Showing papers in "Science, Technology, & Human Values in 2005"

A typology of public engagement mechanisms

Abstract: Imprecise definition of key terms in the “public participation” domain have hindered the conduct of good research and militated against the development and implementation of effective participation practices. In this article, we define key concepts in the domain: public communication, public consultation, and public participation. These concepts are differentiated according to the nature and flow of information between exercise sponsors and participants. According to such an information flow perspective, an exercise’s effectiveness may be ascertained by the efficiency with which full, relevant information is elicited from all appropriate sources, transferred to (and processed by) all appropriate recipients, and combined(when required) to give an aggregate/consensual response. Key variables that may theoretically affect effectiveness—and on which engagement mechanisms differ—are identified and used to develop a typology of mechanisms. The resultant typology reveals four communication, six consultation, and...

Studying Obduracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion between Technology Studies and Urban Studies

Abstract: This article draws the city into the limelight of social studies of technology. Considering that cities consist of a wide range of technologies, it is remarkable that cities as an object of research have so far have been relatively neglected in the field of technology studies. This article focuses on the role of obduracy in urban sociotechnical change, an issue that, it is argued, has considerable importance for both students of the cities and the daily practice of town planners and architects, and, at the same time, forms an important theoretical debate in science, technology, and society (STS) studies. The article provides an overview of theoretical conceptions of obduracy in both technology studies and urban studies and proposes a heuristic model for the analysis of this phenomenon. In this way, this article aims to contribute to the establishment of a common interdisciplinary playground for these disciplines.

New Civic Epistemologies of Quantification: Making Sense of Indicators of Local and Global Sustainability

Abstract: Processes of globalization and decentralization are changing the relationship among statistical knowledge production, nation, and state. This article explores these changes through a comparison of five projects to design and implement indicators of sustainable development to replace conventional measures of economic welfare and social demographics—community sustainability indicators, Metropatterns, greening the gross domestic product, the Living Planet Index, and standardized accounting rules for inventorying greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing on a coproductionist idiom, the article argues that these projects constitute experiments in modifying the civic epistemologies of democratic societies, transforming not only knowledge production but also political identities, relationships, and institutions.

Technology- and Product-Oriented Movements: Approximating Social Movement Studies and Science and Technology Studies

Abstract: Technology- and product-oriented movements (TPMs) are mobilizations of civil society organizations that generally include alliances with private-sector firms, for which the target of social change is support for an alternative technology and/or product, as well as the policies with which they are associated. TPMs generally involve “private-sector symbiosis,” that is, a mixture of advocacy organizations/networks and private-sector firms. Case studies of nutritional therapeutics, wind energy, and open-source software are used to explore the tendency for large corporations in established industries to incorporate the products and technologies advocated by the TPM. As the incorporation process proceeds, the alternative technologies undergo design transformations that make them more compatible with existing products and technological systems. As the technological/product field undergoes diversification, “object conflicts” erupt over a range of design possibilities, from those advocated by the more social movem...

Technocracy, Democracy, and U.S. Climate Politics: The Need for Demarcations:

Abstract: Ulrich Beck and other theorists of reflexive modernization are allies in the general project to reduce technocracy and elitism by rendering decision making more democratic and robust. However, this study of U.S. climate politics reveals complexities and obstacles to the sort of democratized decision making envisioned by such theorists. Since the early 1990s, the U.S. public has been subjected to numerous media-driven campaigns to shape understandings of this widely perceived threat. Political interests have instigated an important part of these campaigns, frequently resorting to ethically problematic tactics to undermine attempts at policy action designed to avert or reduce the threat. The disproportionate influence of such interests suggests the need for a more level political playing field characterized by more equalized access to power and influence.

Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI):

Abstract: This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology (or prove its nonexistence). Visual extraction of pathology becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational (i.e., converted into a set of isolable, disjoint, and differentiable parts).

