Showing papers in "Science, Technology, & Human Values in 2015"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change, which aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference.
Abstract: © 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye toward the kinds of social orders such practices produce. This article focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques from information technology (IT) production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always, however, produce subjects. This article argues that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference.
225 citations
TL;DR: This article takes stock of recent efforts to implement controversy analysis as a digital method in the study of science, technology, and society (STS) and beyond and outlines a distinctive approach to address the problem of digital bias.
Abstract: This article takes stock of recent efforts to implement controversy analysis as a digital method in the study of science, technology, and society (STS) and beyond and outlines a distinctive approach to address the problem of digital bias. Digital media technologies exert significant influence on the enactment of controversy in online settings, and this risks undermining the substantive focus of controversy analysis conducted by digital means. To address this problem, I propose a shift in thematic focus from controversy analysis to issue mapping. The article begins by distinguishing between three broad frameworks that currently guide the development of controversy analysis as a digital method, namely, demarcationist, discursive, and empiricist. Each has been adopted in STS, but only the last one offers a digital “move beyond impartiality.” I demonstrate this approach by analyzing issues of Internet governance with the aid of the social media platform Twitter.
149 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of the Paris subway wayfinding system is presented, where Mol and Puig de la Bellacasa discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes.
Abstract: Drawing on an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of Paris subway wayfinding system, this article attempts to discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes. Though in designersʼ productions (guidelines, graphic manuals...), subway signs have been standardized and their consistency has been invested in to stabilize riders environment, they appear as fragile and transforming entities in the hands of maintenance workers. These two situated accounts are neither opposite nor paradoxical: they enact different versions of subway signs, the stabilization of which goes through the acknowledgment of their vulnerability. Practices that deal with material fragility are at the center of what authors propose, following Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, to term a care of things. Foregrounding such a care of things is a way to surface a largely overlooked dimension of material ordering and to renew how maintainability issues are generally tackled.
143 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a theoretical micro-foundation for technological determinism is proposed, in which economic and military competition constrain sociotechnical evolution to deterministic determinism.
Abstract: “Technological determinism” is predominantly employed as a critic’s term, used to dismiss certain classes of theoretical and empirical claims. Understood more productively as referring to claims that place a greater emphasis on the autonomous and social-shaping tendencies of technology, technological determinism is a valuable and prominent perspective. This article will advance our understanding of technological determinism through four contributions. First, I clarify some debates about technological determinism through an examination of the meaning of technology. Second, I parse the family of claims related to technological determinism. Third, I note that constructivist and determinist insights may each be valid given particular scope conditions, the most prominent of which is the scale of analysis. Finally, I propose a theoretical microfoundation for technological determinism—military–economic adaptationism—in which economic and military competition constrain sociotechnical evolution to deterministic pa...
128 citations
TL;DR: The bioeconomy is becoming increasingly prominent in policy and scholarly literature, but critical examination of the concept is lacking as mentioned in this paper, arguing that the bio economy should be understood as a poli...
Abstract: The bioeconomy is becoming increasingly prominent in policy and scholarly literature, but critical examination of the concept is lacking. We argue that the bioeconomy should be understood as a poli...
117 citations
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors traced back to China's first hackerspace, documenting how a collective of makers began to move away from appropriating Western concepts of openness toward promoting China as source for knowledge, creativity, and innova...
Abstract: From the rising number of hackerspaces to an increase in hardware start-ups, maker culture is envisioned as an enabler of the next industrial revolution—a source of unhindered technological innovation, a revamp of broken economies and educational systems. Drawing from long-term ethnographic research, this article examines how China’s makers demarcate Chinese manufacturing as a site of expertise in implementing this vision. China’s makers demonstrate that the future of making—if to materialize in the ways currently envisioned by writers, politicians, and scholars of the global tech industry—rests on taking seriously the technological and cultural fabrics of professional making outside familiar information technology innovation hubs like Silicon Valley: making-do, mass production, and reuse. I trace back to China’s first hackerspace, documenting how a collective of makers began to move away from appropriating Western concepts of openness toward promoting China as source for knowledge, creativity, and innova...
