scholarly journals Challenging Power, Constructing Boundaries, and Confronting Anxieties: Michael Kattirtzi Talks with Andrew Stirling

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Michael Kattirtzi ◽  
Andrew Stirling
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Epistemic Pluralism

In this interview, Andy Stirling talks to Michael Kattirtzi about what initially drew him to Science and Technology Studies, his account of the impact of the Science Wars on the field, and why it matters that STS researchers do not shy away from challenging incumbents. Through a series of thoughtful reflections on his encounters with STS researchers, Stirling arrives at the conclusion that we should not expect the field to reconcile tensions that are more deeply rooted in society. Nonetheless, he hopes that in the future STS researchers will be more open and admitting of a plurality of epistemic perspectives within the field and avoid overly constraining it––all the while as he continues to demonstrate the value of appreciating such epistemic pluralism to policy-makers and stakeholders.  A reflection by Michael Kattirtzi follows the interview.

scholarly journals Introduction: Talking STS

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadhila Mazanderani ◽  
Isabel Fletcher ◽  
Pablo Schyfter
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Talking STS is a collection of interviews and accompanying reflections on the origins, the present and the future of the field referred to as Science and Technology Studies or Science, Technology and Society (STS). The volume assembles the thoughts and recollections of some of the leading figures in the making of this field. The occasion for producing the collection has been the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of Edinburgh’s Science Studies Unit (SSU). The Unit’s place in the history of STS is consequently a recurring theme of the volume. However, the interviews assembled here have a broader purpose – to present interviewees’ situated and idiosyncratic experiences and perspectives on STS, going beyond the contributions made to it by any one individual, department or institution. Both individually and collectively, these conversations provide autobiographically informed insights on STS. Together with the reflections, they prompt further discussion, reflection and questioning about this constantly evolving field.

scholarly journals China, India, and the social construction of technology in international society: The English School meets Science and Technology Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 713-731
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Stroikos
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Politics Of Technology ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in how International Relations theory can contribute to our understanding of the impact of technology on global politics, underpinned mainly by an engagement with Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which international society shapes technology. Building on sociological and historical studies of science and technology, this article outlines one way through which international society has constituted technology by developing a synthetic account of the emergence of technological advancement as a ‘standard of civilisation’ in the nineteenth century that differentiated the ‘society of civilised states’ from non-European societies, with a particular focus on China and India. In doing so, this article also highlights how this process has had a powerful and enduring influence on Chinese and Indian conceptions about science and technology. Thus, by shifting the focus from how technology shapes global politics to how international society shapes technology, this article provides new insights into the relationship between technology, power, and modernity in an interdisciplinary context. It also offers a new way of thinking about the complex dynamics of today's global politics of technology.

scholarly journals Multiplanetary Imaginaries and Utopia

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Tutton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
The Future

The prospect of human societies being made anew on other planets is a powerful recurring theme in popular culture and speculative technoscience. I explore what Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers to analyzing how the future is made and contested in present-day endeavors to establish humans as multiplanetary subjects. I focus on the case of Mars One—an initiative that aims to establish a human settlement on Mars in the 2020s—and discuss interviews undertaken with some of the individuals who have volunteered to be the first humans to live on Mars, drawing on STS work on futures and sociotechnical imaginaries and scholarly discussions of utopia. Seeing themselves as part of a project that would start to “establish what it means to live on another planet,” I discuss how interviewees talked about how sociotechnical relations could be remade in the future, both on Earth and on Mars, through the pursuit of this technoscientific project. I conclude that this project is an expression of a multiplanetary imaginary of human beings no longer subject to Earth—but, through sociotechnical inventiveness, able to live on other planets.

SSK at Large

Entanglements ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Tosoni ◽  
Trevor Pinch
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Flip Flop ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Harry Collins

The chapter addresses the popularization of the main acquisitions of social constructionist sociology in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), done by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch in the volumes of their Golem trilogy, dedicated respectively to science, technology and medicine. The polemical target of the trilogy, the "flip-flop" understanding of science, technology and medicine, that induces the public to oscillate from an unconditioned trust in scientist, engineers and medics as god-like figures, to a complete skepticism and distrust and vice versa. The chapter also addressed the reasons behind the harsh confrontations between constructionist sociologists of science and scientists occurred in the '90s, known as "Science Wars", and some events connected to the confrontations, like the famous hoax by Alan Sokal.

scholarly journals Apropå Fuglesang - Världsbilder och rekryteringen till naturvetenskapliga/tekniska utbildningar

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Lena Hansson ◽  
Britt Lindahl
Keyword(s):  
Space Flight ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Space Flights ◽  
The Future

In connection to the astronaut Christer Fuglesang’s space flight, different stakeholders have expressed a hope that this event will increase the interest among youths for science and technology studies. The modernistic and technique positive discourse that is used is however not unproblematic in this situation. In the article this is exemplified with students’ views concerning the possibility that humans in the future will be able to live on other planets. This is something that, during an interview, was mentioned by Fuglesang as the main reason for space flights.

scholarly journals User Representations as a Design Resource

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-45
Author(s):  
Kaisa Savolainen ◽  
Sampsa Hyysalo
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Early Research ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Centred Design

The study of how the understanding of usages and users is achieved and turned into the characteristics of products comprises ‘the sociology of user representation’ in Science and Technology Studies. Whilst the early research on the topic was foremost a critique of designers’ imposition of theirimagination and preferences on prospective users, research has since discovered a richer research landscape in accomplishing the difficult task of anticipating the future contexts and identities of users. Our paper continues this line of work by examining a situation where first-hand access to users is blocked from human-centred design-oriented designers. Constructing an array of complementary user representations helps them to bridge the previously accumulated knowledge on users in their trade to the envisioned technology. The complementarities in the handful of key user segment representations and what is represented in their explicated form allowed the design team to make reasoned and accountable design decisions.

scholarly journals Making News, Making the Economy: Technological Changes and Financial Pressures in Brazil

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás Undurraga
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Media Convergence ◽  
Time Service ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Financial Pressure ◽  
Journalistic Field ◽  
The Impact

Media convergence and growing financial pressure on the journalistic field have triggered significant changes in newsmaking cultures across the world. This article examines the challenges of media convergence in the newsroom of Valor Econômico, the main economic newspaper in Brazil. In particular, it explores how the introduction in 2013 of Valor Pro, a real time news service oriented to the financial market, changed newsmaking practices at Valor Econômico. The introduction of Valor Pro meant that journalists from the whole newsroom had to report news simultaneously for three platforms: the real time service, the online website and the printed paper. This shift not only intensified journalists’ workloads and altered the manufacture of news, but also increased financial pressure on the paper’s agenda. I argue that this shift – from producing news for the public towards producing news for the market – cannot be explained solely with reference to traditional political economic factors such as ideological decisions at editorial level and the structural properties of the Brazilian media sphere. Instead, drawing on resources from cultural sociology and from science and technology studies, I provide a richer explanation that acknowledges the impact of technological innovation, the shifting nature of news values, and the agency of journalists themselves. This article elaborates on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Valor Econômico’s newsroom in São Paulo between 2013 and 2015 and contributes to the literature on cultural sociology, media studies and science and technology studies.

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