What's New in the Social Studies of Science?

Social Studies of Science is a premier peer-reviewed journal in the field of STS. Here is the table of contents + abstracts for its latest issue, Volume 37, Issue 3, 2007. Perhaps something will catch your eye:

1. Wendy Faulkner: "`Nuts and Bolts and People': Gender-Troubled Engineering Identities," 331-356

Engineers have two types of stories about what constitutes `real' engineering. In sociological terms, one is technicist, the other heterogeneous. How and where boundaries are drawn between `the technical' and `the social' in engineering identities and practices is a central concern for feminist technology studies, given the strong marking of sociality as feminine and technology as masculine. I explore these themes, drawing on ethnographic observations of building design engineering. This is a profoundly heterogeneous and networked engineering practice, which entails troubled boundary drawing and identities for the individuals involved -- evident in interactions between engineers and architects, and among engineers, especially around management and design. Many engineers cleave to a technicist engineering identity, and even those who embrace the heterogeneous reality of their actual work oscillate between or straddle, not always comfortably, the two identities. There are complex gender tensions, as well as professional tensions, at work here -- associated with distinct versions of hegemonic masculinity, with the technical/social dualism, and with what I call `gender in/authenticity' issues. I conclude that technicist engineering identities persist in part because they converge with (and perform) available masculinities, and that women's (perceived and felt) membership as `real' engineers is likely to be more fragile than men's. Engineering as a profession must foreground and celebrate the heterogeneity of engineering work. Improving the representation of women in engineering requires promoting more heterogeneous versions of gender as well as engineering.

2. Kara Swanson: "Biotech in Court: A Legal Lesson on the Unity of Science," 357-384

This paper examines the American legal system's reliance upon the unity of science through a close study of the testimony presented in a biotech patent trial, explicated through the context of the legal practice of patent drafting and the history of the American biotechnology industry. In order to decide whether a key patent related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invalid, the court needed to decide whether the inventing scientists had made intentional misrepresentations in the process of drafting and prosecuting the patent. I analyze the various images of science presented to the court by scientists testifying about how scientists report their experimental results in scientific publications. By setting this testimony about scientific authorship in the context of the legal understanding of patent authorship, I explain why the court was prepared to accept a universal notion of science and of the scientist that rendered unimportant any distinctions between papers and patents, or between professors and biotech scientists. This image of universal science was opposed at trial by local and specific images of sciences which have been institutionalized in industrial science throughout the 20th century, and which I argue were adopted and adapted by the American biotech industry of the 1970s to the 1990s in ways that contributed both to the trial court's finding against the patent, and to the instability of that ruling.

3. Anne Kerr, Sarah Cunningham-Burley, & Richard Tutton, "Shifting Subject Positions: Experts and Lay People in Public Dialogue," 385-411

Public dialogue about science, technology and medicine is an established part of the activities of a range of charities, private corporations, governmental departments and scientific institutions. However, the extent to which these activities challenge or bridge the lay--expert divide is questionable. Expertise is contested, by the public and the community of scholars who study and/or facilitate public engagement. In this paper, we explore the dynamics of expertise and their implications for the lay--expert divide at a series of public events about the new genetics. We examine participants' claims to expertise and consider how this relates to their claims to credibility and legitimacy and the way in which these events unfolded. Using a combination of ethnographic and discursive analysis, we found that participants supplemented technical expertise with other expert and lay perspectives. We can also link participants' claims to expertise to their generally positive appraisal of genetic research and services. The colonization of lay positions by expert speakers and the hybrid positioning of lay--experts was characteristic of the consensus and conservatism that emerged. This leads us to conclude that public engagement activities will not challenge the dominance of technical expertise in decision-making about science, technology and medicine without more explicit and reflexive problematization of the dynamics of expertise therein.

4. Atsushi Akera, "Constructing a Representation for an Ecology of Knowledge: Methodological Advances in the Integration of Knowledge and its Various Contexts," 413-441

This paper examines the renewed relevance of the metaphor of `ecology of knowledge' in light of recent interests in the circulation of knowledge. As we move away from studying laboratories, institutions, and sociotechnical networks to the more loosely coordinated technical exchanges that have begun to seem as important to scientific knowledge production and engineering work, an ecological view of knowledge re-emerges as a powerful metaphor for our discipline. Earlier studies have demonstrated the value of using an ecological metaphor to attend to issues such as the contingency, indeterminacy, and heterogeneous complexity of knowledge production. This paper extends these insights by considering how metonymic relationships -- part--whole relations -- integral to the ecological metaphor, provide a broader picture of how we think about the linkages between knowledge and its various contexts. This paper advances a specific, layered representation for depicting an ecology of knowledge, and describes it in relation to the common representations associated with Latour and Callon's actor-network theory. The representation is also based on a phenomenological perspective and its emphasis on ordinary action. In this regard, this paper builds on earlier efforts to shift the dominant discourse in science and technology studies away from the language of causality and towards a more process-oriented understanding of technical and institutional change.

5. Stephen Healy, "Deadly Dingoes: `Wild' or Simply Requiring `Due Process'?," 443-471

This paper elaborates a relational framework for `political ecology', based on an analysis of a controversy over the aggressive behaviour of the dingoes on Fraser Island and brought to prominence by the death of a 9-year-old tourist in 2001. In contrast to the authorities' treatment of Fraser's environment as an essentially enduring entity, readily compliant with instrumental interventions, the `partial perspectives' of their local critics emphasize co-constitutive relationships between people and non-humans, including dingoes. This latter view -- that the form, character and content of human activities and the world are intimately interdependent -- resonates with Latour's `experimental metaphysics', which is intended to achieve the `progressive composition' of people and their worlds. However, while Latour's framework relies on conventional notions of knowledge at odds with these local `situated knowledges', Haraway illuminates how their experiential and affective qualities ensure the ethical character of `progressive composition'. I call this consolidation of Latour and Haraway's ideas `affirmative cosmopolitics', and briefly discuss its broader implications and resonance with Australian Aboriginal cosmology.

6. Mikaela Sundberg, "Parameterizations as Boundary Objects on the Climate Arena," 473-488

This paper analyses the relationship between field experimentalists and simulation modellers in meteorological research on the one hand, and how this is related to climate change as a common arena of concern on the other. Climate has become the central topic in meteorological research and it is imperative to link specific research problems to climate change in order to receive funding and attract talent. In addition, climate models have become gatekeepers for claims about climate change. Hence, active participation in climate modelling processes is valuable for all parties. Observational data are used in order to develop new components -- so-called parameterizations -- for the climate models and these novel components therefore emerge as important boundary objects. While they serve different purposes for experimentalists and modellers in terms of translation processes, they also serve to connect these groups and reinforce their mutual dependence.

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