Green Chemistry as Social Movement

Abstract: Is it useful to think of green chemists and engineers in terms of social movement theory? The authors provide an overview of the field of green chemistry and draw on concepts from social movement theory to analyze the developments in green chemistry. They then probe some of the problems that political progressives would face in trying to cooperate with green chemists. They close by linking their analysis to questions concerning gover- nance of technological innovation. They find that green chemistry may be closer to business-as-usual than to a radical departure. Environmentalists might investigate the prospects for cooperation with green chemists in pushing toward a benign chemical regime. Whether green chemistry constitutes the elite movement that the authors have been investigating in this article is less important than whether those with expertise in benign chemical synthesis have insights that the rest of the environmental movement ought to be pursuing more diligently. Might environmentally responsible technological innovation ever be led by technoscientists working within mainstream corporate, governmental, and university institutions? Could it be that the sociotechnical value shifts and reforms called for by many progressive scholars and activists—peace, sustainability, genuine democracy, and social justice—will remain oppositional and marginal unless such innovations take root and blossom in established institutions? If so, if building an environmentally commend- able civilization requires a larger and more influential coalition than well- meaning outsiders to the technosphere usually can muster, there may be no substitute for enrolling insiders as enthusiastic actors and even leaders in the endeavor rather than as resentful and legally mandated participants. This arti- cle offers a preliminary examination of one small but potentially very important group of such insiders, those pursuing "green chemistry."

The Sounds of Science: Listening to Laboratory Practice

Abstract: Works in science and technology studies (STS) have repeatedly pointed to the importance of the visual in scientific practice. STS has also explicated how embodied practice generates scientific knowledge. I aim to supplement this literature by pointing out how sound and hearing are integral aspects of experimentation. Sound helps define how and when lab work is done, and in what kinds of spaces. It structures experimental experience. It affords interactions between researchers and instruments that are richer than could be obtained with vision alone. And it is a site for tacit knowledge, providing a resource for the replication of results, and the transmission of knowledge, and the construction of social boundaries within instrumental communities.

When Is a Work-Around? Conflict and Negotiation in Computer Systems Development

Abstract: The notion of a “work-around” is a much-used resource within the sociology of technology, reflecting an interest in showing how users are not simply shaped by technologies but how they, through adopting artifacts in ways other than those for which they were designed or intended, are also shapers of technology. Using the language and concerns of actor-network theory and focusing on recent developments within computer-systems implementation, this article seeks to explore and add to our understanding of work-arounds through unpacking the work of one group of “users” as they attempt to tailor and roll out a system within the administration departments of their university. This article argues that paying attention to the various networks that lead to and from work-arounds can improve our understanding of the way users both shape and are shaped by technologies. Focusing on work-arounds as “networks in place” also allows us to highlight some of their contingencies; for example, the other actors and entities on w...

Stakeholder Participation in Voluntary Environmental Agreements: Analysis of 10 Project XL Case Studies

Abstract: This article examines stakeholder involvement and influence as part of voluntary environmental agreements between regulatory agencies and companies. Ten pilot projects that were part of the U.S. En...

From “Endless Frontier” to “Basic Science for Use”: Social Contracts between Science and Society

Abstract: This article analyzes the National Science Study produced by the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s to see if the priorities of S&T policy were changing, if state agencies were bei...

Lost in the Mall with Mesmer and Wundt: Demarcations and Demonstrations in the Psychologies

Abstract: This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the "memory wars"-the current controversy around "recovered" or "false" memory. As it is played out inside professional psychology, the disputefeatures clinical practitioners acting largely as proponents of recovered memory and experimentalists as proponents of false memory Tracing a genealogy of this dispute back to a pair of original sites (Mesmer's salon and Wundt's laboratory), we show how the traditions' engagement in three modes of scientific demonstration varies systematically in terms of the modes of social relation inherent in their epistemic practices and the kinds of" reliable witness" these practices produce. We conclude that whereas the experimentalist tradition is able to transport their produced witnesses from one to another site of demonstration with relative case, the clinical tradition has much greater difficulty in doing so and thus has to engage in a variety of compensatory demonstrative strategies.

