeleine Akrich. 1996. “User Representations: Practices, Methods and Sociology." In Arie Rip et. al., Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. London: Pinter: 167-184.
• Rayna Rapp. 1997. "Real-Time Fetus: The Role of the Sonogram in the Age of Monitored Reproduction," in Gary Lee Downey and Joseph Dumit, eds., Cyborgs and Citadels. Santa Fe, School of American Research Press:  31-48.   
• Sandra Harding. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press: 9-12, 136-162.
• Donna J. Haraway:  1998.  “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective."  In Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader: 172-188.
• Joel Novek.  2002.  “IT, Gender, and Professional Practice: Or, Why an Automated Drug Distribution System Was Sent Back to the Manufacturer.”  Science, Technology and Human Values, 27, no. 3: 379-403.

 

WEEK 13: Technology and Politics (11/17)

• * (reprise on Winner and Joerges pieces from Week 1  – not an assignment, just re-review them).
• * Susan Cozzens. 1993. “Whose Movement? STS and Social Justice,” Science, Technology & Human Values, 18, no. 3 (summer):  275-277. (Short piece – for all to read).
• Sheila Jasanoff.  1996.  “Beyond Epistemology: Relativism and Engagement in the Politics of Science.” Social Studies of Science, 26: 393-418.
• David F. Noble. 1998. “Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education.”  First Monday, 3, no. 1: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html.
• Gene I. Rochlin. Trapped in the Net, Chapter 4, “Taylorism Redux.”
• Bruce Bimber.  1994.  “Three Faces of Technical Determinism.”  In M. R. Smith, ed., Does Technology Drive History?: 79-100.
• Gabrielle Hecht.  1998.  The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity After World War II.   Cambridge MA, MIT Press: 21-53, 334-339.
• Adele Clarke and Theresa Montini. 1993. "The Many Faces of RU486 Tales of Situated Knowledges and Technological Contestations", Science, Technology & Human Values, 18. no. 1:  42-78.
• Susan Leigh Star. 1991. “Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: on Being Allergic to Onions,” In John Law, ed.  A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. Sociological Review Monograph 31. London: Routledge: 65-96.

 

WEEK 14: Biotechnology and Bio-medicine (11/24)

• Adele E. Clarke,  Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman. 2003. "Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Tranformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine." American Sociological Review 68:161-194.
• Joan Fujimura.  1988. “The Molecular Biological Bandwagon in Cancer Research: Where Social Worlds Meet.” Social Problems, 35, No. 3: 261-283.
• Lily E. Kay. 1998.  “In the Beginning Was the Word?”  In Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader: 258-275.
• Donna J. Haraway. 1997. “Mice Into Wormholes,” in Downey and Dumit, eds. Cyborgs and Citadels: 209-243.
• Sheldon Krimsky. 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.
• Leah A. Lievrouw.  2003.  “Biotechnology, Intellectual Property, and the Prospects for Scientific Communication.”  In S. Braman, ed., Biotechnology & Communication: The Meta-Technologies of Information. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum: 145-172 (plus refs.).
• Evelyn Fox Keller. 1995.  Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology.  New York, Columbia University Press: 79-118.

We can run late (with pizza and etc.)