Basic Ideas and Concepts of Science & Technology Studies

Transcription

1 Basic Ideas and Concepts of Science & Technology Studies MCTS Faculty Schedule Biweekly, Mondays 12:00-14:00 MCTS, room 370 Oct. 24, 2016 Introduction and Course Mechanics Nov. 14, 2016 Technology & Society I Nov. 28, 2016 Technology & Society II Dec. 12, 2016 Organization & Society Jan. 09, 2017 Boundary Work and the Sciences Jan. xx, 2017 Excursion I BMW Jan. 20, 2017 Excursion II ATOS Jan. 23, 2017 Science & Democracy Feb. 6, 2017 Discussion & Wrap Up This course provides an introduction into the field of Science and Technology Studies. It is directed to students, who did not touch upon Science and Technologies Studies or - more broadly speaking - social sciences yet. Students are exposed to basic STS ideas and learn to explore ways in which science and technology shape and are being shaped by social and political processes. The module is devoted to discussing and critically engaging with foundational works in STS in a playful and encouraging way. The course calls attention to a limited number of widely debated technological and scientific developments and leads the students to addressing them through an STS lens. In selected excursions our students practice to sharpen their senses for the ways how science and technology are political and social. STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 1

2 Course Information Type Seminar Course No Time Biweekly, Mondays 12:00-14:00 Place MCTS, Augustenstr. 46 Room 370 Resources Credits & Requirements Creditable to Consultation TUM Moodle 5 CP Reading Cards, Oral Text Presentation and Short Essay Master s program Science and Technology Studies STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 2

3 Oct. 24, 2016 Introduction and Course Mechanics The first session is devoted to the introduction of the goals of the course to the students. Another aim is to get to know the students and their expectations with regard to the course. Moreover, the course mechanics are introduced, texts are assigned for oral presentation. This is followed by a discussion about how to read texts and how to produce proper reading-cards and presentations. STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 3

4 Nov. 14, 2016 Technology and Society I The second session draws attention to the ways how technologies are political. The text by Winner, introduces students to social - and technological determinism. The text exemplifies how physical arrangements do have implicit and explicit political consequences, and discusses how technologies can be conceptualized as being inherently political. The text by Collins and Pinch addresses the question of the role of the Patriot (a missile) in the Gulf war, or more concretely the question whether the Patriot actually shot down any scuds back then. What appears to be an easily answered question, turns into an odyssey. The more success -criteria are introduced the more difficult it gets to answer the question. The answer lies somewhere in the fog of war, which serves as a (questionable) metaphor for the difficulty to settling an argument in science, as related to the fact that there is no direct measurement. Key readings Winner, L. (1980). "Do artifacts have politics?" Daedalus: Collins, H. and T. Pinch (2014). A clean kill?: the role of Patriot in the Gulf War. In: The golem at large: What you should know about technology, Cambridge University Press STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 4

5 Nov. 14, 2016 Science & Technology II In the session Science & Technology II students revisit the idea of technological determinism. Based on the classic cultural lag as theory by Ogburn, students critically engage with the imagination that culture (such as institutions, norms or values) naturally lacks behind technological development and needs to be adapted. Technological determinism, social determinism or none of which? In Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together, students follow the sociology of a door-closer and get to know the basic ideas of how the sociology of translations conceptualizes the relation between science and technology. By means of the concepts of delegation, translation, or scripts and inscription a purely technical view on the artefact of the door-closer is challenged. This is aimed to lead students to more broadly questioning divisions between the social and the technical. Key readings Ogburn, W. F. (1957). "Cultural lag as theory." Sociology and Social Research 41(3): Johnson, J. (1988). "Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together. The Sociology of a Door-Closer" Social Problems 35(3): STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 5

6 Dec. 12, 2016 Organization & Society The session deals with the relation between organization, politics and technology. The text by Bensmans and Gerver takes the students into an airplane factory. More concretely, the text introduces us to the mysterious case of the tap (an extremely hard steel screw) and how it can be both simultaneously: Widely possessed and used ( Every well equipped senior manager owns at least four or five of different sizes ) and illegal defined as criminal instrument (since it destroys the effectiveness of stop nuts, for instance). We don t want to unravel the mystery by now, but maybe give a small hint: the answer lies in the organisation. The second text by Barley problematizes - what has not been given much attention to so far - namely how organizations mold their environments. Barley does so by reconstructing how corporations establish an institutional field to increase their influence on the US government. This is a specifically interesting case, since it shows how corporations want to have influence on the government, but at the same time aim to convey the impression that they don t. Key readings Bensman, J. and I. Gerver (1963). "Crime and Punishment in the Factory: The Function of Deviancy in Maintaining the Social System." American sociological review 28(4): Barley, S. R. (2010). "Building an institutional field to corral a government. A case to set an agenda for organization studies." Organization Studies 31(6): STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 6

7 Jan. 9, 2016 Boundary Work and the Sciences In the session Boundary Work and the Sciences students get familiar with Science Studies. The session draws on three short texts which are all concerned with some sort of boundary work and the sciences, but do so in different ways and starting from different angles. Merton is proposing the idea that science shares a scientific ethos. Snow in contrast brings in a cultural perspective and highlights differences between what he calls the two cultures. Finally, Gieryn is focused on how science is demarcated from non-science. Students will not only learn to differentiate ways to characterize and understand science - respectively its relation to society - but also to consider the historical context in which texts are written. Finally, the students will get the chance to relate the concepts as discussed in the course to the example of the Munich Center for (MCTS) as well as the Technical University of Munich in which it is embedded. Key readings Merton, R. K. (1973 [1942]). The normative structure of science. The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. R. K. Merton. Chigaco, University of Chicago Press Snow, C. P. (1959). The two cultures, Cambridge University Press.1-22 Gieryn, T. F. (1983). "Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from nonscience: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists." American sociological review: STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 7

8 Jan. 23, 2017 Science & Democracy The session science and democracy asks who is producing knowledge, for whom, and how - or in which kind of arrangements. In this session, students are introduced to the promises and paradoxes of so-called knowledge societies. They are confronted with the impression that disciplinarily organized knowledge production has become insufficient to deal with the complexity of contemporary societal problems (think of climate change for instance), and get to know alternative approaches to knowledge production. One of which is transdisciplinarity. It can be described as an attempt to democratize science by establishing modes of knowledge production in which also actors stemming from outside the science system can participate. Key readings Gibbons, M. and H. Nowotny (2001). The potential of transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinarity: joint problem solving among science, technology, and society, Springer: STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 8

9 February 6, 2017 Discussion & Wrap Up The last session of the course is devoted to a revision of the different concepts and STS-ideas as encountered during the semester. Moreover, the students will present their topics for the final essays. The idea is to relate one of the topics (e.g. science & democracy) to a contemporary debate or controversy (e.g. vaccination). Students are expected to engage with the analytical perspectives and problematizations seen in class. STS 0 (WS 2016/17) 9

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