Showing papers in "Science, Technology, & Human Values in 2012"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that postcolonial science studies can do more than expand answers to questions already posed; it can generate different questions and different ways of looking at the world.
Abstract: The authors suggest that postcolonial science studies can do more than expand answers to questions already posed; it can generate different questions and different ways of looking at the world. To illustrate, the authors draw on existing histories and anthropologies and critical theories of colonial and postcolonial technoscience. To move forward together, rather than remaining mired in regretful contemplation of past biases, the authors offer some analytical and practical suggestions. In reading hegemonic forms of postcolonial computing, this article offers tactics for rereading, rewriting, or reimagining those scripts.
200 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Stengers' figure of the "idiot" is proposed as a device for deploying those overspills to interrogate "what we are busy doing" as social science researchers in engagement events.
Abstract: Engagement events—whether interviews, installations, or participatory encounters—can entail a range of happenings which, in one way or another, “overspill” the empirical, analytic, or political framing of those engagement events. This article looks at how we might attend to these overspills—for instance, forms of “misbehavior” on the part of lay participants—not only to provide accounts of them but also to explore ways of deploying them creatively. In particular, Stengers’ figure of the “idiot” is proposed as a device for deploying those overspills to interrogate “what we are busy doing” as social science researchers in engagement events. This interrogation is furthered by considering the proactive idiocy of “Speculative Design’s” version of the public engagement with science which seems directly to engender “overspilling.” Providing examples of speculative design prototypes and practices, the article develops an ideal typical contrast between social scientific and designerly perspectives on public engagement. It is suggested that speculative design can serve as a resource for supplementing “science and technology studies” (STS) conceptualizations of, and practices toward, public, engagement, and science.
111 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show empirically that in practice, this laboratory participation leads to paradoxical effects: successfully carrying out the experiment results in a systematic disappointment of the hope for gains in rationality typically attached to lay participation.
Abstract: An ongoing trend in technology policy has been to advocate participation. However, the author claims that lay citizens’ participation typically materializes in the form of a laboratory experiment at present. That is, lay participation as currently organized by professional participation experts under controlled conditions rarely is linked to public controversies, to the pursuit of political participation or to individual concerns. Derived from qualitative research on two citizen conferences, the author shows empirically that in practice, this laboratory participation leads to paradoxical effects: successfully carrying out the experiment results in a systematic disappointment of the hope for gains in rationality typically attached to lay participation. Finally, the author relates this result to sociological debates about new modes of knowledge production. Under such a perspective, the author sees a paradoxical development: while society at large is becoming a laboratory in which knowledge is produced, part...
107 citations
TL;DR: The concept of ethical research holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a va... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The concept of “ethical research” holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a va...
88 citations
TL;DR: Actor-network theory has challenged the status of "context" as an explanatory resource as discussed by the authors, arguing that context can be used as a kind of "transformation of social worlds" or "enactments".
Abstract: Since the early 1980s, actor-network theory has contested the status of “context” as an explanatory resource. Expressions and concepts such as “transformations of social worlds,” “enactments,” and ...
72 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take its points of departure in this irreductionist program, its source of inspirations, as well as its reworkings, and experiment with context and what they label contexting.
Abstract: What is context and how to deal with it? The context issue has been a key concern in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This is linked to the understanding that science is culture. But how? The irreductionist program from the early eighties sought to solve the problem by doing away with context altogether—for the benefit of worlds in the making. This special issue takes its points of departure in this irreductionist program, its source of inspirations, as well as its reworkings. The aim is not to solve the context problem but rather to experiment with context and what we label contexting.
67 citations
TL;DR: The sociology of science has shown that the scientific quest for truth, framed by the search for objectivity was granting objects of knowledge the form of independent and autonomous things, "data" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The sociology of science has shown that the scientific quest for truth, framed by the search for objectivity was granting objects of knowledge the form of independent and autonomous things, “data” ...
52 citations
TL;DR: Since 1989, widely circulating statistics on gay teen suicide in the United States have acted as catalysts for institutional reforms, scientific research, and the creation of an identity category for gay teenagers.
Abstract: Since 1989, widely circulating statistics on gay teen suicide in the United States have acted as catalysts for institutional reforms, scientific research, and the creation of an identity category “...
49 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the British Cattle Tracing System (CTS) is described as a context that frames and guides good farming practices to promote accountability for cattle movements and to control disease.
