Live feed archive
Below is an archive of the live feed that took place during the 2011 conference. It is preserved both as a written record of what took place during the conference (its time stamps in particular may be useful in locating things discussed in the video of the conference), and as the result of an experiment in simulcasting the conference proceedings internationally.
Like all such records, it contains typos, mistakes, discussions about whether the video streaming was working correctly, and other ephemera. It has not been edited and will not be (avatar images have been stripped out to improve loading time, but nothing else has been changed).
Hi everyone. I’m Sam Evans, a fellow at the Harvard STS Program, and I will be blogging the first session of STSNext20. We’ll get started in 10 minutes or so
Greetings from London
Hi Tim! Welcome. Are you getting the live feed?
Hello from Ithaca. Lots of familiar faces in the audience.
Hi Everyone, Tolu here.
Hi both 🙂
Sheila Jasanoff begins the event by welcoming everyone.
Hi Rachel
Can the volume be cranked up a bit? Hard to understand the speaker.
We are working on that. Sorry if it’s too quiet.
I dont know what others can hear, but I can’t hear anything – it is very faint
Is the sound any better now, Tim?
marginally better, but still not enough… sorry
Agreed, can’t hear a thing!
Hello from Oxford. I agree it’s more like a silent movie.
Sound is good now, for me here in Brazil. Hi and thank you!
A scary black and white silent movie
Applause for Team STS from Estonia! The sound for me is OK, but I have no visuals – my movie is a still! Ought I refresh, perhaps…
OK, if you tell me what you hear, I tell you what I see. 😉
Greatings from Denmark: I think the microphone for the speaker does not feed – because we could hear the clapping and laughter, but not Sheila
Hi everyone! Here in the Netherlands I have decent sound with earphones, but no moving picture as well.
Ted Porter takes the podium to discuss “Does STS Matter, and to Whom?”
With headphones and volume set to max I can understand maybe half of what Andrew Jewett is saying.
I hear that “STS” appears in many sentences.
erm, Ted Porter, I meant
Tim says STS has been moderately successful in enhancing discussion on science and technology issues, though it does not have the control of the discourse like the natural science or medical disciplines do.
Yes headphones help, but still faint. Actually really blurred
Is it possible that the wrong Microphone is feeding?
wworking on the audio. we may have to move the camera during the first brek.
I’m still finding it very faint, too…a bit better than before, but still hard to understand. Thanks.
As science is brought more openly into policy-making, we tend to see science as a well-demarcated affair, keeping free of conflict. But now, the incentives for contesting “what is science” have never been more compelling.
Our modern debates has provided forums for asking questions that scientists used to be better at suppressing. Our current “un-modern” uncertainty have created a space for STS.
Hello from Germany. Thank you for the live feed. The sound is not really clear because it is the room sound and not the one from the speakers microphone. Is there a possibility to improve that? Thanks a lot.
We will re-jig it in the first break. Sorry for the low audio volume!
Such a shame that even with headphones, I can hear only every fifth word.
What sort of knowledge should be brought to bear on problems involving science and technology? An STS training can provide indispensable skills
OK, now I get nothing anymore…
Same!
you-u-u-u get-t-t-t it-t-t
with-h-h-h-h the-e-e-e echo-o-o-o if-f-f you-u-u reload-d-d-d
My error, i had two windows open. Its okay now. Thank you.
A motto for our field: Not just thin discription, but thin description thickly described
Yeah, feed is gone. Well, let’s rely on Sam’s tweets for now.
One of the real contributions of STS calls attention to the material aspects of the science.
And the social practices that surround them
Sound is better, thanks
Science promotes knowledge without knowledge of the knower
Science supports (and seeks to develop) evidence that seems to stand for itself.
STS is the far-flung community of scholars that takes serriously the impact of science and technology to almost every aspect of life
The historical form is no alternative to STS, but can enhance and extend it.
We need to write both for the public, and for the millstones of bureaucracy.
Andrew Jewett now takes the podium as a discussant for Ted’s talk.
Andy started his studies in STS with Ted Porter’s Trust in Numbers, which helped liberate him from the parochialisms of American history.
Intellectual historians often have more in common with other disciplines, than with other historians. This is certainly true for communicating with STS
Andrew Jewett emphasizes the common language shared by STSers and those in related fields.
At first glance, intellectual history seems to be antithesis to STS, pontificating on the intelligentsia of past times.
Context has now become a keyword in current intellectual history, focusing on how intellectuals make and use knowledge. A lot of this is informed and in dialogue with STS.
“‘Context’ as a keyword” many. More so than “ideas”
Andy looks at how and why the objectivist civic epistemology has taken such hold in the United States
Andy sees himself in general agreement with Ted’s thoughts. Who knows, even philosophers may one day see our light as well.
Both Jewett and Porter emphasize the tight and fruitful connection between STS and history of science.
It’s now time for questions and answers. If you have a question, post it and everyone else can vote if they would like to have it asked.
Dorothy Zinberg says: the fact that Brian Williams, host of NBC, asks “should we believe scientists about the radiation hazards of nuclear plants” show how our discourse has changed
Clark miller asks: Given imporance of the shared intellectual space for both understandin the modern condition and informing scholarship, do you think either of those statements should influence how we organize intellectual activity in the academy? Should we continue to operate in old disciplines?
Ted replies: positions are usually in departments. A lot of money is interdisciplinary. It is the discussions at those forums that are very stimulating. To what extent does that need to move on to reconfugring departments? I would like to have the faculty positions to maintain cross-fertilization.
Sheila adds: departments have scarce positions, so what if they give the positions that include intellectual history to move to an STS-inflected department?
Andy comments: people should be more respectful across disciplines, but that’s hard to ask when funding is so tight
Discussing about disciplinarity, funding structures, and positions is very much based in US context and there might be different conclusions for STS in Europe, I think.
Ted adds: History tolerates but does not demand close interaction with other disciplines.
Q: Implications for education, on grad and undergrad level?
Chris Jones asks: with the historical approach, do you have reflections looking at the history of the history of science and STS disciplines over the last 20 years? Are we moving towards more of this engagement?
Jasanoff: are some disciplinary boundaries stronger than others?
Andy comments: interdisciplinary communication has really only been improving in the last five years. This is particularly true in the humanities vs the natural sciences. The focus on interdisciplinarity is *seen* to be a good thing, but it is a big pressure on individuals because it adds to an already heavy workload.
Porter: proliferation of a wide variety of … studies, many of them associated with some kind of identity politics, unlike STS
Ted: a large body of theory we now have in common could be roughly considered “postmodern”. For instance, we all know Foucault
Thanks for the first session. we’ll workon the sound now and Margo Lipstin will take over from me for live blogging the next session.
Quick question, did the sound get better as we went along?
For me it did. I could understand most of it.
Somewhat, but I need headphones and all sonds set to max. Its still taxing to listen to.
yes, it did a bit better
Thanks, Sam!
Thanks for the feedback. I will try and get the levels to be louder.
Hello, I’m Margo Boenig-Liptsin, I’ll be taking over from Sam for the live blogging for this session. Thank you for joining us!
