Nancy D. Campbell, Ph.D. Fall 2005 M 10-1 Sage 5202, x6065 Office Hours: Th and by appt.

Transcription

1 1 Nancy D. Campbell, Ph.D. Fall 2005 M 10-1 Sage 5202, x6065 Office Hours: Th and by appt. campbell@rpi.edu SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE This course is about how modes of authority and governance, colonialism and imperialism, capitalism and globalization, work through science and technology. It is also about how science and technology serve as a resources for the reproduction and reinforcement of colonial and imperial encounters, and about how people have been effaced or injured in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and technological innovation. But it is also about the movements that arise to put technoscience to use towards other, more humane or even libratory, ends. We will read works by authors who use social justice, broadly defined, as an analytic framework, and those who use it to guide empirical projects in the history, sociology, and anthropology of knowledge. This seminar raises the questions, What do those who study science and technology need to know about struggles for social justice? About complex inequality? About those who struggle to meet their basic needs and to widen access to public goods? About those who struggle against injustice and for decreased experience of negativity? Can there be a science and technology studies that works towards social justice? This course is designed to help PhD students in the STS graduate program think well about how to go about answering infrastructural and cultural questions concerning power and inequality in terms broader than access to basic needs and social goods; how to craft lives of scholarly participation in advocacy and activism; and how to frame their research and writing for multiple publics. The course lays out conceptual and methodological tools necessary for a critical advocacy studies that is strategically engaged with public discourse. Substitution policy: If at any time you desire to substitute texts that perform comparable work to those listed on the syllabus, I encourage substitutions, especially from your exam list, if they are made in a timely way. However, I also consider it my responsibility to structure a collaborative learning environment, and towards that end I have made a series of difficult choices about which material to include. The course is substantively framed around access to basic needs, and because medical anthropologists, historians, and sociologists, as well as folks in public health have raised similar questions, my choices for texts center on this domain. Modes of inquiry: How can STS scholars learn to frame their thinking so as to make research tasks more feasible and contributions to social thought/action more common? This question arises from the fact that the domain of technoscience is vast, and STS scholars are few. Building an intellectual community where people can talk to each other is by no means assured, and so we might together pose a series of questions to ourselves and others: What would it take for technological innovation (and knowledge production relevant to it) to be guided more wisely and more fairly? What would it take to build more socially just science and science policy?

2 Course Materials The items on the optional suggested list at the end of the syllabus are NOT available from the bookstore you are responsible for using the library or interlibrary loaning them from Connect NY in time to use them. I will make copies of articles and excerpts available when we decide to use them as a group but you are unlikely to have access to them beforehand. Strategically, I would suggest developing a reading method that enables you to draw out the main points without reading every word. Books Listed Below ARE Available in Bookstore Keith Wailoo, Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Hopkins 1997), ISBN Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights (Zed Books, 2003) ISBN Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (South End Press, 1999) Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (University of California Press 2002) Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (University of California Press 2005) Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (UC Press 1999) Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation (University of California Press 1992) Scott Frickel, Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology (Rutgers University Press 2004) ISBN Susan Reverby, ed, Tuskegee s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (University of North Carolina Press 2000) Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream (Vintage 1997) ISBN Sheldon Krimsky, Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis (Hopkins 2000) ISBN 2 Assignments and Grading Attendance and participation are mandatory. This is a graduate seminar structured primarily as a reading and discussion course. There is a difference between excused and unexcused absences in my view. Excused absences are negotiated beforehand unless they are the outcome of emergency situations. I recognize that you have health and family responsibilities that

3 sometimes pre-empt class. Feel free to miss one class with impunity; and you can negotiate excused absences with me on an as needed basis. Once have more than two unexcused absences, you cannot earn an A; if you miss three, you cannot earn a B; and if you miss four, consider another career. Of course, if you are presenting at a conference or have some other obligation, you should let me know beforehand. The reading list for this course overlaps somewhat with your exam reading list, and you can use texts on this syllabus to supplement the exam list. Spend most of your time learning to read in order to discuss and experimenting with integrating the material with your own approach. Come prepared to speak with a short reading response paper that summarizes the substance of the readings, analyzes the conceptual framework and methodological approaches within them, and raises questions about how social justice is framed in the works we are discussing that day. You should aim to amass an accumulation of summaries and critical questions responsive to each of the readings. Reading responses are due in class on the day of discussion in the form of typed, double-spaced, hard copy, approximately 5-7 pages. If we find that we need to, we will generate questions to which your reading response papers will reply in class the week before they are due. You may skip two reading response papers during the semester. Where there are multiple readings, you need not address them all. You may also write about optional readings or others from your exam list if you have them approved first. You will each be responsible for guiding one session. What that means is that you should select a framework that you think exemplifies an approach that, if taken, would enhance social justice. The choice is up to you you might select, for instance, John Rawls philosophical framework; or the health disparities approach; feminist theory such as Nancy Fraser or Iris Marion Young; or postcolonial theory. There is a wide array of possibilities. My point is that you should select an approach that you believe will be useful to you in your own work, present it in an accessible way, put it to use in making sense of the material for that day so that the rest of the class sees how it can be deployed, and argue well for its effectiveness. Take as much time as you like, but end with a structured discussion of the readings for that day. At the end of this syllabus, there is a brief list of suggested sources for such frameworks. You will also find suggestions embedded in the texts themselves, and in the framing article. Although I can guide you towards one, exploring each enough to select one is part of your work in this class, and part of becoming intellectually differentiated enough to undertake your own project. Your real job comes in the last four classes, which will be structured mainly around examples that you consider to be a publicly engaged, social justice oriented version of STS. Your final paper is due in the LAST class meeting, Monday, December 12. There are no extensions and no exceptions (you may turn the paper in early, always an option for those who have significant responsibilities elsewhere). The final paper is not a reading response paper, although you should cite readings where appropriate. Your final paper should define a theoretical approach to social justice ; offer a compelling example of a problem that you feel people from the field of STS should participate in resolving in order to create a more just and fair future; assess what empirical research needs to be done in order to better resolve that problem; and argue for a politically feasible approach that is responsive to the social justice framework you have chosen. 3