106 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that scientists and technologists associated with the nuclear industry are building support for small modular reactors (SMRs) by advancing five rhetorical visions imbued with elements of fantasy that cater to various social expectations.
Abstract: In this article, we argue that scientists and technologists associated with the nuclear industry are building support for small modular reactors (SMRs) by advancing five rhetorical visions imbued with elements of fantasy that cater to various social expectations. The five visions are as follows: a vision of risk-free energy would eliminate catastrophic accidents and meltdowns. A vision of indigenous self-energization would see SMRs empowering remote communities and developing economies. A vision of water security would see SMR-powered desalination plants satisfying the world’s water needs. A vision of environmental nirvana would see SMRs providing waste-free and carbon-free electricity to preserve the earth’s biosphere. A vision of space exploration would see SMRs assisting in the colonization of the moon, Mars, and possibly other worlds. These visions help create a symbolic convergence among promoters, serving to attract political and financial support, and erasing previous nuclear failures from public discourse. Moreover, underlying these visions is a technological utopian ideal world where SMRs would generate plentiful energy of multiple kinds (electricity and heat), offering the necessary means for a life of comfort for all people by meeting various needs (lighting, temperature control, drinking water, and provision of scarce minerals) and without any environmental externalities or cause for concern about accidents.
81 citations
TL;DR: In this article, three design projects in the high-tech industry were studied using three ethical traditions as lenses, namely, virtue, curiosity, creativity, and empowerment, to understand cooperation, curiosity and empowerment as virtues that people in participatory design need to cultivate.
Abstract: Contemporary design practices, such as participatory design (PD), human-centered design (HCD), and codesign, have inherent ethical qualities, which often remain implicit and unexamined. Three design projects in the high-tech industry were studied using three ethical traditions as lenses. Virtue ethics helped to understand cooperation, curiosity, creativity, and empowerment as virtues that people in PD need to cultivate, so that they can engage, for example, in mutual learning and collaborative prototyping. Ethics of alterity (Levinas and Derrida) helped to understand human-centered design as a fragile encounter between project team members and prospective users, and foregrounds the ethics in these encounters: our tendencies to "grasp the other" and to "program invention." And pragmatist ethics (Dewey) helped to understand codesign as a process of joint inquiry and imagination, involving the organization of iterative processes of problemsetting and solution finding, with moral qualities. When we open the "black boxes" of design practices, we find them filled with ethics. Moreover, it is proposed that design practitioners need to make explicit their practices’ inherent ethical qualities and that they can do that by embracing reflexivity.
62 citations
TL;DR: Drawing on the anthropological literature on inalienable possessions, property’s traditional exclusionary role is reconsidered and the possibility that the new pharmaceutical “commons” proclaimed by contemporary global health partnerships might be the precursor of future enclosures is discussed.
Abstract: In the last decade, the organization of pharmaceutical research on neglected tropical diseases has undergone transformative change. In a context of perceived “market failure,” the development of new medicines is increasingly handled by public-private partnerships. This shift toward hybrid organizational models depends on a particular form of exchange: the sharing of proprietary assets in general and of intellectual property rights in particular. This article explores the paradoxical role of private property in this new configuration of global health research and development. Rather than a tool to block potential competitors, proprietary assets function as a lever to attract others into risky collaborative ventures; instead of demarcating public and private domains, the sharing of property rights is used to increase the porosity of that boundary. This reimagination of the value of property is connected to the peculiar timescape of global health drug development, a promissory orientation to the future that takes its clearest form in the centrality of “virtual” business models and the proliferation of strategies of deferral. Drawing on the anthropological literature on inalienable possessions, we reconsider property’s traditional exclusionary role and discuss the possibility that the new pharmaceutical “commons” proclaimed by contemporary global health partnerships might be the precursor of future enclosures.
48 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that an institutional banalization of risk structures the perceptions of research staff and healthy volunteers participating in the studies and renders invisible ethical concerns about exploitation of underprivileged groups in pharmaceutical research.
