Showing papers in "Science, Technology, & Human Values in 2010"

This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept

Abstract: There are three components to boundary objects as outlined in the original 1989 article. Interpretive flexibility, the structure of informatic and work process needs and arrangements, and, finally, the dynamic between ill-structured and more tailored uses of the objects. Much of the use of the concept has concentrated on the aspect of interpretive flexibility and has often mistaken or conflated this flexibility with the process of tacking back-and-forth between the ill-structured and well-structured aspects of the arrangements. Boundary objects are not useful at just any level of scale or without full consideration of the entire model. The article discusses these aspects of the architecture of boundary objects and includes a discussion of one of the ways that boundary objects appeared as a concept in earlier work done by Star. It concludes with methodological considerations about how to study the system of boundary objects and infrastructure.

Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting.

Abstract: "Undone science" refers to areas of research that are left unfunded, incomplete, or generally ignored but that social movements or civil society organizations often identify as worthy of more research. This study mobilizes four recent studies to further elaborate the concept of undone science as it relates to the political construction of research agendas. Using these cases, we develop the argument that undone science is part of a broader politics of knowledge, wherein multiple and competing groups struggle over the construction and implementation of alternative research agendas. Overall, the study demonstrates the analytic potential of the concept of undone science to deepen understanding of the systematic nonproduction of knowledge in the institutional matrix of state, industry, and social movements that is characteristic of recent calls for a "new political sociology of science."

Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science

Abstract: In light of arguments that citizen science has the potential to make environmental knowledge and policy more robust and democratic, this article inquires into the factors that shape the ability of citizen science to actually influence scientists and decision makers. Using the case of community-based air toxics monitoring with ‘‘buckets,’’ it argues that citizen science’s effectiveness is significantly influenced by standards and standardized practices. It demonstrates that, on one hand, standards serve a boundary-bridging function that affords bucket monitoring data a crucial measure of legitimacy among experts. On the other hand, standards simultaneously serve a boundary-policing function, allowing experts to dismiss bucket data as irrelevant to the central project of air quality assessment. The article thus calls attention to standard setting as an important site of intervention for citizen science-based efforts to democratize science and policy.

On the Consequences of Post-ANT

Abstract: Since the 1980s the concept of ANT has remained unsettled ANT has continuously been critiqued and hailed, ridiculed and praised It is still an open question whether ANT should be considered a theory or a method or whether ANT is better understood as entailing the dissolution of such modern ‘‘genres’’ In this paper the authors engage with some important reflections by John Law and Bruno Latour in order to analyze what it means to ‘‘do ANT,’’ and (even worse), doing so after ‘‘doing ANT on ANT’’ In particular the authors examine two post-ANT case studies by Annemarie Mol and Marilyn Strathern and outline the notions of complexity, multiplicity, and fractality The purpose is to illustrate the analytical consequences of thinking with post-ANT The analysis offers insights into how it is possible to ‘‘go beyond ANT,’’ without leaving it entirely behind

National Biobanks: Clinical Labor, Risk Production, and the Creation of Biovalue

Abstract: The development of genomics has dramatically expanded the scope of genetic research, and collections of genetic biosamples have proliferated in countries with active genomics research programs In this essay, we consider a particular kind of collection, national biobanks National biobanks are often presented by advocates as an economic "resource" that will be used by both basic researchers and academic biologists, as well as by pharmaceutical diagnostic and clinical genomics companies Although national biobanks have been the subject of intense interest in recent social science literature, most prior work on this topic focuses either on bioethical issues related to biobanks, such as the question of informed consent, or on the possibilities for scientific citizenship that they make possible We emphasize, by contrast, the economic aspect of biobanks, focusing specifically on the way in which national biobanks create biovalue Our emphasis on the economic aspect of biobanks allows us to recognize the importance of what we call clinical labor-that is, the regularized, embodied work that members of the national population are expected to perform in their role as biobank participants-in the creation of biovalue through biobanks Moreover, it allows us to understand how the technical way in which national biobanks link clinical labor to databases alters both medical and popular understandings of risk for common diseases and conditions

Diverse Knowledges and Contact Zones within the Digital Museum

Abstract: As museums begin to revisit their definition of ‘‘expert’’ in light of theories about the local character of knowledge, questions emerge about how museums can reconsider their documentation of knowledge about objects. How can a museum present different and possibly conflicting perspectives in such a way that the tension between them is preserved? This article expands upon a collaborative research project between the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology at Cambridge University, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center to compare descriptions of museum objects by multiple expert communities. We found that narratives and objects in use are key omissions in traditional museum documentation, offering us several possibilities to expand our concept of digital objects. Digital objects will allow members of indigenous source communities to contribute descriptive information about objects to support local cultural revitalization efforts and also to influence h...