Abstract: The article discusses three versions of context. First, UK Government legislation, the British Cattle Tracing System (CTS), as a context that frames and guides good farming practices to promote accountability for cattle movements and to control disease. It describes how the legislative context creates particular constructions of farmers, cows, and good and bad farming practices. Second, the article creates context as the local farm-based practices of cattle movement and monitoring. Differences and similarities between the legislative requirements and the farm-based practices are discussed. The farming practices are primarily practices of responsibility and care that are embodied, relational, collective, and responsive. The article draws upon feminist insights into responsibility and accountability that accountability is mundane practices of touch, regard, looking back, and becoming with. Thereby, the article creates a third context in which local farming practices, legislation, and feminism meet and interact with one another. Within this ‘‘meta-context’’ of interferences between contexts, accountability is revisioned as the very condition of farm-based practices of care and responsibility. At the same time, the article revisions context as emergent in interferences and enacts alternative versions of farmers, cows, and good and bad practices.
49 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that DNA databases are spaces of convergence for computing and biology that change in form, meaning, and function from the 1960s to the 2000s, and both the view of a natural marriage and of a digital shaping of biology are qualified.
Abstract: This article proposes a new bi-directional way of understanding the convergence of biology and computing. It argues for a reciprocal interaction in which biology and computing have shaped and are c...
47 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a way to investigate design practices that allow a focus on the movements and the transformations that lie behind designed products, which usually lose contact with the real world.
Abstract: The aim of this work is to provide a way to investigate design practices that allows a focus on the movements and the transformations that lie behind designed products, which usually lose contact w...
TL;DR: In States of Knowledge (2004), Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not...
Abstract: In States of Knowledge (2004), Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the rationales of scientists and engineers for distributing moral responsibilities related to technology development were explored, and it was found that these deliberative processes could best be interpreted in terms of an interplay between different layers of morality.
Abstract: The present article explores the rationales of scientists and engineers for distributing moral responsibilities related technology development. On the basis of a qualitative case study, it was investigated how the actors within a research network distribute responsibilities for these issues. Rawls’ Wide Reflective Equilibrium model was used as a descriptive framework. This study indicates that there is a correlation between the actors’ ethics position and their responsibility rationale. When discussing how to address ethical issues or how to distribute the responsibility for addressing them, actors with similar normative background theories referred to the same type of normative arguments. It was found that these deliberative processes could best be interpreted in terms of an interplay between different layers of morality. The case suggests that people seek coherence between these layers rather than work through them one-directionally. By distinguishing between rationales for distributing responsibilities...
TL;DR: Context is a pivotal concept for social scientists in their attempt to weave singularities or universals to moral codes and political orders as mentioned in this paper. But in this, social scientists might be neglecting context.
Abstract: Context is a pivotal concept for social scientists in their attempt to weave singularities or universals to moral codes and political orders. However, in this, social scientists might be neglecting...
TL;DR: This paper examined the publication records of an interdisciplinary sample of university scientists and found evidence of both careeraging and cohort-succession processes, although cohort differences are much more pronounced than individual changes.
Abstract: Coauthored scholarship increased substantially across fields of science during the twentieth century, but it is unclear whether this growth reflects change in the behavior of individual scientists (i.e., career aging) or publishing differences between cohorts of researchers (i.e., cohort succession). I examine the publication records of an interdisciplinary sample of university scientists and find evidence of both career-aging and cohort-succession processes, although cohort differences are much more pronounced than individual changes. Specifically, scientists in this sample increased the percentage of their articles with coauthors by 0.63 percentage points annually. However, compared to those who received their PhDs between 1953 and 1962, scientists who entered the workforce between 1983 and 1991 coauthored approximately one third more of their early career articles (35.63 percentage points). Additionally, career-aging processes in coauthorship varied by PhD cohort, with earlier trained researchers incre...
TL;DR: The authors explores how laboratory studies and observational methods have been tied up together in the science and technology studies (STS) project of making scientific practice visible, contrasting powerful rhetorics of witnessing and revelation in some significant STS texts with the negotiated and partial ways in which observing science work is done in social science practice.