Abstract: Phase I clinical trials are the first stage of testing new pharmaceuticals in humans. The majority of these studies are conducted under controlled, inpatient conditions using healthy volunteers who are paid for their participation. This article draws on an ethnographic study of six phase I clinics in the United States, including 268 semistructured interviews with research staff and healthy volunteers. In it, I argue that an institutional banalization of risk structures the perceptions of research staff and healthy volunteers participating in the studies. For research staff, there are three mechanisms by which risk becomes banal: a perceived homogeneity of studies, Fordist work regimes, and data-centric discourse. For healthy volunteers, repeat study participation contributes to the institutional banalization of risk both through the process of desensitization to risk and the formation of trust in the clinics. I argue that the institutional banalization of risk also renders invisible ethical concerns about exploitation of underprivileged groups in pharmaceutical research.
45 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of PE practitioners in realizing impacts through their interactions with policy makers in the informal "in-between" spaces of public engagement is emphasized, and a range of criteria are identified to increase the policy impact of PE.
Abstract: There is a lack of published evidence which demonstrates the impacts of public engagement (PE) in science and technology policy. This might represent the failure of PE to achieve policy impacts or indicate a lack of effective procedures for discerning the uptake by policy makers of PE-derived outputs. While efforts have been made to identify and categorize different types of policy impact, research has rarely attempted to link policy impact with PE procedures, political procedures, or the connections between them. In this article, we propose a simple conceptual model to capture this information, based on semistructured interviews with both policy makers and PE practitioners. A range of criteria are identified to increase the policy impact of PE. The role of PE practitioners in realizing impacts through their interactions with policy makers in the informal “in-between” spaces of public engagement is emphasized. However, the potential contradictions between the pursuit of policy impacts and the more traditi...
TL;DR: The works that compose this special section of Science, Technology, & Human Values draw on the idea of recuperation and suggest that such a theoretical framework is a productive tool for analyzing the life cycles of digital innovation.
Abstract: The association of hacking with computer software is gradually changing, as new walks of life are being explored with a hacker mind-set. The creation of ‘‘hackerspaces’’ or ‘‘makerspaces’’ in cities around the world has facilitated the spread of hacker practices to new fields of engagement, such as open hardware development and do-it-yourself (DIY) biology. This evolution brings with it a renewed need to analyze the significance of hacking from a historical angle and in relation to its role in industrial and institutional innovation. The works that compose this special section of Science, Technology, & Human Values draw on the idea of recuperation and suggest that such a theoretical framework is a productive tool for analyzing the life cycles of digital innovation. Three papers examine the process of recuperation following a red thread that runs through many recent works on hacking. ‘‘Recuperation from below’’ captures the essential meaning and promise of hacking, which is to use technology to serve ends other than those originally intended, starting with the computer (which is itself a product of the military–industrial complex). This evokes the emancipatory promises that are invested in reverse engineering and the repurposing of tools and
TL;DR: In 2010, the governor of Mississippi suspended the dual life sentences of two African American sisters who had been imprisoned for sixteen years on an extraordinary condition: that Gladys... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In December 2010, the governor of Mississippi suspended the dual life sentences of two African American sisters who had been imprisoned for sixteen years on an extraordinary condition: that Gladys ...
TL;DR: It is argued that recalibration enables clinicians to manage the tension between the highly optimistic and hyped visions of the future that surround novel biomedical interventions, and the exigencies of delivering those interventions in a clinical setting.
Abstract: "This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm). "
TL;DR: In this article, the clarity of criteria for tenure and promotion reported by women and men faculty in scientific fields was investigated and the results showed that women reported higher satisfaction with the criteria than men.
Abstract: This article addresses a telling issue in academic science: the clarity of criteria for tenure and promotion reported by women and men faculty in scientific fields. Data from faculty surveyed in ni...
TL;DR: The role that politics and corporate interests have had in distorting an honest inquiry into the health effects of GMO crops is explored.
Abstract: Prominent scientists and policymakers assert with confidence that there is no scientific controversy over the health effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—that genetically modified crops...