Introduction: Demarcation Socialized: Constructing Boundaries and Recognizing Difference

Abstract: Given what we know about the nature of knowledge and scientific work it no longer makes sense to think of scientific knowledge as demarcated from “ordinary” knowledge through its methods or the characteristics of the scientific community. As the social studies of science have shown, boundaries become ambiguous when viewed close up so that science merges with ordinary knowledge. But does this mean that distinctions between knowledge claims rest on nothing more than social conventions, powerful as these might be? The articles in this special issue address this question from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction sets out this broader framework and highlights the themes that unite the individual articles. Our central argument is that although boundary work is difficult, complex, and contingent, it is too important to be left to chance or tradition. We need to rescue expertise from the antiessentialist consensus that there is nothing but attribution.

Reading Digital Denmark : IT reports as material-semiotic actors

Abstract: During the past decade, several governmental reports have discussed how information technology can transform Danish society. Most important among these reports is Digital Denmark from 1999.In this article, the authors examine how to analyze Digital Denmark by considering two strategies for engaging reports. The first aims at uncovering and making explicit hidden assumptions or ideologies in the text. This approach is called “reading against the text.” The second approach—inspired by science, technology, and society studies—considers where a text goes and what it does rather than how to critically interpret it. Texts may be read as material-semiotic actors, having effects on their environment that exceed or bypass discussions of content or motivation. This approach is called “reading with the text,” and the authors argue that traveling with Digital Denmark makes visible the limitations of critical analyses, while adding agency to the report as it moves in between practices.

Taming Unruly Science and Saving National Competitiveness: Discourses on Science by Sweden’s Strategic Research Bodies

Abstract: Promoting collaboration between university researchers and practitioners from the business and public sectors has emerged as an important tool of science policy. This article examines the discourses that policy makers employ in promoting this strategy by analyzing the narratives about the social relevance of science and its role vis-a-vis the industrial sector in the context of strategic research funding in Sweden. Four dominant discourses on science are identified and discussed. It is argued that these policy frames construct a boundary between research and practice, which is in turn used as rhetorical justification for research funding policies that seek to increase business influence and input to university research at the expense of academic autonomy in this sphere.

Suspect Technologies: Scrutinizing the Intersection of Science, Technology, and Policy:

Abstract: Drug testing is widely deployed in the United States throughout the public and private sectors. This case study uses two emergent drug-testing technologies—hair analysis and the sweat patch—as examples of techniques of governance that should be subjected to the political equivalent of strict scrutiny. The article contributes to conceptual debates in science and technology studies, arguing that the study of social structure and subject formation should be integral rather than epiphenomenal to analysis in the transdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS). The article contextualizes the development and deployment of drug-testing technologies within the structural and epistemological categories of racial and ethnic difference, gender, sexuality, and class formation. Conflicts between proponents of the technologies and critical advocates who seek to constrain their use mark sites of productive theoretical engagement with structural sociology, racial formation theory, critical race theory, and...

IT and Senior Citizens: Using the Internet for Empowering Active Citizenship

Abstract: This article seeks to explore how a social learning environment can be constructed that uses IT and the Internet. Based on interviews and observations made during two experiments concerning IT and senior citizens in Denmark, the article examines how these experiments make the link between senior citizens and the Internet. In particular, the cases show how IT, as it is used in the social experiments, can be applied to construct empowerment properties and thereby enable “active citizenship” for seniors.

On the Margins of Everything: Doing, Performing, and Staging Science in Homeopathy

Abstract: Although it seems scientifically implausible, holistically oriented forms of alternative and complementary medicine (ACM) have become popular over the past few years. Homeopathy is considered to be one of the most widespread, heterogeneous, and controversial of these therapies. Science works as a generator of professional identify in such groups of medical outsiders. This article is based on extensive research on homeopathic communities conducted over several years. It will outline social conditions of homeopathic knowledge and treatment as opposed to scientific standards and will shed some light on homeopathy as affected by science on three levels: homeopathic research, education, and everyday work. Since the area of medical science and research affects homeopathic practice but not vice versa, this article will also highlight the challenge of "doing science" in a still marginalized field.