Life, science, and biopower

Abstract: This article critically engages with the influential theory of "molecularized biopower'' and "politics of life'' developed by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. Molecularization is assumed to signal the end of population-centred biopolitics and the disciplining of subjects as described by Foucault, and the rise of newforms of biosociality and biological citizenship. Drawing on empirical work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we argue that this account is limited by a focus on novelty and assumptions about the transformative power of the genetic life sciences. We suggest that biopower consists of a more complex cluster of relationships between the molecular and the population. The biological existence of different human beings is politicized through different complementary and competing discourses around medical therapies, choices at the beginning and end of life, public health, environment, migration and border controls, implying a multiple rather than a singular politics of life.

Locating Scientific Citizenship: The Institutional Contexts and Cultures of Public Engagement

Abstract: In this article, we explore the institutional negotiation of public engagement in matters of science and technology. We take the example of the Science in Society dialogue program initiated by the UK’s Royal Society, but set this case within the wider experience of the public engagement activities of a range of charities, corporations, governmental departments, and scientific institutions. The novelty of the analysis lies in the linking of an account of the dialogue event and its outcomes to the values, practices, and imperatives—the institutional rationality—of the commissioning organization. We argue that the often tacit institutional construction of scientific citizenship is a critical, and relatively undeveloped, element of analysis—one that offers considerable insight into the practice and democratic implications of engaging publics in science and science policy. We also present evidence indicating that over time the expanding ‘‘capacities’’ associated with dialogue can act in subtle ways to enroll other elements of institutional architectures into more reflexive modes of thinking and acting. In the concluding section of the article, we consider the ways in which research and practice could (and we believe should) engage more squarely with facets of institutional context and culture.

Scientific Nonknowledge and Its Political Dynamics: The Cases of Agri-Biotechnology and Mobile Phoning:

Abstract: While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ‘‘risk’’, over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cultures of nonknowledge can be discerned and, second, that drawing attention to nonknowledge in technology conflicts results in significant

Science and Power in Global Food Regulation: The Rise of the Codex Alimentarius

Abstract: The emergence of the global administrative sector and its new forms of knowledge production, expert rationality, and standardization, remains an understudied topic in science studies. Using a coproductionist theoretical framework, we argue that the mutual construction of epistemic and legal authority across international organizations has been critical for constituting and stabilizing a global regime for the regulation of food safety. The authors demonstrate how this process has also given rise to an authoritative framework for risk analysis touted as ‘‘scientifically rigorous’’ but embodying particular value choices regarding health, environment, and the dispensation of regulatory power. Finally, the authors trace how enrollment of the Codex Alimentarius in World Trade Law has heightened institutional dilemmas around legitimacy and credibility in science advice at the global level. Taken together, the case illustrates the importance of attending to the iterative construction of law and science in the constitution of new global administrative regimes.

Experimenting with the Archive: STS-ers As Analysts and Co-constructors of Databases and Other Archival Forms:

Abstract: This article is about recent attempts by scholars, database practitioners, and curators to experiment in theoretically interesting ways with the conceptual design and the building of databases, archives, and other information systems. This article uses the term ‘‘archive’’ (following Derrida’s Archive Fever 1998/1995 and Bowker’s Memory Practices in the Sciences 2005) as an overarching category to include a diversity of technologies used to inventory objects and knowledge, to commit them to memory and for future use. The category of ‘‘archive’’ might include forms as diverse as the simple spreadsheet, the species inventory, the computerized database, and the museum. Using this protean concept, this study suggests that we are currently witnessing a time where close convergences are occurring between social theory and archive construction. It identifies a ‘‘move’’ toward exposure of the guts of our archives and databases, toward exposing the contingencies, the framing, the reflexivity, and the politics embedded within them. Within this move, the study examines ways in which theories of performance and emergence have begun to influence the way that archives of different kinds are conceived and reflects on the role of Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars in their construction.