TL;DR: The relationship between the representations of brain optimization that surfaced in a study of British press coverage between 2000 and 2012 and interviews with forty-eight London residents is considered and their wider cultural significance and implications for the media–mind relationship in public engagement with neuroscience are considered.
Abstract: In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience’s role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring individuals to expend calculated effort in cultivating culturally desirable forms of selves and bodies. However, little research has investigated whether the themes that characterize media dialogue are shared by lay populations. This article considers the relationship between the representations of brain optimization that surfaced in (i) a study of British press coverage between 2000 and 2012 and (ii) interviews with forty-eight London residents. Both data sets represented the brain as a resource that could be manipulated by the individual, with optimal brain function contingent on applying self-control in one’s lifestyle choices. However, these ideas emerged more sharply in the media than in the interviews:
TL;DR: This paper argued that the concept of energy security is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary, a collective vision for a good society realized through t... and argued that energy security can be viewed as a social good.
Abstract: This article advances recent scholarship on energy security by arguing that the concept is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary, a collective vision for a “good society” realized through t...
TL;DR: This article provided empirical evidence of the social context and moral reasoning embedded within a parents' decision to participate in autism genetics research, based on in-depth interviews of parents and their families.
Abstract: This article provides empirical evidence of the social context and moral reasoning embedded within a parents’ decision to participate in autism genetics research. Based on in-depth interviews of pa...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies (STS) and Internet governance (IG) research, and propose a framework for integrating STS and IGs.
Abstract: Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies (STS) and Internet governance (IG) research. This ar...
TL;DR: In this article, a developmental perspective regarding the difference in perceptions toward privacy between young and old is presented, where the differences in privacy concerns often found between young adults and old are postulated as the result of the differences found in their privacy conceptions, which are subsequently linked to their developmental life stages.
Abstract: We present a developmental perspective regarding the difference in perceptions toward privacy between young and old. Here, we introduce the notion of privacy conceptions, that is, the specific ideas that individuals have regarding what privacy actually is. The differences in privacy concerns often found between young and old are postulated as the result of the differences found in their privacy conceptions, which are subsequently linked to their developmental life stages. The data presented have been obtained through a questionnaire distributed among adolescents, young adults, and adults and provide support for this developmental perspective. This study is one of the first to include adolescents when investigating the privacy concerns among young and old. The results show that the privacy conceptions held by adolescents indeed differ from those held by young adults and adults in keeping with the expectations as seen from a developmental perspective. In addition, the areas in which the differences in priva...
TL;DR: In this paper, observations of three lab groups of chemical scientists in academic and industry contexts illustrate variation in interactions with ethics-related policies (as defined by the respondents), finding more tension for academic science with business-based practices, such as the move toward greater accountability, than for industrial science with academic practices.
Abstract: Asymmetrical convergence is the increasing overlap between academic and industrial sectors, but with academia moving closer toward for-profit industrial norms than vice versa. Although this concept, developed by Kleinman and Vallas, is useful, processes of asymmetrical convergence in daily laboratory life are largely unexplored. Here, observations of three lab groups of chemical scientists in academic and industry contexts illustrate variation in interactions with ethics-related policies (as defined by the respondents). Findings show more tension for academic science with business-based practices, such as the move toward greater accountability, than for industrial science with academic practices. This asymmetry is evident in the process of purposive decoupling: for example, where academic scientists use humor to distance themselves from the performance of compliance in required reporting and top-down ethics training requirements. This distancing from meaningless requirements (formalism) contrasts with men...
TL;DR: The authors explored how citizen participation was methodologically devised and materially articulated in the post-disaster reconstruction of Constitucion, one of the most affected cities after the Spanish Civil War.
Abstract: This article explores how citizen participation was methodologically devised and materially articulated in the postdisaster reconstruction of Constitucion, one of the most affected cities after the...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that for scientists and science communicators to build usable knowledge for various publics, they require social and political capital, skills in boundary work, and ethical acuity.
