- To provide a workshop model that can be repeated, evolve in response to evaluations, and adapted by participants.
Spring 2010 Workshop
" Where social theory meets critical engagement with the production of scientific knowledge "
The topic and the processes of this workshop are designed to attract a diverse group of scientists, science educators, and scholars from the various areas of science and technology studies (STS) interested in developing social theory and engaging critically in the negotiated, contested production of scientific knowledge. With an eye to training "interdisciplinarians" the workshop will include graduate students as well as more experienced scholars.Applicants should: a) submit as soon as possible [deadline extended] a written account of your innovations (or planned innovations) in research, teaching, and wider outreach in response to the thought-piece below; b) be prepared to lead an activity during the workshop that helps other participants develop knowledge, skills, and interest in these innovations. (The organizer will consult with participants in February or March to help plan such activities.)
Both the products and the processes of the workshop will be documented on the web. The pre-submitted innovations in research, teaching, and wider outreach, supplemented by a record of the accompanying activities at the workshop made by a participant-evaluator, will be assembled for a special edition of a journal.
There is no charge for the workshop*, but applicants are expected to make every effort to secure support for travel to Woods Hole and accommodation. Limited funds are available to support participants who are unable to find others sources of funding, with priority to students and independent scholars. (*A deposit will be required to secure your accommodation.)
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Thought-piece, 4 August '09: No entry for "social theory" can be found in the index of the latest Handbook of Science and Technology Studies; the classical "isms" and theorists of society barely register either. Is it that the social order that is co-constructed with scientific knowledge is too contingent and transitory to be theorised? Or that the category "social" needs to be abandoned if we are to move beyond unproductive society/nature dualisms and build freer associations with non-human actants? Or that "theory" connotes explanation and causality, which are problematic from a performative, mangling perspective?
Perhaps. Yet are there really no traces we can discern of the training some older STSers have received in sociology, anthropology, and political science when the "isms" were debated and social theorists were read? Is no one taking stock of unfulfilled STS agendas about bringing in social structure, such as the third stage of the empirical program of relativism (i.e., examining limits on the 'potentially endless debate about interpretation' in relation to the wider social and political structure; Collins, Soc. Stud. Sci., 1981)?
Conversely, where do concerns about science and technology enter in areas of newer areas of social theory (or some replacement term) such as: Postmodernism and poststructuralism; Postphenomenology and other inquiries into materiality; Identity and ethical imaginaries; Ethics and complexity; Language and practice; and Psychological bases for social behavior?
All these questions could elicit lively debate, but this workshop's goal is not to address directly (and over-ambitiously) the range of positions STSers could take on them. Instead, the idea is to explore the particular pockets in which participants practice, to elicit and build on our diverse and partial experiences in developing or applying some angle of social theory to help them engage critically in the negotiated, contested production of scientific knowledge in a wide range of arenas-labs and fieldsites, classrooms, training programs, and textbooks, policy formation and contestations, the media and public conversations.
Concerning critical engagement, one of the forefathers of STS said, the "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." The question then-one Marx spent the next forty years of his life grappling with-is what mode of interpretation should guide people in effecting change? What is needed to effect change and how to make it needed? Expressed in another way: the workshop participants are expected to be concerned both with the conceptualisation of the structure (or structuredness) of the social context of scientific and technological developments and with the shaping of human agency in the ongoing restructuring of that context.
Location: Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole MA, USA
Dates (to be confirmed) April 17 (Sat, 9am)-20 (Tues, 2pm), 2010 (arriving Friday evening)
Organizer & Lead Facilitator: Peter J. Taylor, University of Massachusetts Boston, Programs in Science, Technology and Values and Critical and Creative Thinking.
(applications details & arrangements)
Sections to follow (or to be added in due course) and associated links
(Much of the working, "in progress" material is developed on a wiki, and only the final products and reports are posted here. Thus some of these links are placeholders for material not yet available.)-
Adjustments relative to previous workshops
Profiles of participants and their publications
Program with links to associated materials
Photos and other images
New educational or outreach activities that participants submit to the expanding compilation of Online Resources for Science-in-Society Education and Outreach
Evaluations by participants
Adjustments relative to previous workshops
List of participants, short profiles, and webpages
Atsushi AkeraRensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Interests-History of technology; sustainability; engineering education; social theory; structuration theory; theories of practice; American pragmatism; language and semiotics (but an amateur!); dynamic visualizations of semiotic relations & human memory/perception/cognition; ecological view of knowledge.
Author of Calculating a Natural World (MIT press, 2006), on the history of early computer development projects and Cold War research; Current book project on history of engineering education reform. (Visualization demos)
Elisabeth Abergel
York University, International Studies/Département d'études internationales
Interests include developing courses on the role of science in international politics, the various trajectories of scientific knowledge globally, and its role in political and social transformation that go beyond International Relations to include much more in terms of cultural discourse, environmental issues, development, economics, international law and human rights, peace and security, postcolonial studies and feminist approaches.
Andrea Feldpausch-Parker
Texas A&M University, Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
Feedback loop between the production of scientific knowledge, communication of that knowledge, policy implementation, and public responses to the ensuing policy
Raúl García Barrios
National Autonomous University of México, Cuernavaca
Community activist and researcher around watershed restoration and landfill issues
Wendy Hamblet
Philosophy, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Counseling, Philosophical Counseling, Workplace Ethics training and development, conflict transformation and community building.
My interest in thinking about Science in Society issues comes from a fundamental challenge facing all (and especially higher education) teachers. I wonder: "What is the best form of paideia for fostering socially responsible citizenship appropriate to a democratic society?"
Emma MacKenzie
Montana Tech.
Using semiotics and Actor Network Theory to explore the material-semiotic relationships of the different stakeholder communities around the reintroduction of wolves, which include ranchers, environmentalists, government agencies and agents, wildlife biologists, hunters, wolves, elk, the environment, the economy, and other actants.
João Arriscado Nunes
Coimbra, Portugal
Sociologist of biomedicine. Runs training courses for environmental protection staff, activists and members of the Civil Protection Agency, as well as in initiatives in science education and the development of participatory procedures in the fields of assessment of controversial knowledge and technology, health and environment
Rita Serra
Coimbra, Portugal
Biotechnology Ph.D. now working on public knowledge and communication on health in Portugal and other projects in the Center for Social Science at Coimbra.
Erich Schienke
Penn State
Researches how environmental knowledge is produced, prioritized, and communicated between scientists, policy makers, and the public. Geopolitically, interest in these questions remains situated in contemporary China.
Peter Taylor (organizer)
UMass Boston
Having worked for many years on ecology and environmental research (Unruly Complexity, U. Chicago 2005), I am now taking my interests in heterogeneous complexities in new directions through engagement with various social epidemiological approaches that address the intersections of environment, health, and development.
wiki version of program
Last update 5 November 2010