4 4 SYLLABUS: READINGS AND RESPONSIBLITIES Monday, August 29 Dreams Framing Science, Technology, and Social Justice Reading: Science, Technology, and Social Movements by Steve Breyman, Nancy Campbell, David Hess, and Brian Martin is an overview written for an encyclopedia on science, technology, and ethics. It considers social movement theory, a body of work that arose out of the attempt to understand how social protest has changed in relation to social change, in relation to STS. I consider it a stake in the ground, a good starting point for delimiting the arena in which we will work this semester. But it is only a starting point, and I would like you to come prepared for the first discussion by crafting a very short statement (1-2 pp.) on how you would define social justice, and who you include within the category of people who are thinking about it. We ll then map out our differing definitions and create an agenda for the remainder of the course. Monday, September 5 NO CLASS Monday, September 12 Blood Keith Wailoo, Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Hopkins 1997), ISBN Monday, September 19 Blood Susan Reverby, ed, Tuskegee s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (University of North Carolina Press 2000) Monday, September 26 Blood Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation (1992) Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (UC Press 1999) Monday, October 3 Money Discussant: Framework:

5 5 Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (UC Press 2005) Monday, October 10 NO CLASS - CLASS MEETS ON TUESDAY THIS WEEK Tuesday, October 11 Drugs and Bodies Discussant: Suggested Framework: Cheah, Public Culture article and Jacques Derrida "Mystical Foundation of Authority" Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights (Zed Books, 2003), ISBN Preface and Ch. 1-2 Rosalind Petchesky, "Body as Property" from Conceiving the New World Order, eds. Rapp and Ginsberg Monday, October 17 Drugs and Money Discussant: Framework: Petchesky, Ch. 3-4 V. Spike Peterson, chapter on social reproduction from A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy Michael Storper, Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society in Public Culture 12.2 (2000), Monday, October 24 (after 4S) Drugs and Sex Petchesky, Ch. 5-6 Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (UC Press 2002) Monday, October 31 Water On Rachel Carson/Silent Spring, please read this brief excerpt from the NRDC website: Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream (Vintage 1997) ISBN

6 6 Scott Frickel, Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of genetic Toxicology (Rutgers University Press 2004) ISBN Monday, November 7 Water Sheldon Krimsky, Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis (Hopkins 2000) ISBN Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (South End Press, 1999) Monday, November 14 Food Stephen Hilgartner, Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000) OR texts on the anti-gmo foods movements Monday, November 21 What STS Can Do Monday, November 28 What STS Can Do Read on-line Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne s WTO brief Monday, December 5 Monday, December 12 What STS Can Do What STS Can Do LAST DAY OF CLASS FINAL PROJECTS DUE OPTIONAL READINGS TO INFORM FRAMING DISCUSSIONS 1. Excerpts from Jurgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (MIT, 1989); Jurgen Habermas, Science and Technology as Ideology, in Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Beacon, 1975), pp ; or his recent work on eugenics. 2. Excerpts from Anne Larason Schneider and Helen Ingram, Policy Design for Democracy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997). 3. Nancy Fraser, Ch. 1 Redistribution to Recognition: Dilemmas of Justice in a Postsocialist Age and Ch. 3 Rethinking the Public Sphere from Justice Interruptus 4. Excerpts from Erving Goffman, Stigma

7 7 4. Woodhouse, Edward, David Hess, Steve Breyman, and Brian Martin Science Studies and Activism: Possibilities and Problems for Reconstructivist Agendas, Social Studies of Science, 32: Nathanson, Constance, Disease Prevention as Social Change: Toward a Theory of Public Health, Population and Development Review 22(4): (December 1996) AND Nathanson, Constance, Social Movements as Catalysts for Policy Change: The Case of Smoking and Guns, Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law 24.3 (June 1999): Laury Oaks, Smoking and Pregnancy 7. Kim Fortun, Advocacy After Bhopal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 199x) 8. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference 9. For a good summary of the work of John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), see Martha Nussbaum s article, The Enduring Significance of John Rawls, Chronicle of Higher Education at as well as his own web page at Excerpts from Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks and Stuart Hall, Gramsci s relevance for the study of race and ethnicity, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp Postcolonial theory: Edward Said, Orientalism 12. Feminist postcolonial theory: Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? We will read the version embedded in History, Chapter 3 in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp Institutional ethnography: Dorothy E. Smith, Excerpts from Writing the Social; Nancy Naples, selections from Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research (Routledge 2003), pp. 3-33; and Marjorie DeVault, selections from Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research (Temple, 1999). 14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish 15. Feminist economics: Leslie McCall, Intro and Conclusion, Complex Inequality and/or Nancy Folbre, Invisible Heart or Who Pays for the Kids? Others as needed