Abstract: We argue that for scientists and science communicators to build usable knowledge for various publics, they require social and political capital, skills in boundary work, and ethical acuity. Drawing on the context of communicating seasonal climate predictions to farmers in Australia, we detail four key issues that scientists and science communicators would do well to reflect upon in order to become effective and ethical intermediaries. These issues relate to (1) the boundary work used to link science and values and thereby construct public identities, (2) emplacement, that is, the importance of situating knowledge in relation to the places with which people identify, (3) personal and organizational processes of reflexivity, and (4) the challenges of developing and maintaining the social and political capital necessary to simultaneously represent people’s identities and lifeworlds and the climate systems that affect them. Through a discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with Australian agro-climatologist...
TL;DR: The concept of strategic science translation (SST), the process of interpreting and communicating scientific evidence to an intended audience in order to advance certain goals and interests, is developed.
Abstract: In contested areas of environmental research and policy, all stakeholders are likely to claim that their position is scientifically grounded but disagree about the relevant scientific conclusions o...
TL;DR: It is argued that the FBI needs to police the DIYbio network in order to disseminate a specific notion of bioterrorist risk, while, in a counter-intuitive manner, the DIY bio network benefits from being policed by the FBI as it helps them disseminate their socio-technological vision.
Abstract: Biotechnology's promises has been widely recognized as a major enterprise accelerating the commodification of the biological. After the 9/11 events and the subsequent anthrax letters, biotechnologi...
TL;DR: The results show that environmental research’s diversity does not result only from the complexity of reality itself but is also embedded in various views of scientific advancement, future scenarios, and useful contributions to environmental governance.
Abstract: We contribute to the exploration of diversity in interdisciplinary science by elaborating the notion of epistemic commitments to address researchers’ different views of knowledge that matters and h
TL;DR: The authors argue that children's virtual worlds are fundamentally negotiated spaces in which broader aspirations and anxieties about children's relationships with play, technology, consumer culture, and the public sphere resurface as "configurations" of an imagined, ideal child player.
Abstract: Scholars from various disciplines have explored the powerful symbolic function that children occupy within public discourses of technology, but less attention has been paid to the role this plays in the social shaping of the technologies themselves. Virtual worlds present a unique site for studying how ideas about children become embedded in the artifacts adults make for them. This article argues that children’s virtual worlds are fundamentally negotiated spaces in which broader aspirations and anxieties about children’s relationships with play, technology, consumer culture, and the public sphere resurface as “configurations” of an imagined, ideal child player. The article begins with a brief overview of the children's virtual worlds phenomenon, followed by a discussion of related research on children’s play and play technologies. Findings from a case study of six commercial, game-themed virtual worlds targeted specifically to children are then presented, with a focus on how these artifacts configure thei...
TL;DR: In this paper, a multidimensional model was developed to explain disciplinary variation in scientists' accounts of emotions and link this variation to internal, external, and material aspects of the disciplines.
Abstract: Science and emotions are typically juxtaposed: science is considered rational and unattached to outcomes, whereas emotions are considered irrational and harmful to science. Ethnographic studies of the daily lives of scientists have problematized this opposition, focusing on the emotional experiences of scientists as they go about their work, but they reveal little about disciplinary differences. We build on these studies by analyzing Citation Classics: accounts about the making of influential science. We document how highly cited scientists retrospectively describe emotional aspects of their research and assess variation in these narratives across six diverse disciplines: Chemistry; Clinical Medicine; Neurobiology; Physics; Plant and Animal Science; and Psychology and Psychiatry. Using correspondence analysis, we develop a multidimensional model to explain disciplinary variation in scientists’ accounts of emotions and link this variation to internal, external, and material aspects of the disciplines. We f...
TL;DR: In recent decades, academic science has increasingly been directed toward commercializable ends by neoliberal governments as mentioned in this paper, and there is a concern that academic scientists have not bee bee enough concerned about their own interests.
Abstract: In recent decades, academic science has increasingly been directed toward commercializable ends by neoliberal governments. In this article, I outline a concern that academic scientists have not bee...