How to Kill with a Ballpoint: Credibility in Dutch Forensic Science:

Abstract: A woman is found lying dead on the floor of the living room of her house in Leiden, the Netherlands, and because of a swollen and a slightly wounded eyelid, an autopsy is performed on the body the day after it is found. Behind the wound, there is a whole ballpoint pen, which entered the head of the deceased through her right eye causing mortal brain damage. How did it get there? This question was to cause a stir in Dutch society, holding a group of police detectives and several (forensic) scientists in its grip for several years. In this article, the ballpoint (murder) case is analyzed as to the boundary work between credible and noncredible expertise. As it is often assumed that boundary work in continental law is preempted by the structure of these law models, this case study adds a comparative note to the growing literature about science and the law.

Science in Context. The paradoxes of universalism and liberalism

Abstract: Putting Science in Its Place. Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, David N. Livingstone The Body Multiple. Ontology in Medical Practice, Annemarie Mol

Book Review: He, She and IT Revisited: New Perspectives on Gender in the Information Society; TechnoFeminism:

Abstract: These two recent books provide the newcomer to feminist technology studies with a good overview of the field. For the more experienced reader, they also provide food for thought. In 1991, Wajcman published Feminism Confronts Technology. She says herself in the preface of the new book that the two should be read as companion volumes. The earlier book provides a wealth of historical and case study material; the new book focuses primarily on the theoretical developments in the field during the 1990s. Lie has also published widely in the field, with her book about domesticating technology, coedited with Knut Sørensen (1996), being the best known in English. Thus, both Wajcman and Lie are very well positioned to reflect on developments in gender and technology studies. In these new books, both of them more or less explicitly pose the question of whether we really need any more writing about what used to be called simply “women and technology” after thirty years of empirical and theoretical research. Have not all the questions been answered? Is there anything new to say on the topic? Wajcman and Lie clearly think there is, with Wajcman focusing on new theoretical developments and Lie bringing together recent empirical research conducted largely at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Although Wajcman gives some attention to feminist work about reproductive and biomedical technoscience, both books focus primarily on those technologies that became widely available at the end of the twentieth century, namely, information and communication technologies (ICTs). I shall briefly summarize each of the books before providing my view of their answers to their own rhetorical questions. Wajcman’s book has a short introduction followed by five chapters. The first chapter, “Male Designs on Technology,” provides an overview of how feminist theory developed during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in relation to science and technology. The second chapter, “Technoscience Reconfigured,” covers the same time period but focuses on the development of feminist science and technology studies (STS). A huge amount of material is covered with admirable succinctness in forty-five pages. The third chapter, “Virtual Gender,”

Book Review: Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer

Abstract: Although production of modern popular music during the last forty years has been thoroughly changed by the application of various technologies, the case of musicmaking technology in science, technology, and society (STS) studies has been remarkably absent. Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco’s book, Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (hereafter called AD), published in 2002, is therefore extremely welcome. In the book, Pinch and Trocco present a detailed history of how the electronic music synthesizer was developed, with emphasis on the various actors that were involved and that influenced the development, as well as the culture in which the development was possible. It is further emphasized that the development of electronic sounds was an important forming factor of the culture in which the synthesizer was shaped. AD is a book about the electronic music synthesizer as an invention in general and about Bob Moog in particular. However, a more theoretically directed analysis is sketched in the last chapter by drawing attention to such terms as “liminal entities” and “boundary objects” (pp. 308-9), “technological frames” (pp. 309-11), “scripts” and “configurations” (pp. 311-3), and “boundary shifters” (pp. 313-4). In a review for the STS research community, I would regard the book as a very rich and detailed introduction to a fairly new case of study. In this review, I briefly outline how the case is presented. The authors start out with a short introduction to the synthesizer in general, the role of synthesizers in modern music, and how the development and use of such technologies should be analyzed as intertwined with cultural practices. “Just as the development of the synthesizer demanded collaboration across cultures, among engineers, musicians, and salespeople, in our story, too, we want to reintegrate machine and music, technology and culture” (p. 9). Then, the main part of the book is organized chronographically, starting out with Bob Moog’s interest in electronics, his first homemade Theremin (electronic musical instrument invented by Leon Theremin in Russia in the 1920s), and his early basement business in the 1950s, where he sold Theremin parts and complete instruments. We follow Moog to Cornell University and Trumansburg, where he combines an academic career with a growing business of manufacturing and selling transistorized Theremin kits. Moog’s meetings with Walter Sear and, later, Herb Deutsch stand out