We’re going to turn the audio off for just a sec while we test a new mic.
Yes, Muuch better!
Thx
Good job, Sam. Much better now.
This is great now. Much louder
Is that any better?
Audio should be better now!
Jasanoff: Definition of human has drastically changed. Example of arrest because of a DNA fingerprint > genetic reductionism does not tell the whole story
20 years ago without a plane ticket there was just a résumé to read. But to “almost like there”, we just take ‘nother 20 years I suppose.
Sheila describes her edited volume around the topic of bioconstitutionalism, which is an attempt at a meta-level STS work — not just a case study
Douglas Kysar is from Cornell Law School, where Sheila started the STS department.
Doug is an environmental law scholar; he says that it is a challenge for law to address environment because the “environment” is everywhere, while law works with abstractions, simplifications.
Doug mentioned Alex Wellerstein’s chapter in ‘Reframing Rights,’ which examines the topic of contingency in science and law
positivism v. coproduction/bioconstitutionalism!
“Does STS need an ethics?” This is a very interesting question the Doug raises
Kysar: More concerned about genetic deprivation than about enhancement
Levinas!
Subjects are not a given. Levinas: ethics is primary.
Question: is the Levinasian face-to-face encounter the same through telepresence technologies?
no firm ontologies or fixed ethics; as I understand it, ethics is taken not as fixed norms, but more like stories, in the sense of narrative ethics (Levinas, Ricouer)
Does STS invite a sense of vertigo? Even ethics is questioned, not accepted as a given.
Democracy as co-production and also as a technology. The paradox of ‘bootstrapping’
Do we have any of the authors of Reframing Rights out there? If so, please share your comments!
Doug asks what the role of the STS scholar is. His questions is important: how/in what way do STS scholars intervene in actual decision making?
Sheila: revealing moments of co-production is already a political act
Sheila re-words Doug’s question: how do we, once we’ve been in the “swamp,” act?
Jasanoff: Once you’ve been in the swamp of ethics and politics and science, how do you get out and answer the so-what question?
Oh, now we’re seeing “Lunar History: Four views of the cataclysm…”
wrong room? 🙂
Ah, reloading the stream helped
Contributor to the ‘Reframing Rights’ volume from UC Berkeley: it’s up to the individual to decide how to act after the “swamp”
That’s David Winickoff
individual action or are there procedures that can guide the STS scholar?
Question if turn to the procedural is a solution to the swamp problem
What procedural, Harald?
The procedural is what lawyers focus on.
Is it being proposed as a ‘safety net’ to the swamp problem? Curious.
I’m skeptical of proceduralism as a solution on its own. This reminds of article in the current volume of SSS, discussing 4 approaches to the relation between technoscience and politics, one of them being formalism (which is not exactly the same as proceduralism, but close)
Why does it have to be a swamp metaphor? Isn’t this replaying the point behind the book We Have Never Been Modern? ie we have never not been in a swamp, but at least we know we know it?
Jasanoff: STS scholars (or anyone) should not be held reasonable for _not_ knowing what the best solution is.
FYI conference backchannel chat is on Twitter at #stsnext20
Sheila advocates the contingency point that is in the book — a human being cannot know how his or her action is right
Sheila: procedurealism is never just procedural
we have to keep in mind that ethics shape technologies, too.
Kaushik Sunder Rajan (Chicago)
Are there other questions from our virtual participant you would like me to ask?
[Thanks for asking Sam! Not sure it went down so well..]
Sunder Rajan’s comment/question to Doug: is Doug’s point about STS prescriptions assuming that politics comes from above?
hey @stsnext20, please put “share on Twitter” on – your Twitter stream has dropped off the map.
thanks for letting me know about the Twitter stream — Sam, do you know how to fix this?
okay, I think it should work now
Wynne: we have an ethical responsibility to tell it like we see it
Brian Wynne on the swamp: I’m scholar and activist at the same time. We have an ethical responsibility as scholars to tell it as we see it.
..if you practice science as personal experience, too.
Can you expand on that? Science as personal experience?
“Wissenschaft als persönliches Erlebnis” – science as personal / individual experience is a booktitle from Hans Jonas. He appeals to the individual responsibility (also refering to Kant’s categorical imperative).
I see. Thanks for clarifying.
Wynne: We are continually confronted with ethics. Ultimately: it’s an issue of exposing the challenges for democracy posed by scientization
Q: Is “out there” a resistance to outsourced moralities (=STS scholars as normative agency)?
Wynne: we have a responsibility of connecting our understandings of science and of publics.
Wynne seems to be confirming Sheila’s point that STS scholars’ work is itself a political act
Wynne: we don’t have to be prescriptive in the sense of philosophers. But describing what the challenges for democracy are.
Kysar: integrity of ideas comes, in part, from the integrity of individual
Wynne: the optimistic note in the ‘Reframing Rights’ — STS helping to articulate another kind of science, another focus for science — this is a democratic agenda
Wynne: STS helps showing that there are alternatives, within and to S&T.
Third panel, on “STS, Politics, and Public Management: Disaster and the Politics of Intervention” just beginning
Ok! There is now an audio-only feed for those on slow connections! The link is at the top fo the video feed if you reload the page. It’s here too: rtsp://video2.harvard.edu/broadcast/stsconference.mp4
Ok! Sam Evans back here taking over live blogging for the next session.
Okay, no panel yet. Sorry for false alarm.
Okay, no panel yet. Sorry for false alarm.
We’re back! This session includes Daniel Barben (Aachen), Andrew Lakoff (USC), and Alan Irwin (Copenhagen Business School)
We’re back! This session includes Daniel Barben (Aachen), Andrew Lakoff (USC), and Alan Irwin (Copenhagen Business School)
Daniel Barben talking about his position at Aachen University, powerhouse of engineering. “Interdisciplinarity not a big deal there”
Barben teaches at Aachen University, an engineering university in Germany where classes/projects are interdisciplinary
Aachen engaged in future studies, which allows him to promote STS
Future studies as a way of promoting STS in German university system
This session is about: STS, Politics, and Public Management: Disaster and the Politics of Intervention
At stake: Issues of critical analysis, of capacities of practically engaging, politics of intervention. E.g. Earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan, Libya
all of the disasters that took place during the book’s process to publication
what kind of interventions can STS make to thinking about disasters?
Andrew Lakoff: Introducing edited volume on “Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question,” published in 2008
Oh sorry, I think it’s a different book
Lakoff: hope that the book (inexpensive and short) could influence policy; copies sent to congressional staff members
Did anyone get the correct title?
book: Disaster and the Politics of Intervention
Edited by Andrew Lakoff
Thanks!
Volume concerned with designing successful interventions in disasters
“social science of disaster” — disasters are influenced by social factors that need to be understood to intervene successfully
Sheila’s contribution calls for ‘technologies of humility’ (see Nature article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7166/full/450033a.html)
unfortunately the live stream is scrambled and full of echo’s
make sure you do not have multiple streams going on?
sorry, you were right!
rob hagendijk watching from amsterdam
Lakoff, Andrew (ed) (2010) Disaster and the Politics of Intervention , NY: Columbia Uni Press.