Beyond Speaking Truth? Institutional Responses to Uncertainty in Scientific Governance

Abstract: Elitist, technical, and positivist models of scientific governance have been subject to much scrutiny and criticism by science and technology studies (STS) for many years. Seminal work in STS has exposed the boundary work through which the distinctions between science and nonscience, science and politics, and experts and lay people are constructed and maintained (to mention only a few: Gieryn 1999; Latour 1993; Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). A more specific tradition in STS has focused on the relations between science, technology, public policy, government and civil society, and has articulated demands for the acknowledgment of uncertainty and a self-critical stance toward scientific truth claims (Wynne 1993; Collins and Evans 2007), for a broader participation of citizens or lay people

Reflective equilibrium in R & D networks

Abstract: In this article, we develop an approach for the moral assessment of research and development (R & D) networks on the basis of the reflective equilibrium approach proposed by Rawls and Daniels. The reflective equilibrium approach aims at coherence between moral judgments, principles, and background theories. We use this approach because it takes seriously the moral judgments of the actors involved in R & D, whereas it also leaves room for critical reflection about these judgments. It is shown that two norms, namely reflective learning and openness and inclusiveness, which are used in the literature on policy and technological networks, contribute to achieving a justified overlapping consensus. We apply the approach to a case study about the development of an innovative sewage treatment technology and show how in this case the two norms are or could be instrumental in achieving a justified overlapping consensus on relevant moral issues.

Knowledge on Stage: Scientific Policy Advice:

Abstract: The paper provides a deeper insight into institutionally given opportunities for and limitations to reflexive, dialogue-centered, and risk-sensitive knowledge exchange between scientific experts and agro-political decision makers, especially under the conditions of a significant degree of complexity, far-reaching uncertainties and potential impacts. It focuses on the practical orientations, guiding expectations and selection criteria shaping expertise in processes of science policy consulting. In doing so, two perspectives will be discussed: first the orientation of the knowledge production process by different concepts of ‘‘usable knowledge.’’ Second, the influence of specific constellations on different stages of the political process, which shape the institutional conditions for the transfer and the use of scientific knowledge within the policy consulting process. Both perspectives help to come to a closer understanding of the demanding and very heterogeneous process of science policy consulting, which...

Coming to Terms with Biomedical Technologies in Different Technopolitical Cultures: A Comparative Analysis of Focus Groups on Organ Transplantation and Genetic Testing in Austria, France, and the Netherlands:

Abstract: In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ‘‘technopolitical culture,’’ we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conceptualized organ transplantation (OT) and genetic testing (GT), their perceptions of individual agency in relation to the two technologies and to more collective forms of acting and governing, and also their understanding of the two technologies’ relationship to broader societal value systems. Against the background of the sustained political effort to build common European values, we suggest that more fine-grained attention toward the culturally embedded differences in coming to terms with biomedical technologies is needed.

Explaining Hwang-Gate: South Korean Identity Politics between Bionationalism and Globalization

Abstract: This article explores the scientific fraud case of the South Korean stem cell scientist Woo-Suk Hwang, which represents a struggle over political identity. The South Korean state supported Hwang’s research hoping to establish Korean scientific-technological leadership in biotechnology, but it combined this globalization strategy with an identity politics built around the Korean people. The emerging bionationalism exceeded traditional ethnic nationalism insofar as the traditional ethnicity marker of ‘‘blood’’ was displaced by biologically scientifically grounded notions such as the stem cell or the oocyte. These new biological markers defined national identity and embedded the transformative potential of modern biomedicine to be put into the service of Korean bodies and the nation’s economic future. Bionationalistic mobilization became hegemonic in South Korea in 2000 and undermined the democratic process, giving rise to violations against core principles of good governance. This bionationalistic narrative...

How Politics Deals with Expert Dissent: The Case of Ethics Councils

Abstract: Over recent years, science and technology have been reassessed increasingly in ethical terms. Particularly for life science governance, ethics has become the dominant discourse. In the course of this ‘‘ethical turn’’ national ethics councils were set up throughout Europe and in the United States to advice politics in ethically controversial issues such as stem cell research and genetic testing. Ethics experts have become subject to traditional warnings against expertocracy: they are suspected to unduly influence political decision-making. However, any reliable ethics expertise has to reflect societal disagreements in moral issues. Therefore, expert dissent is a normal feature of legitimate ethics expertise. Based on theoretical considerations we argue that in principle, expert dissent does not cause problems for political legitimacy; rather, it enhances the salience of politics: obviously decisions on ethical issues cannot be taken on the basis of expert knowledge alone. We therefore conclude that expert ...

