Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead

Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead PDF Author: B. Joerges
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401001855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This volume brings together contributions that resemble spotlights thrown on the past twenty-five years of science and technology studies. It covers a broad range: history of science; science and politics; science and contemporary democracy; science and the public; science and the constitution; science and metaphors; and science and modernity and provides a critical overview of how the field of science and technology studies has emerged and developed.

Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead

Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead PDF Author: B. Joerges
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401001855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
This volume brings together contributions that resemble spotlights thrown on the past twenty-five years of science and technology studies. It covers a broad range: history of science; science and politics; science and contemporary democracy; science and the public; science and the constitution; science and metaphors; and science and modernity and provides a critical overview of how the field of science and technology studies has emerged and developed.

Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics in the Social Sciences

Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics in the Social Sciences PDF Author: Tuija Takala
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 180088169X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Covering a vast array of disciplines, this prescient Encyclopedia analyzes the many roles that applied ethics plays in the social sciences. Entries scrutinize the various manifestations of ethics across a range of disciplines and subdisciplines such as animal studies, criminology, and global health.

Handbook on Science and Public Policy

Handbook on Science and Public Policy PDF Author: Dagmar Simon
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1784715948
Category : SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
This Handbook assembles state-of-the-art insights into the co-evolutionary and precarious relations between science and public policy. Beyond this, it also offers a fresh outlook on emerging challenges for science (including technology and innovation) in changing societies, and related policy requirements, as well as the challenges for public policy in view of science-driven economic, societal, and cultural changes. In short, this book deals with science as a policy-triggered project as well as public policy as a science-driven venture.

Designs on Nature

Designs on Nature PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837316
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Biology and politics have converged today across much of the industrialized world. Debates about genetically modified organisms, cloning, stem cells, animal patenting, and new reproductive technologies crowd media headlines and policy agendas. Less noticed, but no less important, are the rifts that have appeared among leading Western nations about the right way to govern innovation in genetics and biotechnology. These significant differences in law and policy, and in ethical analysis, may in a globalizing world act as obstacles to free trade, scientific inquiry, and shared understandings of human dignity. In this magisterial look at some twenty-five years of scientific and social development, Sheila Jasanoff compares the politics and policy of the life sciences in Britain, Germany, the United States, and in the European Union as a whole. She shows how public and private actors in each setting evaluated new manifestations of biotechnology and tried to reassure themselves about their safety. Three main themes emerge. First, core concepts of democratic theory, such as citizenship, deliberation, and accountability, cannot be understood satisfactorily without taking on board the politics of science and technology. Second, in all three countries, policies for the life sciences have been incorporated into "nation-building" projects that seek to reimagine what the nation stands for. Third, political culture influences democratic politics, and it works through the institutionalized ways in which citizens understand and evaluate public knowledge. These three aspects of contemporary politics, Jasanoff argues, help account not only for policy divergences but also for the perceived legitimacy of state actions.

Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour PDF Author: Anders Blok
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136855327
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
French sociologist and philosopher, Bruno Latour, is one of the most significant and creative thinkers of the last decades. Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World is the first comprehensive and accessible English-language introduction to this multi-faceted work. The book focuses on core Latourian themes: • contribution to science studies (STS – Science, Technology & Society) • philosophical approach to the rise and fall of modernity • innovative thoughts on politics, nature, and ecology • contribution to the branch of sociology known as ANT – Actor-Network Theory. With ANT, Latour has pioneered an approach to socio-cultural analysis built on the notion that social life arises in complex networks of actants – people, things, ideas, norms, technologies, and so on – influencing each other in dynamic ways. This book explores how Latour helps us make sense of the changing interrelations of science, technology, society, nature, and politics beyond modernity.

The Local Configuration of New Research Fields

The Local Configuration of New Research Fields PDF Author: Martina Merz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319226835
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This new Yearbook addresses the question of how policy, place, and organization are made to matter for a new research field to emerge. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and organizational researchers on science and technology, the volume answers this question by offering in-depth case studies and comparative perspectives on multiple research fields in their nascent stage, including molecular biology and materials science, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. The Yearbook brings to bear the lessons of constructivist ethnography and the “practice turn” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) more broadly on the qualitative, comparative, and critical inquiry of new research fields. In doing so, it offers unprecedented insights into the complex interplay of national research policies, regional clusters, particular research institutions, and novel research practices in and for any emerging field of (techno-)science. It systematically investigates national and regional differences, including the variable mobilization of such differences, and probes them for organizational topicality and policy relevance.

European Interests

European Interests PDF Author: Guido Houben
Publisher: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
The future of the EU's Foreign and Security Policy (FSP) and its interaction with the world's dominant power, the United States of America lies at the heart of this book. The eight authors, experienced in government and international organizations, tackle the development of the Union's hard and soft power. Having met as a group over the course of a year at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government during the months before and after the invasion of Iraq, they coherently address the most pressing FSP issues. These range from chapters on the why and how of EU-FSP over the classic areas diplomacy, defense and development to economic and science & technology policies. Under the auspices of Stanley Hoffmann and in close collaboration with distinguished professors from Harvard University, the authors have determined the interests of the EU as a single political body, laid out a clear vision for the year 2020, and established policy recommendations. Experienced professionals such as former German Minister of Defense, Rudolf Scharping to former UN Undersecretary Karl-Th. Paschke have added to the practical quality of the chapters with their reviews.

Public Understanding of Science

Public Understanding of Science PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic journals
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
A forum for the emerging interdisciplinary field of public understanding of science, this journal encourages open debate of contrasting and even conflicting viewpoints on all aspects of the interrelationships between science and the public.

Lithics in the Scandinavian Late Bronze Age

Lithics in the Scandinavian Late Bronze Age PDF Author: Anders Högberg
Publisher: BAR International Series
ISBN:
Category : Bronze age
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Some time just after 900 BC a tool was introduced with a shaft of wood and a knife blade of flint. It was manufactured and used for cutting and reaping over a large geographical area. It was included in the ritual depositions of the age. Over time the original intention of making knife blades for a composite tool was renegotiated. The tool became part of a dynamic between old and new, for example, through manufacturing sites, use, and deposits. This original study discusses how interaction between actors and 'actants' during the Late Bronze Age in the area of modern southern Scandinavia created socio-technical networks of change and persistence. Flint technology was a palpable part of this, contributing to a technical shaping of society. At the same time, there was a social shaping of technology. By focusing on manufacturing sites and different ways of making large flint blade-knives the author emphasizes the dynamic between different claims in society, between two social groups - the institution of the transformer and the institution of the innovator. Large flint blade-knives were a point of reference to certain ideas about new technology in the form of the use of flint and iron. This was the dynamic that gradually marginalized older positions of power, and over a long time it had the effect of shaping society in a new way. The author's findings show that this was not to do with a direct change between 'Bronze Age' and 'Iron Age' there was something else in between. This 'something else' has not been formulated before and the results demonstrate how intentions and consequences do not necessarily follow straight lines. Nevertheless, a consequence was - just before 500 BC - that society changed: iron attained widespread distribution and the large flint blade-knives disappeared.

How Social Science Got Better

How Social Science Got Better PDF Author: Matt Grossmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197518990
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.