Lakoff: passes on to Alan Irwin to comment on success/failure/potential of volume
shout out to Denmark!
Lakoff: will focus on the public role of STS
http://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Politics-Intervention-Columbia-Privatization/dp/0231146965/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302208953&sr=8-2#_
Irwin: 3 points about book: how should we think about disasters? what themes emerge? what does it mean for politics of intervention?
Irwin’s reference: Guardian article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/02/natural-disasters-floods-earthquakes-landslides
tsunami “as beyond the social”
Irwin: We want experts to make sense of situation in Fukushima and other disasters for us
Irwin: the way disasters are portrayed is increasingly bound up with expert systems.
disasters become “extrapolations into the future” (Jasanoff”s term)
example of private firefighters in California
private fire-fighters reminds one of private security firms (e.g. James Ferguson’s work on large corporations in Africa)
similar case: role of military contractors
Disasters – politics – market
Interesting: Irwin keeps suggesting that disasters point to the future. How do they do this? I wonder what Barben would say about this, since he’s in future studies
Structuring sessions around books which significant portion of audience hasn’t read doesn’t seem to be the best format to me.
Irwin suggests that ‘dignity’ is a good counterbalance to ‘risk’
Although we haven’t read the books, it is important to discuss the latest in STS research. We are, after all, interested in the next 20 years of STS work!
Irwin: the anticipation of disasters is a challenge to governments. Perhaps the anticipation is the link to the future.
Hello Rob
hi Tim
Interesting how “otherness” is intended by Irwin and, previously, Kysar, in ethical terms. Kysar as human otherness and Irwin as alternative futures
Clark: Knowing disasters and how to respond to them becomes endemic to everything a government/public administration does every moment.
Clark Miller makes interesting point about disaster as the exception or a view where disasters are ever-present in the realm of politics and regulation
Clark: blurring boundaries between natural disasters and human-made disasters (interestingly, the term “tsunami” was used by Japanese to describe Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
Clark Miller on peculiar temporality of disasters: disasters appear from systems and frameworks that we’re creating all of the time
Is this different from Beck’s arguments about risk society? Sounds very similar to me.
Trevor Pinch: two other books on disasters, Challenger Disaster and Normal Accidents
Trevor Pinch: mentions two books that predicted two accidents in the future. Does this book predict a future disaster?
http://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Technologies/dp/0691004129 and http://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Launch-Decision-Technology-Deviance/dp/0226851761
(future) risk / disaster has supposed to be manageable. risk proposes descision. on my opinion descisions in interdisciplinary and complex fields are always descisions by different epistemic cultures. interdisciplinary issues have to be translated. STS could help to translate.
I’m wondering how a “disaster” is defined?
Japanese STS scholar: wonders what book can offer to Japanese STS scholars who were asked by Japanese government to help respond to tsunami and nuclear power plant disasters
That’s Yuko Fujigaki, who will be speaking on Saturday.
I was wondering how people construct certainty 😉
With regard to the disaster in Japan, some friends of mine have started a website for collecting STS and HoS resources on the topic. http://teach311.wordpress.com/
will the live feed be recorded and can be watched later?
Yes it will! It might take a little time to get it up, though
great!
Irwin: interested in how the news seizes on “news from below” — on the stories of individuals rather than having experts (or in addition to having experts).. experts provide the ‘coherent framework’
Hm, Irwin seems to discount first-hand, from below accounts as useful for making sense of a situation if there is no framework for situating them.
Irwin: stories from below are a challenge to sense-making
Lakoff: bottom-up processes are already integrated into disaster preparedness systems. The attempt of the volume was to show what has not yet been incorporated into disaster preparedness.
I think this is a good point. An interesting case of bottom-up processes in the Japan disaster case is the “crisismapping” on the openstreetmap platform http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami
Barben: panel brings up two issues — what’s the role of legal principles (e.g. precautionary principle) in creating resilience/protection? 2) how can we enhance anticipatory capacities?
Goodbye, fellow-STSers. I have to go do some real work now, unfortunately.
Thanks for your contributions, Harald
we continue with the 4th session on economics and sociology
participants: Joan Fujimura (Wisconsin), Pierre-Benoit Joly (Paris Est and IFRIS), David Stark (Columbia)
Joly: 20 years ago economics and markets would not be an issue for STS, but the next 20 years must consider it
Sam: Congrats on getting the live feed up and working! It looks great!
Joly: explains STS approach to the economy/economics.
materiality and performativity are the two key concepts for understanding economy from STS perspective
Joly: growing importance of emotions in economics (behavioral economics) has potential to reconstruct economic sphere around this “new” (for economists) understanding of human beings
Joly: second trend in economics is to design dispositif (apparatuses) to “nudge” by state
Joly: STS has many concepts that could be integrated into study of economy (civic epistemologies, coproduction, etc.)
David Stark’s volume, ‘The Performativity to Reflexivity’
Talcott Parson’s Pact:
economists get to “work” the economy; social scientists will study the social relations within the economy
Stark: no one examines “calculation,” even the sociologists. STS (Michel Callon, Donald MacKenzie) move to define the social studies of finance
Stark: calculation is itself social — not socially embedded
reference to Donald MacKenzie’s ‘An Engine, Not a Camera’
Stark references speech acts work of John Austin
Stark proposes a different sense of performativity; e.g. a financial model is an intervention
In Stark’s definition, a model is performative when its use improves the predictive performance of the model (e.g. Moore’s Law)
Stark describes the feedback loop of economic prediction
materiality of reflexivity is socio-technical
I wonder to what extent reflexivity that Stark describes in relation to market models is also true of STS research in general..
explains the graph, the spread plot that traders use to bet
Whitington: relationship between reflexivity and feedback loops?
Chris Jones: there is a lot of reflexivity in the field, but how do they represent their work to the world, which is the level of policy?
*they* refers to scientists, economists
Stark: the object of study of sociality is being human. Being in the world with objects is to be human.
Stark is interested in devices that traders come up (devise) to deal with uncertainty, lack of knowledge, risk..
Stark: we have left out reflexivity as STS scholars. But is this fair??
Kris Saha: how does the collapse of the financial crisis relate to the Parson’s pact? i.e. how the disciplines were understanding interaction between reflexivity, STS, economics, break of fields…
Daniel Barben: is Stark reproducing the argument of classic economics that you need diversity to create a market?
Stark: is it right to think of the individual as the unit of cognition and decision maker? There’s the group of people and the instrumentation. What’s making the decision?
Neuroscientists would say the brain is making the decision 😉
Stark: cognition and action is distributed at the desk. Even the lay out of the room is important for cognition.
Stark: is the room the cognitive agent? the desk? the individual? cognition is distributed throughout the arbitrage systems.
Thank you for joining us and hope that you listen-in again tomorrow at 9am.
– Margo Boenig-Liptsin
That’s all for today, everyone. See you tomorrow.
Thank you for your work!
The sound is good!
Good morning everyone! Tolu Odumosu here, I will be live bloggin the first session.