Mass-Mediated Expertise as Informal Policy Advice

Abstract: Scientific policy advice is usually perceived as a formalized advisory process within political institutions. Politics has benefited from this arrangement because the science-based rationalization of policy has contributed to its legitimacy. However, in Western democratic societies, scientific expertise that is routinely mobilized to legitimate political positions has increasingly lost its power due to controversial expertise in the public sphere in particular within the mass media. As a consequence of the medialization of science, political decision makers are increasingly confronted with mass-mediated expertise. Empirical results of a qualitative survey among decision makers in the German political and administrative system, presented in this article, support the hypothesis that mass-mediated expertise has a significant impact on policy processes. Five functions of media coverage on science-based issues for policy making were identified. Mass-mediated expertise has therefore altered the established relations between scientific policy advisors and political decision makers and can be seen as informal policy advice complementing institutionalized advisory arrangements.

Changing Social Order and the Quest for Justification: GMO Controversies in Japan:

Abstract: Over the past decade, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have come to be viewed as problematic in Japan, as evidenced by a large number of newspaper articles covering questions ranging from the unknown ecological impact of GMOs to uncertainty about food safety, and by the fact that a number of consumers’ groups have organized activities including demonstrations at the experiment stations and the submission of petitions to the government. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to understand the changing interpretation of the perceived rational social order in the context of the Japanese GMO controversies. Drawing on the French Theory of Conventions, the article will shed light on the conventions that serve as templates enabling actors to interpret what it means to introduce GMOs and what constitutes a rational decision concerning GMOs. The article will argue that rationality is best viewed as an emergent and interpretive process involving interpretation and negotiation by and among actors, and tha...

Technoscientific Normativity and the ‘‘Iron Cage’’ of Law:

Abstract: Participation of a broad variety of actors in decision-making processes has become an important issue in science and technology policy. Many authors claim the involvement of stakeholders and of the general public to be a core condition for legitimate and sustainable decision making. In the last decades, a wide spectrum of procedures has been developed to realize biotechnological citizenship. These procedures, composed of multiactor arenas, are either located in close relation to the system of politics, or, as in the case of administrative decision making, more closely to the system of law. In the latter case, a problematic constellation arises. Here, law and science can build a techno-scientific normativity that systematically excludes political discourse. The law, although intending to provide for political freedom and citizenship rights, at the end appears to be an "iron cage" for political communication.

Rhetoric of Innovation Policy Making in Hong Kong Using the Innovation Systems Conceptual Approach

Abstract: Since its introduction in the 1980s, use of the innovation systems (IS) conceptual approach has been growing, particularly on the part of national governments including, recently, the Hong Kong Government. In 2004, the Hong Kong Government set forth a ‘‘new strategy’’ for innovation and technology policy making. Because it marked a significant break from the past (characterized by a laissez-faire Government attitude), it was necessary to convince a wider audience to accept this new strategy, a strategy that included the IS conceptual approach. Adopting a science and technology studies (S&TS) perspective, I show how the IS conceptual approach is being used as a rhetorical resource by the Hong Kong Government in its innovation and technology policy making in an effort to persuade its perceived audience of the efficacy of its new strategy for its policies—policies that are in fact unrelated to the basic precepts of the IS conceptual approach. The case provides a cautionary tale in the ways in which policy ma...

Listening to Cybernetics Music, Machines, and Nervous Systems, 1950-1980

Abstract: Scholars have explored the influence of the field of cybernetics on scientific thought and disciplines. However, from the inception of the field, ‘‘cyberneticians’’ had explicitly envisioned applic...

Value-Laden Technocratic Management and Environmental Conflicts: The Case of the New York City Watershed Controversy

Abstract: Environmental controversies are often framed as conflicts between environmentalist and antienvironmentalist positions. The underlying dimensions of ethics and justice tend to be overlooked. This ar...