Abstract: In science studies the laboratory has been positioned as a privileged place for understanding scientific practice. Laboratory studies foregrounded local spaces of knowledge production in the natural sciences, and in doing so made the laboratory key to social science epistemologies. This article explores how laboratory studies and observational methods have been tied up together in the science and technology studies (STS) project of making scientific practice visible. The author contrasts powerful rhetorics of witnessing and revelation in some significant STS texts with the negotiated and partial ways in which observing science work is done in social science practice. Drawing on empirical material generated with bioscientists and social scientists, the article explores how researchers may resist the observational gaze and mark aspects of knowledge work as private and solitary. The author concludes by arguing that epistemologies of vision point to some unsettling parallels between the study of knowledge-mak...
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that neoliberal political ideology has redefined the regulatory state to have greater convergence of interests and goals with the pharmaceutical industry than previously, particularly in the US.
Abstract: It is argued that neoliberal political ideology has redefined the regulatory state to have greater convergence of interests and goals with the pharmaceutical industry than previously, particularly ...
TL;DR: This study suggests that the remarkable diffusion of PGD/PGS in Spain may be largely due to the interaction between the growing momentum enjoyed by embryonic stem cell research and a vibrant expansion of IVF business along the Mediterranean coast.
Abstract: In the last decade, preimplantation genetic testing (preimplantation genetic diagnosis [PGD] and preimplantation genetic screening [PGS]) have become widely used and in 2005 constituted 5 percent of all in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles performed in Europe Their diffusion, however, is not homogenous; while in some countries they are prohibited and in others hardly implemented, Spain performs 33 percent of all the PGD/PGS While policy guidelines and mainstream bioethics address PGD from a patient choice perspective, disability studies insist on PGD’s potentiality for discrimination Alternatively, other authors have explored PGD/PGS from the perspective of geneticization but little work has been done on how PGD/PGS are framed by the members of national regulatory bodies Combining the analysis of juridical documents with semistructured interviews with members of the Spanish National Assisted Reproduction Committee (CNRHA), this study suggests that the remarkable diffusion of PGD/PGS in Spain may be lar
TL;DR: In this paper, the analysis of research assessment in a non-Anglobal setting is discussed, and the authors show how the analysis can be different from the analysis in a global environment.
Abstract: Science policies and science studies largely share an understanding of scientific knowledge and objects as immutable mobiles. This article shows how the analysis of research assessment in a non-Ang...
TL;DR: The interventionist turn in science and technology studies (STS) increasingly involves researchers with practices of technology development and thus entails the need for appropriate methodologies as discussed by the authors, which is the case in this paper.
Abstract: The interventionist turn in science and technology studies (STS) increasingly involves researchers with practices of technology development and thus entails the need for appropriate methodologies. ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design, to do justice to gender in design, which foregrounds ethics in the design process.
Abstract: Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is that it does not engage with the emergent effects of design. The authors explore this critique with the help of two vignettes taken from their design research. In this article they ask: How to design for gender if gender and design are emergent? The authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design and propose a new approach to doing justice to gender in design. This perspective foregrounds ethics in the design process, in particular the accountability of technology designers.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that to depict the world is to assemble contexts and to hold them together in a mode that may be descriptive, explanatory, or predictive, and they explore how contexts are assembled in a series of different descriptive and explanatory narratives in epidemiology, policy, critical social science, and (feminist) social studies of science.
Abstract: This article asks how contexts are made in science as well as in social science, and how the making of contexts relates to political agency and intervention. To explore these issues, it traces contexting for foot-and-mouth disease and the strategies used to control the epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001. It argues that to depict the world is to assemble contexts and to hold them together in a mode that may be descriptive, explanatory, or predictive. In developing this argument, it explores how contexts are assembled in a series of different descriptive and explanatory narratives in epidemiology, policy, critical social science, and (feminist) social studies of science.
TL;DR: In this article, a special section brought together three strands of expertise: Science and Technology Studies (STS), Gender Studies and computing, focusing on gender analysis and feminist design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Abstract: By focusing on gender analysis and feminist design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), this special section brings together three strands of expertise: Science and Technology Studies (STS), Gender Studies and computing. 1 A commonality among these three disciplines is a shared interest in interventions to improve the world we live in. Nevertheless, particularly Gender Studies and computing seem difficult to combine, partly because of their different epistemologies. Whereas deconstructivism, the challenging of categories and dichotomies, is an important target of many Gender Studies (and STS) researchers, most ICT researchers have a positivist stance toward science (Forsythe 2001; Weber 2004) as ICT developers need clear categories and choices to construct ICTs (Maass et al. 2007, 23). The presentations at the "Gender & ICT Symposium 2009" in Bremen, Germany, from which the articles of this special section originate, showed that STS provides theoretical concepts, tools, and theories that may help bridge this gap.