We should be starting in a few minutes
We are off!
Welcome everyone. do have a look at the new provocation page above and give us your thoughts.
As we go thru logistics, if you are watching with us, please do introduce yourself.
First session: Defining the Boundaries!
Suman Seth from Cornell Speaking.
Line up this morning includes, Kaushik sunder Rajan, David Winickof and Javier Lezaun
Kaushik is giving a provocation.
Hello. I am Maya. Watching from Brazil. I wonder if we can have access to the document Chris mentioned. I don´t see it in teh webpage. Thanks
Kaushik: We need to think about Biopolitics “elsewhere” in the world in a non-derivative fashion
How do we think through technoscience and its interactions with postcolonialism?
Hello! Johanna Hoeffken from Maastricht University is lsitening in too.
MIT’s imaginary can be described as technocratic
Hi Johanna! Glad you can join in.
Kaushik THSTI http://www.thsti.res.in/
Kaushik: Important institutional differences in technocratic imaginaries of both THSTI and MIT
On what is at stake, Kaushik mentions taxpayers money, but did he attribute that concern to either of the camps – his Indian Scientists/MIT dichotomy?
Indian scientists much more aware of STS and coproduction
subjectivity of Indian scientists as marginal and marked explains their reflexivity somewhat.
global postcolonial sensibility is NOT equal to anti-colonial inclinations.
Is a global postcolonial sensibility limited to institutional and sociological critque? What about the epistemic?
Is scientific universalism undermined by the globalization of science?
Moving on to David’s response
David: A lot of the innovative interventionist technologies (cook stoves, etc) are coming from India.
David: The US community is becoming more aware of the “shift in power” in innovative capacities in this area.
Winickoff describes an upswell of innovative energy and vitality from “places like India” as a shift in power. Does this not maintain the “elsewheres” that Kaushik is trying to unsettle?
David do I do STS inspired by Law, or Law inspired by STS? Answer: I do both!
Winickoff is asking about Kaushikäs positionality and his thoguhts on an anthropologically inflected STS.
Winickoff : Concepts, themselves, with traditions and long histories.
Javier speaks
Javier: Where should STS go in the next 20 years?
STS is restless and appears everywhere.
Javier: Kaushik asking us to follow the lifesciences in the post-genomic era
Javier: Follow the global postcolonial sensibility because it provides fodder for examining possibile disruptions in universalism.
Javier: If we are to follow Kaushik, we need to remember that there is no free travel.
Javier:What is the difference between an anthropology of science and technology, and STS inflected with anthropological overtones?
Javier: The main question is where to go with which new companions and how to get there.
Suman summarizes provincializing europe by Chakrabarty
Isn’t it a neo-liberal claim to count MIT and IMTFI as fully representative of the global?
or rather, counts as analysis of the “global”. Iäm not sure either claimed fully representativeness…
Chakrabraty’s critque of incommensurability is itself relativizing – Kaushik
I am open to voicing your questions!
Thanks! Still digesting KSR-speech!
To David Winickoff: is it possible to be a constructionist policy-maker? Policy-making involves realpolitik, strategic analysis of interests involved and some amount of conflicting. Is STS realist(ic) enough to participate in policy-making and make a difference?
Thanks David.
thanks for voicing the question
Fascinating exchange between Jasanoff and Suman on where history/STS might be seen to fail as a project in the kinds of questions it is able to ask and its own form of knowledge production. Arguing around Chakrabarthy, Suman would like to see (more?) problematization of structuring assumptions, Jasanoff is pointing out that it is through perhaps what Suman is calling “arrogance” that what might previously not have been considered possible becomes so : eg long duree, subaltern studies and sitse of memory projects in history.
Javier is picking up the Suman provocation again.
STS as mode of attentiveness, and looking head on at issues of incommensurability. What was posed as a weakness can be seen as a strength. Why what was posed as the end can be positioned as the beginning.
Suman shifting from incommensurability to relativism, itself as a concept we can historicize.
Thanks Tolu!
Thanks to all! We will be back in 15 mins
Second panel is underway: STS on Difference
Complexity of co-construction of users and technologies as a place to study difference
Greene: How does STS configure difference differently?
the videos and audio feed stopped working for me towards the end of the last panel. is it just me or is there a technical problem?
Working for me…try the audio only?
yes, i did. neither is working. it says “server not found” — it worked
fine yesterday and all morning upto that point.
so i am puzzled. thanks. i’ll see what i can do my end
banu
Steve Epstein’s slides are available here: http://goo.gl/AeYhs
Brilliant. Thanks Sam.
One are for discussion: Identity politics and how they relate to science and technology
How are “race” and “sex” operationalized in medical research?
Take a look at Epstein’s slides for STS literature on difference.
Having challenges with the feed? Try refreshing the page.
Epstein uses difference in his work as an actor’s category.
What about religious identities in STS scholarship? Has this dimension been given enough attention?
We turn to some data… Please refer to Epstein’s slides.
What about social class in STS literature?
Is STS scholarship on difference impacting other disciplines?
Epstein is setting up the panelist to hopefully discuss how STS scholarship on difference can pollinate research in other domains.
On the panelists…
Nelly Oudshoorn: co-production of technoscience and bodies
Nelly points out that the time for discussion has been foregrounded. This might seem mundane, but I was thrilled that there was so much space for questions and talk after this morningäs first panel.
Nice! Nelly provided a connection to the previous panel – difference ties into how the “other” is understood and constructed.
Should we rethink our own vocabulary? Should we be talking about diversity and not difference?
Hi, joining in again from Maastricht, NL. I think it is remarkable that Nelly notes that she is invited to do the same kinds of debates now as she was in the 1970s. Does that mean she believes STS has been unable to get any messages across? How do other virtual participants feel about this?
Iäd suggest she was reflecting on how things emerge and re-emerge at particular times, less about whether or not any message got across (across where, to whom, what are the constants in time that we might want to imagine?) or not.Thereäs another question of difference, the shifting arenas into which “messages” fall?
Themes: We should study age as a category, and turn to other locations where the production of knowledge is connected to difference.
Sherine Hamdy: Question of how religious knowledge (as an alternative rationality) comes to shape notions of difference?
Sherine: Religious knowledge influences cost-benefit analysis of science and technology.
Mike Lynch responding to Steve in a way that is “not defensive”!
Comment from the audience: Religion has influenced the analytical approach of STS scholars.
STS has dissected the “religion” of science, but have we understood religion?
What is rational and what is not, what is cultural and what is not – Sherine is thinking along with Suman on what STS approaches have implicit within them.
Observation: I wonder if we can relate the question of STS analysis of religion and difference to Suman’s previous question about whether there are domains where STS can fail?
Perhaps it is the phrasing as “fail” that people are reacting to negatively? Examinations of failure, as STS scholars know more than most, can be fascinating. Just seeing a “fail”, and seeing just a “fail” are different thigns (ie being able to vs only being able to)
Ok, she is disagreeing with this – concern with intergenerational transmission within the discipline and the reinvention of the wheel. “Rehearsal of the same debate all of the time – what can we do here to reframe it?”
