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.

A Field of Its Own

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
University Administrators ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Graduate Degrees ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Innovative Work

This chapter presents science and technology studies (STS) as a new island in a preexisting disciplinary archipelago. As a field, STS combines two strands of work dealing, respectively, with the nature and practices of science and technology (S&T) and the relationships between science, technology, and society. As such, STS research focuses on distinctive objects of inquiry and employs novel discourses and methods. The field confronts three significant barriers to achieving greater intellectual coherence, and institutional recognition. First, it must persuade skeptical scientists and university administrators of the need for a critical perspective on S&T. Second, it must demonstrate that traditional disciplines do not adequately analyze S&T. Third, it has to overcome STS scholars’ reluctance to create intellectual boundaries and membership criteria that appear to exclude innovative work. A generation of scholars with graduate degrees in STS are helping to meet these challenges.

Thickening Transregionalism: Historical Formations of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Thought Style ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article offers an overview of science and technology studies (STS) in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on historical formations of science, technology, and medicine in the region, loosely defined, though research using social science approaches comes within its scope. I ask whether we are fashioning an “autonomous” history of science in Southeast Asia—and whether this would be enough. Perhaps we need to explore further “Southeast Asia as method,” a thought style heralded here though remaining, I hope, productively ambiguous. This review contributes primarily to the development of postcolonial intellectual history in Southeast Asia and secondarily to our understanding of the globalization and embedding of science, technology, and medicine.

scholarly journals The Floating Ampersand: STS Past and STS to Come

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come

STS has become a discipline in the sense that it offers new ways to read and make sense of the world. It remains an amalgam, however, of two linked yet separate lines of inquiry, both abbreviated as STS. Science and technology studies refers to the investigation of S&T as social institutions; science, technology and society, by contrast, analyzes the external relations of S&T with other institutions, such as law or politics. This essay reflects on the implications of this ambiguity for institutionalizing STS as a field of its own, drawing on the author’s experiences in building STS at two universities.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of information society conceptualizations from an STS point of view

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Aibar
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social

Science and Technology Studies (STS) have developed over the last four decades very rich and deep analysis of the interaction between science, technology and society. This paper uses some STS theoretical and methodological insights and findings to identify persistent misconceptions in the specific literature on ICTs and society. Technological deterministic views, the taken-for-granted image of technological designs, the prospective character of many studies that focus mainly on potential effects, a simplistic view of uses and users, and an uncritical distinction between the technical and the social, are discussed as some of the most remarkable theoretical flaws in the field.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of information society conceptualizations from an STS point of view

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182
Author(s):  
Eduard Aibar
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Social

Science and Technology Studies (STS) have developed over the last four decades very rich and deep analysis of the interaction between science, technology and society. This paper uses some STS theoretical and methodological insights and findings to identify persistent misconceptions in the specific literature on ICTs and society. Technological deterministic views, the taken-for-granted image of technological designs, the prospective character of many studies that focus mainly on potential effects, a simplistic view of uses and users, and an uncritical distinction between the technical and the social, are discussed as some of the most remarkable theoretical flaws in the field.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document