TL;DR: In this article, the role of dedicated online biotechnology news providers in disseminating and shaping stories of technological promise within the bioeconomy is examined, and the authors examine the role that dedicated online news providers play in this field.
Abstract: In this article, the authors examine the role of dedicated online biotechnology news providers in disseminating and shaping stories of technological promise within the bioeconomy. In this field, co...
TL;DR: What happens when a randomized controlled trial encounters existing epistemic virtues is described and the impacts on ideas of authority, expertise and doctor–patient relationships found in Sri Lankan medicine are documents.
Abstract: In this article, the authors present an ethnography of biomedical knowledge production and science collaboration when they take place in developing country contexts. The authors focus on the arrival of international clinical trials to Sri Lanka and provide analysis of what was described as one of the first multisited trials in the country, a pharmaceutical company sponsored, phase 2, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial carried out between 2009 and 2010. Using interviews with those who conducted the trial and six months of participant observation at the trial hospital, the authors describe the work that goes on to perform trials according to international standards. The article describes what happens when a randomized controlled trial encounters existing epistemic virtues and documents the impacts on ideas of authority, expertise and doctor–patient relationships found in Sri Lankan medicine.
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the perspectives related to performing numerical simulations, in general, and the situations in which simulationists deal with uncertain output, in particular, and presents the principal methods of evaluation in relation to these practices and how different audiences expect different methods.
Abstract: Numerical simulations have come to be widely used in scientific work. Like experiments, simulations generate large quantities of numbers (output data) that require analysis and constant concern with uncertainty and error. How do simulationists convince themselves, and others, about the credibility of output? The present analysis reconstructs the perspectives related to performing numerical simulations, in general, and the situations in which simulationists deal with uncertain output, in particular. Starting from a distinction between idealized and realistic simulations, the paper presents the principal methods of evaluation in relation to these practices and how different audiences expect different methods. One major challenge in interpreting output data is to distinguish between “real” and “numerical” effects. Within the practice of idealized simulations, simulationists hold the underlying model accountable for results that manifest “real” effects, but because “numerical” and “real” effects cannot be dis...
TL;DR: The authors examined the articulations and tensions between performing laboratories as locales and as locations of scientific excellence across a range of heretofore underexamined online and offline sites, including group seminars and institutional web pages.
Abstract: This article notes that research policy and early laboratory studies resonate in foregrounding the laboratory as an important place and agent in producing valued research output but tend to gloss over the complex processes by which laboratories are built and sustained over time as well as the significance of non-Western histories. Drawing on multisited ethnography in laboratories located in the geopolitical East of Europe, it examines the articulations and tensions between performing laboratories as locales and as locations of scientific excellence across a range of heretofore underexamined online and offline sites, including group seminars and institutional Web pages. By drawing attention to enterprising modes of performing achievement and lab organization, the article shows how the laboratory is also a policy actor and reproduces Westward-oriented knowledge geographies. Pointing to care as a mode of ordering, it further explores different forms of material and affective labor that are obfuscated in such...
TL;DR: The authors examine science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research, and examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the United States.
Abstract: The article examines science-policy conversations mediated by social science in attempts to govern, or set up terms for, scientific research. The production of social science research accounts about science faces challenges in the domains of emerging technosciences, such as nano. Constructing notions of success and failure, participants in science actively engage in the interpretation of policy notions, such as the societal relevance of their research. Industrial engagement is one of the prominent themes both in policy renditions of governable science, and in the participants’ attempts to achieve societally relevant research, often oriented into the future. How do we, as researchers, go about collecting, recording, and analyzing such future stories? I examine a series of recent interviews conducted in a number of US universities, and in particular at a university campus on the West Coast of the United States. The research engages participants through interviews, which can be understood as occasions for te...
TL;DR: Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is a rapidly emerging, new area of knowledge and policy that is coevolving with political negotiations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is a rapidly emerging, new area of knowledge and policy that is coevolving with political negotiations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the question of how to identify relevant contexts for understanding a work of natural history, in this case The First Natural History of N. America, and propose a method to find relevant contexts in the book.
Abstract: How are contexts made and narrated? This article addresses the question of how to identify relevant contexts for understanding a work of natural history, in this case The First Natural History of N...