More productively, why has STS not taken on religious rationality more?
Yep,there is clearly a thread of limits/edges which applies as much to the engagement with different differences as to the way in which we have dealt with the possibilities of alterities, or alternative ontologies.
Nelly: STS should reflect on generational understandings and analysis of difference.
From the audience: Who should our intellectual companions be to further analysis of difference?
Nelly : human geographers , for their focus on the places and spaces of knowledge production.
Hello everyone. Seems like I’ve missed a lot this morning.
It has been brilliant so far!
The travel metaphor is doing a lot of work.
Brian Wynne: Challenge to the panelists to expand their notions of difference.
What about cases where difference has been denied?
Nelly: Methodological point. Analysts should not go into a sociotechnical domains with an idea of difference.
From the audience: What about difference beyond humans?
Sherine: What about non human actors that are limiting human agency?
Sherine is considering how and when in bioethics, differences are put in categories such as the social or cultural “difference”, a move which relies on a ground of universalised concepts of the body. She is observing that a biological ground is assumed to be the same (eg. that a body doesnät really need two kidneys) may not be (eg. because of high rates of schistosomiasis or other compromising factors) thus the notion of acceptable harm changes. It was in response to a point about differences which are denied/made less visible, and the STS role in that situation.
I really liked this as an example for the entanglement of the biological and the social/cultural.
What gets called science and what gets called religions – take different shapes and do different social work depending on the context. – Sherine
The conceptions of difference on this panel are too narrow. Classifying something as different is a itself an epistemic act. Differences between normal and pathological are fundamental to medical knowledge. Differences between genetic and epigenetics are fundamental to some fields of biology. Could you have STS without difference? It’s part of how we generate and operate with particular ontologies.
Difference is also needed for building disciplines.
I haven’t heard anyone mention differences in “ability” (particularly neurological and psychiatric disabilities and disorders), though there is certainly some STS (and STS-related) work that problematizes how ability differences are framed, both in the sense of their being “constructed” and/or in the sense of their being “denied.” I’m thinking of Chloe Silverman’s work on autism and Emily Martin on bipolar disorder, among other
projects. Any thoughts on the place — current or potential — of this kind of work within STS?
– Suzanne Kirschner
College of the Holy Cross and
Harvard University (Visiting Scholar spring 2011)
I agree, classification and difference are at the heart of STS, and I think Jeremy’s point about the difference/similarity between GMOs, pharmaceuticals etc. pointed away from the use of “actor categories” towards these questions. However, it’s also interesting to see how sociological differences are inflected through an STS perspective.
Epstein: calling for reflexivity in the categories we analyze.
It seems that there would be scope to go through this panel and look at the different ways that people are talking about difference – on reflexivity inthe categories we analyze and use for analysis. They could be scaled : the (scalar) difference between the kind Suzanne is missing vs the kind that is raised as a distinguisher between disciplines. Bateson would be laughing.
Winickoff to the panel: What do you recommend for the codification of difference in legal and policy contexts?
Haraway did not teach Kaushik *how* to ‘do gender’ but simply told him, when he asked, that he ought to “be attentive”, and hold a certain kind of vigilance.
I’d say that “modes of attentiveness” are part of what constitutes a discipline.
Yes, so are these modes something the disciplines could positively share, use as ground? I am interested in the recurrent thread of anthropology, being an anthropologist.
One way to get at that would probably to look at the core syllabi posted on this website and trying to see what they have in common. The modes of attentiveness of anthropology, in my account, would certainly be an important part of it.
From the audience: drawing attention to how categories are going digital. Should this be an issue for STS? Should surveillance studies be included in STS scholarship?
It’s too bad that Annemarie Mol is not speaking at the conference. She might have provided interesting insights.
We need to get her online!
Sherine: Suggestion to change approach to bodies and health management from patient rights and consumerism to a greater emphasis on “tinkering” care.
Thanks for joining us! We will be back at 2:15 to discuss:
“STS and the Public Sphere”
We’re asking participants here and around the world to give us their ideas, in 60sec or less, on three questions: 1) Why do you think STS matters (to you, to anyone)? 2) Hid did you come into STS? 3) What new problems or challenges do you think STS needs to address?
Feel free to video your own (60sec!) thoughts and share them with us.
Alright, time for a break. Back at 2:15 :: STS and the Public Sphere
Welcome back! I’m Margo Boenig-Liptsin, one of Sheila’s students, and I will be in charge of the live blog for this session.
Participants of this panel includes John Dryzek, Sheila Jasanoff, Myles Jackson, and Brian Wynne
Jasanoff discusses her methods in organization of the conference: “Provocations”
Jasanoff”s theoretical contribution to the public sphere
public engagement v. public sphere
“the public” — as understood by Dewey — the phantom, incapable of informed self-governance
on the other hand, Congress understands public as capable of understanding highly technical issues
Jasanoff: it matters how we imagine “the public”
As new viewers come online, do introduce yourselves! And feel free to contribute your thoughts.
This morning’s “elsewhere” to start from was India, Jasanoff’s “elsewhere” is the law
Hi Sam. I’ve been around for a while – only left you for dinner when you had lunch
STS helps to “thicken” understanding of the public. STS shows that collective preferences are tied up with understanding, not existent a priori
“potential publics” ready to be engaged
liberal view of the public: group of individuals OR collective view of public, unified by shared norms
STS takes seriously the way the public is co-produced by science and technology
the problems of STS with regard to publics: our focus on technology can narrow our attention to the political
STS focuses on technoscientific moments, where we are following the science and technology
we need to take into consideration why publics are constructed and for whom (in relation to power)
what are publics useful for?
Could the slides Sheila is apparently using be made available?
I know, but I wasn’t able to get Sheila’s slides before the talk. We’ll try to get them up soon
what construction of the human does “nudge” theory assume?
Myles Jackson, historian of science
Great, thanks
historians of science are interested in public sphere as communication, openness of shared knowledge
Jackson: interested in communicability of scientific knowledge
scientific knowledge historically contrasted with secretive, private artisan knowledge
scientific knowledge as enabling a “public sphere from below”
Jackson contrasts this historical view of shared scientific knowledge with recent scholarship that emphasizes the secretive consequences of patents
Jackson: there are institutions/organizations that promote openness of science and technology knowledge
Jackson assumes that sharing is a scientific norm — is this historically true, when you look beyond the statements of scientists to their practice?
Brian Wynne: post-scientific life began in Edinborough
Wynne: interested in looking at scientific knowledge in public arenas
Wynne: how do we know what the public is actually concerned about?
Do we seem to presume what they care about or do we begin with the understanding that we don’t know?
Wynne: publics rarely claim to know better than the expert scientists
Wynne: it is also rarely recognized that public knowledge is of a different kind than the scientists’
Wynne: if we conceive of consulting with public only about risk and safety, then we already assume that the public can only comment on these aspects of science and technology.
Wynne: Difference and disagreement of the public is thought of as a deficit by policy makers and scientists (this is the “deficit model”)
Wynne: the scientization — science informing identity on publics– of public arena
* “imposing” instead of “informing” (see previous post)
who is this?