Ethical Reflection Must Always be Measured

Abstract: The article analyses what we term governmental ethics regimes as forms of scientific governance. Drawing from empirical research on governmental ethics regimes in Germany, Franceand the UK since the early 1980s, it argues that these governmental ethics regimes grew out of the technical model of scientific governance, but have departed from it in crucial ways. It asks whether ethics regimes can be understood as new ‘‘technologies of humility’’ (Jasanoff) and answers the question with a ‘‘yes, but’’. Yes, governmental ethics regimes have incorporated features that go beyond technologies of prediction and control, but the overcoming of the technical model also bears some ambivalence that needs to be understood. The article argues that governmental ethics regimes can be understood as a form of ‘‘reflexive government’’ (Dean) in that the commitment to techno-scientific innovation is stabilized not through an elitist, technocratic exclusion of non-scientific

Working around ERPs in technological universities

Abstract: This article explores the work-arounds through which an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system is implemented within an Australian University. We argue that while resistance is signific...

Embodied Interventions—Interventions on Bodies: Experiments in Practices of Science and Technology Studies and Hemophilia Care

Abstract: Science and technology studies (STS) analyses of emerging forms of treatment often result in the detailed display of complexities and at times lead to explicit critiques of particular healthcare practices. Simultaneously, there seems to be an increasing interest in exploring more experimental engagements by STS researchers in the proactive construction of such practices. In this article, I explore the relevance of experimental interventions in health care practices for both these care practices and for issues of the normativity of STS research. By analyzing my involvement in changes in the practice of hemophilia home treatment, I indicate how this care practice was reconfigured, partly by drawing on STS insights on the issue of compliance. I also claim that experimenting with forms of "artful contamination" allow STS researchers to do normativity in the practices they engage with. Such practices of interventionist STS research may be of value for refiguring debates in which constructivism has been accused of being normatively deficient. This may make interventionist STS research a fruitfully risky business.

Knowing How to Sleepwalk: Placing Expert Evidence in the Midst of an English Jury Trial

Abstract: In this case study I argue that experts, to gain relevance in a jury trial, need to fit into a manifold division of knowing. They do so by borrowing and sharing diverse knowledges. These exchanges place the modest expert testimony right into an authoritative and powerful decision-making apparatus. This argument derives from an ethnographic study of a "sleepwalking defense." The division of knowing embraces the certified facts, the instructed case, the competing expertise, and the common sense. As a conclusion, I identify the experts’ twofold relevance. Experts perform the case as undecided and decidable. They provide exclusive knowledge and affirm a set of other knowledges. By "knowing" and "not knowing," the experts perform individual modesty and systemic immodesty by the same token.

Gender Differences in Support for Scientific Involvement in U.S. Environmental Policy

Abstract: Many studies have documented gender differences in attitudes toward and experiences with science. Compared to men, for example, women are less likely to study science and to pursue careers in science-related fields. Given these findings, should we expect gender differences in support for scientific involvement in U.S. environmental policy? This study empirically examines the relationship of gender to attitudes toward science and preferred roles of scientists in environmental policy among various environmental policy participants. Data collected in 2006 and 2007 from national surveys of four different groups involved in environmental policy and management suggest that social context, including education and occupation, shapes the way that gender matters. Specifically, we find that gender is less important among scientists and managers than among interest groups and the general population regarding attitudes toward science and views about preferred roles of scientists in environmental decision making.

In Memoriam: Susan Leigh Star (1954-2010)

Abstract: Corresponding Author: Adele E. Clarke, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Box 0612 UC San Francisco, Laurel Heights Campus, 3333 California Street, Suite 455, San Francisco, CA 94143-0612 Email: Adele.Clarke@ucsf.edu Science, Technology, & Human Values 35(5) 581-600 a The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0162243910378096 http://sthv.sagepub.com

In Search of the Mommy Gene: Truth and Consequences in Behavioral Genetics:

Abstract: Behavioral genetics has as its goal the discovery of genes that play a significant causal role in complex phenotypes that are socially relevant such a parenting, aggression, psychiatric disorders, intelligence, and even race. In this article, I present the stories of the discoveries of three such important phenotypes: maternal nurturing behavior and the c-fosB gene; intelligence and phenylketonuria (PKU); and pair-bonding and monogamy (vasopressin and oxytocin) and show that the reality is considerably more complex than often portrayed. These accounts also lay bare some fundamental misconceptions of this field in which genes hold a privileged place and inherently subjective phenomena are mistakenly objectified.