Hi Rob! I hope things are going well in Amsterdam. Do let us know if you’d like to ask a question.
Clark Miller (ASU):
Welcome to our viewers from Asia! Do get involved and post any questions you would like asked. We’ll do our best to get a mic and ask them.
Miller: the only kind of contestation that is legitimate in court is epistemic
Miller: the problem is about the institutional dimension of democratic practices (e.g. court system), not cognitive or epistemic deficit
Wynne: I was describing an institutional-cultural condition — it’s not a purely cognitive issue, but a cultural one
Climate issue can provide an entry to discussion of public and science
Jasanoff: nation by nation responses to “climate gate” reveal broader national cultural identities
Wynne: why has anthropogenic description of climate change been unproductive to rial the public?
Jasanoff: the fact that the IPCC has had so little effect is being blamed on the public.
Jasanoff: little evidence indicates that the public is actually against action on climate
Allistair: studying STS can be thought of as the study of science, technology, and the public sphere. So what is the difference?
Wynne: scientists in labs always imagining an audience (funders, patrons, patients, customers..)
Allistair: is there still a role for lab studies?
Jasanoff: lab studies is the basic method of STS. Of course, one should still continue to do them in interesting areas of S&T development.
Jasanoff: but new issues might draw us attention, e.g. ethics and values
Jasanoff: we can adopt a more expansive sense of “lab”
Without assuming that, as lab studies have, that the public is, somehow outside the lab.
Jasanoff: we have to not just go where S&T is producing the latest and greatest invention.
Ulrike Felt (U of Vienna)
Everything Ok here. The flow is having a little compression every 1/2 minute but I am not really missing any words.
ok. you could always mute the video feed and take the audio from the audio-only feed
Jasanoff: what we can do as STS scholars is to “nudge” — use the existent structures to our advantage
tried but that does not work for me right now the system says
Wynne: framing of public becomes a justification for the neglect of the public concern
quite right Brian!
Ulrike Felt: need to think about how to scale up our efforts
Question: there’s been an incorporation of info and communication technologies into the public sphere and scientific knowledge production. given this development, are you still seeing deficit structure models?
Jasanoff: we should be careful about how the questions of technological democratization are put in the first place.
Jasanoff: American preferences to construct agora as market rather than political forum results in construction of user as a consumer rather than citizen
Jasanoff: we should first find out the historical facts of WikiLeaks and then start asking questions about tech democratization
Kaushik Sunder Rajan is speaking
Kaushik: are different publics the products of the different underlying structures?
Wynne: society as the new laboratory — when we conduct experiments in a lab, we don’t know what questions the experiments will pose. If we’re experimenting in the field, we should think about the question for the experiment more.
Ted Porter: what are the objections to the deficit model? It seems that one is that deficit is not just what the public doesn’t know, but that there’s misinformation in the public sphere.
Jasanoff: we need to think about the interpretive framework — why were the statistics not trusted? why was the confidence over rated?
Jasanoff: yes, one should worry about misinformation circulating, but doesn’t that put us back to the question of designing the kind of figures/institutions that we trust
Jasanoff: we need to take into consideration the discourses and practices of the experiment as well as the realism.
Thanks for listening and see you in 15 minutes. – Margo
If you want to load up Trevor Pinch’s slides, they are here: http://goo.gl/PsZvy
We are back!
Langdon Winner introduces the panel and goes back 40 years, not 20.
Trevor Pinch begins his provocation…
Trevor: In STS we like having fights and disagreements. This is a strength, not a weakness.
Long debates over the role of the ampersand
Trevor gives a history of the founding of the STS Department at Cornell
with an emphasis on the car-parking debate that overshadowed the decision to create the STS department. Everyone wanted to talk about cars, so they created the department with barely any debate!
STS can never take stability for granted
opening the black box has shown that politics can be found in the hardest of artifacts.
Power lies with the small stuff of life as well as with the big stuff.
STS still has to show (sociology) how materiality and technology are embedded in classic social theories
David Kaiser is on now.
David Kaiser’s slides are here: http://goo.gl/t5PUu
scientific consensus is messy and usually the matter of face to face conversations
David Kaiser on cold war bubble: graph of US PhDs in physics compared to graph of financial crisis.
Importance of paying attention to scale in opening the black box.
Production of similarity in the rapid growth of physics departments was done through detailed micro practices like swapping syllabi.
Antoine Picon is on now.
Picon: Have we really opened the black box?
Picon: Reading STS, it sometimes seems too abstract.
Picon: STS has not sufficiently impacted the social sciences.
Picon: Even the thick descriptions are not sufficiently descriptive from a technical viewpoint.
Picon: STS appears pre-occupied with simple and simplified technical examples e.g. Latour’s hotel keys.
Brian: STS and SCOT is about roads not taken..
Picon: solution to my provocation may lie in new modes of co-operation
Morning everyone. We are having a slow start this morning, but things should be beginning in a few minutes.
Welcome to the third and final day of STS: The Next Twenty. The first panel this morning will start shortly, which will look at “The Core of STS: Where are we? Where are we headed?”
Good morning. For me the sounds is very faint again. Am I the only one?
I am having the same problem. Can’t hear what Clark’s saying at all
We apologize if there is some feedback on the audio. we are working on it and should have it sorted at the beginning of the next session.
Kris Saha points out that we will be having a discussion this lunchtime on the provocation document: http://stsnext20.org/a-provocation/
If you want to provide feedback, do so either on the document itself, via the email on that page, or commenting here during the lunch.
Clark Miller begins the session
When building a field we need to focus on the ideas of the field, but also its pedagogy. Today looks at the latter
The problem with being in a different place every day! We’re troubleshooting it now. Apologies.
Once every twenty years, is probably not too often to have a reflection on the core of the field. This panel provides a representation of that core.
That’s much better. Thanks!
Steven Hilgartner take over
Hilgartner describes the different ideas of the “core”
Much better now. Thanks for showing the slides!
Saying that STS is an independent discipline doesn’t say that members of it can’t be members of other disciplines as well.
Hilgartner goes through the “of” models
STS should try to move up the gradient of institutional strengthen, and to do that, we need a “core” of people involved.
This core of STS is most evident in pedagogy, and Hilgartner wants to talk about Cornell as an example.
you can find Cornell’s core syllabi here: http://stsnext20.org/syllabi/
STS has a tendency to not play up its own intellectual coherence. But it is comparable to other established disciplines.
You can find out more about where Cornell grads have gone here: http://www.sts.cornell.edu/peoplealum.php
Ulrike Felt takes over
Ulrike is ambivalent on talking about cores.
She discusses the Vienna STS degrees, but first looks back to the last two days of the meeting
A common idea is that what makes STS is it’s boundary-less-ness. Another is the reflexive question of the core of STS: how could our core come about?
over the last two days, we have also spoken much in spacial metaphors, travel, companions, intellectual homes, deserts, garden of eden, and more.
Institutionalizing creates needed space to open up and further develop.
Non-agreement needs institutionalization because it allows us to have battles without threatening our general livelihood.
[from the blogger] Welcome to our friends in Vienna! Do contribute to the discussion if you’d like!
The Viennese department of STS has existed since 1987.
You can view more about many STS programs around there world on our STS World page: http://stsnext20.org/sts-world/
If you want to add your program, do send an email to sts@hks.harvard.edu
The yearly discussions on pedagogy in Vienna is a classic case of boundary-drawing on the core of STS
three foci to organize teaching around: knowledge cultures; arenas of interaction; and politics of knowledge and instutitions
The need is to develop the core of STS in a way that it does not become a millstone around the necks of the students.
The purpose is to develop critical sensibilities, to make connections between seemingly disconnected entities, and to experiment with teh “how” of questions.
Yuko Fujigaki now takes the podium.
Yuko and Steve’s slides are available on the Program page: http://stsnext20.org/program/
Yuko’s main point of discussion is on STS education in Japan.
Yuko goes through the historical development of Japanese STS, culminating in the 4S in Tokyo last year.
There is no big STS center in Japan, but there are strong connections between the centers.
[from the blogger] We encourage our Japanese colleagues watching to say hello and comment on the discussion!
Yuko turns to the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. STS researchers are no analyzing the events.
Hi. As a half insider of Japanese STS community, I agree with Yuko that many educational themes in Japan have been closely related to ‘social problems’, or ‘failures of science’. I guess this is another reason why public engagement and ethics are dominant areas in Japanese STS.
We now turn to conversation from the floor.
question from the floor. Should there be a commitment from STS departments to hire STS graduates?
Ulrike answers: as you have seen, there are very different visions over what the field is. Perhaps it is good that they go into other fields and spread STS that way.
Fallon Samuels, PhD candidate @ Harvard: Can a mic be given to audience members? If not, can the questions and comments be reproduced here? (we cannot hear them) Thanks!
Steve Epstein asks: He’s not happy with the definition of the core as a process of boundary-drawing on who is in an out. Second question on institutional models of STS: do dual-citizenship models multiple the possibilities for graduating PhDs? Are the models useful in bringing STS back to other disciplines, reshaping those disciplines to more STS angles?
Hi Fallon, we have a mic now. and I am reproducing the questions. If they are not showing up, try refreshing your browser.
Stephen Hilgartner answers the collective definition issue: people who are going to be within the field need to know the various histories we have gone through. There isn’t one history, but the various histories can be collectively defined.
Clark Miller adds: when he was at Wisconsin, they hired many people in other departments, but they were mostly interdisciplinary departments. There, it was the STS unit that was the core many of these people identified with.
Is the sound better on the questions?
sound on the questions is great now for me
Yes, now it’s much better. Thanks.
yes, with the passed mic it is.
Comment from Sheila Jasanoff: She had to formally renounce her Indian citizenship upon her return to India recently. The Indian government is paranoid about the possible terrorist coming in. There is rarely a symmetry between things presented as “dual”
Jay Aronson from Carnegie-Mellon: making sure there are post-grad and grad opportunities is key. The unevenness in difference: there are no sociologists at Carnegie-Mellon. We need to be flexible in our models, as people come to STS from many different places. But we do need places like Cornell and others to get a strong STS training.
Good point Jay’s making – STS needs to be present and visible in order to attract possibly interested students
Arthur Daemmrich: Do we want to build a Gates Foundation or a Ford Foundation model? If it’s the Ford model, we need disciplines.
Greg Eghigian, Former director at Penn State: understanding STS in an age of entrenchment. The reasons why Penn State dropped STS. why were the projects cut? They were all interdisciplinary, and were seen as “luxury items”. Despite what the SSRC and NSF say the disciplines seem to reign supreme in hard times. Is STS just a luxury enterprise? Having tenured lines didn’t protect us.
Final comments from the panel.
I support the point Jay made that we need to think about how other people see us. Sociologists or anthropologists may not have ‘agreed’ cores of their field, but we seem to assume that they do and they are institutionally or disciplinary secured. We need to be identified by others as a field first and if we are not happy with the way we are identified then each of us can send stronger messages about what we do or what our sensibilities are about. Having wrote this, I am not 100% sure who ‘we’ are…
Yuko: in Japan, the resources devoted to STS is increasing.
Ulrike: we are moving in different directions, but as a result we need to be attentive to stabilizing the field in one way or another. We need to be careful in how we talk about our field. We can use our own political knowledge to position ourselves.
Steve: We have to make the case that STS needs to be part of the core mission of the University. It is inconceivable to me that if we were to reconstruct the university today that we would not have a department of science and technology studies.
Sarah Wagner @ UNC Greensboro: I heartily agree with Arthur Daemmrich, but see it from a slightly different view. In the NC system’s stated logic in staving off cuts, emphasis has been less on disciplinary entrenchment than community engagement–that is, how is our research relevant to local, region communities? STS has much to offer public policy debates because of its dynamic interdisciplinary perspectives.
Thanks for your discussion! We will have a short break.
Welcome back! Our next panel looks at “STS and Careers: Have we come home?”
Ben Hurlbut begins the discussion.
The panel consists of early career STS Scholars, from the newly tenured, to the just getting started.
Jay Aronson takes over. He is now Associate professor of STS at Carnegie Mellon, thought that’s an unofficial title. He deals with civilian casualty in times of conflict.
He doesn’t consider himself to be a theoretical core, but definitely as the next generation of STS Scholars. He likes being able to choose approaches from many disciplines.
STS provides a sense of freedom that other fields don’t offer. For example, being able to work on social forms in many different fora.
Jay discusses the usefulness of having places like Harvard were scholars can come to recharge their skills and passion for STS.
Brice Laurent now takes over. He is both an STS scholar and a civil servant.
In new problems within the French government, there is a strong push to defining the relevant science in conjunction with defining the problem to be dealt with. This provides space for STS to enter and contribute to the discussion and policy debates.
The Center for Sociology and Innovation is a unique place for STS in France.
Shobita Parthasarathy begins with her path towards STS, which started in Biology.
It wasn’t until she was on a Presidential Commission that she encountered STS. Until then, she didn’t think about disciplines as different places with different trainings
At Cornell, she gained the language to talk about the experiences she had in Washington.
There are important formal institutional connections, but we should also focus on the need to strong informal networks.
STS multiples the options in the professional school arena that we should recognize. Shobita eventually got a jon in a policy school, and hasn’t changed the type of work she does. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed her priorities, but she is still thinking in STS ways.
Her role now involves a lot of translational work, and the fact that STS has footholds in many field is a resource.
Anne Pollock now begins her thoughts.
“Race, biology, and American culture”, the position she got, sounded like an interesting description of her dissertation title. She didn’t want to label herself as a sociologist, so the STS program was a good fit.
A central question for her: how do we tell stories about technology as we tell stories about race and class?
Anne describes current moves within the STS program, which includes the move towards a certificate program. But it is still a work in progress.
Kris Saha takes over.
He spends most time in the lab looking at who has the power to create knowledge.
To do his work effectively, he feels he needs to find a home in STS. But he has yet to see a position open for STS and engineering, or STS and stem cell research.
Sonja Schmid rounds out the panel. She went through Ulrike’s program in Vienna.
She then got on to the PhD program at Cornell, which allowed her to combine interest in technology with understanding complex cultural phenomena in a critical way.
She is now in the STS department at Virginia Tech, which is largely engineering. Every year there are a few STS courses that the engineers take that are very popular. The STS department also recently launched an undergraduate major.
She is now in the STS department at Virginia Tech, which is largely engineering. Every year there are a few STS courses that the engineers take that are very popular. The STS department also recently launched an undergraduate major.
Sonja describes the relationship Virginia Tech has with the Washington DC community, where they have a satellite campus.
Sonja describes the relationship Virginia Tech has with the Washington DC community, where they have a satellite campus.
If there are questions the online audience would like to ask, please share them.
Anne Pollock says that Georgia Tech as a strong STS community even though there is little institutionalization.
Shobita: the problem lies in training the next generation of STS scholars.
Kris’ comments have highlighted precisely the point that Sheila made in the last sesson about the asymmetry of dual citizenship.
Kris comments: he benefited from at least having the STS program at Berkeley (where he did his PhD). It was an important space to connect with scholars in the field.
Sonja add: these spaces are important for both faculty and students. This is why institutionalization matters.
Ben asks: what role do you see for the disciplinary identity of STS in your toolkit for positioning yourself?
Kris replies: the metaphor of translation is appropriate. “Science policy” is a more recognized term, but he can point to the outputs from the community, which people in other disciplines can connect with.
Shobita adds: in running the STP program, she varies in labeling her lectures as STS, but STS ideas inflect all her teaching.
Question from the floor, from Nicolle, a colleague at Cornell: she struggles with explaining the value of what she does.
Shobita responds: students assume a traditional deficit model. If that’s what brings them in the door, that’s ok, but we then try to work with (re)shaping that perspective.
Cormac O’Raifeartaigh asks a question: The lack of penetration of STS into science is still striking. Much of the last few decades of STS scholarship is ignored (after the Science Wars).
Ben asks for Cormac’s reflections on his year at Harvard
Cormac: my colleagues and I hugely underestimate the amount of knowledge that STS has built up. The lack of understanding is often on the scientist’s side rather than the STS scholar’s side.
Thomas Pfister asks Brice: From your bureaucratic experience, did you find that STS might be an instrument to discipline the science?
Brice replies: STS is more identified in France as a field of expertise that needs to be included in policy making.
Mark During comments on experience with practitioners: in interacting with them, the concept of ethics cuts across to a lot of issues. A key to that process is to bring in STS. It is a body of expertise that provides a new and interesting perspective from the viewpoints of practitioners at all levels.
Jay responds: he’s be working with practitioners, and the minute you start probing them, they see it as very political. Ethics is an interesting way in, but ethical questions are political questions. That’s both bigger and more basic that STS in many ways.
I would like to ask a more career-related question, since all of these panel members are at an early stage in their career. How do they see their own career develop in the next few years, between the pressures of teaching, engaging with both scientists and the public ‘out there’, application for funds, etc. and how do they see their position in relation to the further establishment of the field/discipline of STS – which is presumably something they will be responsible for?
Erik, where are you watching us from?
Sorry we didn’t get to your question Erik.
I am watching from Maastricht, the Netherlands – though I’m currently working with Daniel Barben in the “institutional desert” in Germany. And never mind about the question – I found the discussion very interesting anyway.
Shobita responds: Does not want to lose her STS training in a policy sphere.
Trevor Pinch: is it Science and Technology Studies, or Science, TEchnology, and Society?
Jay and Shobita don’t really think it matters.
Anne points out that many in her area actually use Science Studies
Javier Lezaun asks: many on the panel when through post-doc positions, but didn’t talk about it. Also, regarding research funding bodies, they are fragile elements. What are your reflections on interacting with them?
Interesting question by Javier – it is my impression in continental Europe as well, that the postdoc phase is the most tricky one in establishing an STS career!
Ben and Jay say that their funding time was critical in their career development.
Shobita adds: her postdocs were instrumental in allowing her to write her book. The feeling, though, is that there were a lot of postdocs, but not many tenure-line postions.
Kris has a postdoc from Zurich, which really carved out space for his STS work.
Sonja had two postdocs. It was a good time to extend and solidify her networks, and helped create her home. It also allowed her to make STS recognizable to other communities like security studies, that did not have a prior awareness of STS.
Alister Isles questions: how can we create new homes for STS?
Shobita comments: centers don’t necessarily create strong roots. Secondly, if we make centers that revolve around hot topics, they need to be constructed carefully to ensure they still contribute to the larger community.
Jay: It’s not the role of the profession, necessarily, to create the jobs. It is, however, the role of scholars or trained practitioners to point to the value of an STS training.
As the panel comes to a close, it’s time for the presentation of the poster prizes.
Kris Saha and Sheila Jasanoff present the awards.
Next we’ll be talking about the provocation document. Do read it over and provide any comments: http://stsnext20.org/a-provocation/
Back at 12:50 EDT.
We are back to discuss the provocation document
It can be read at http://stsnext20.org/a-provocation/
What do we share as a community? Is STS more than simply the sum of a variety of disciplinary perspectives?
What is the relationship between the center and the periphery of STS?
Andy Lakoff: What compromises are we willing to make to assist with STS’s institutionalization
Clark Miller: This document ought to make a strong statement about funding for STS research.
Clark Miller: We need to an actor network analysis of NSF funding for STS
Sheila: How have the large order of about $1M investments in STS worked out? Cornell (STS), UCSD etc
unfortunately the current speaker cannot be heard on the video
Current Speaker is from the NSF
Discussing the political attacks on social science funding at the NSF.
sounds fine from my end. did you try reloading?
We (STS) needs to make a case that we are making a difference to ensure continued funding
Chris: What are the types of impact descriptions that would be useful?
reloading does not make a diference Sam (funny I see you. Hi!))
Question: Does NSF have a reporting mechanism in place to record funded research impacts?
Is anyone else having this problem? It seems fine from my end
No problems here
Tomas: Important to keep contact with funding agencies even when one is not actively submitting grant applications.
Alan Irwin: In Europe the humanities are feeling pressured.
In Europe the humanities have a more expansive vision in terms of making a difference and are making broad social arguments
Alan: How could we have a more expansive vision articulated in the provocation document?
Nelly: Reinforces the point that STS needs to keep contact with funding agencies and be in conversation with them.
To all watching, please feel free to leave commentary on the provocation page.
Ben: Deep dependency created if STS has to attach itself and cling to whatever science is in the ascendancy
Ben: Is it possible to maintain independence and expand our claims of expertise in these funding mechanisms?
Trevor: Economists while reviewing their own work are very positive while STS reviewers may tend to be less effusive. Is this a problem?
Sheila: STS scholars need to love each other more in their reviews. Historians do and tend to do better
Observation: the question isn’t about relevance, it is about added value!
Jonathan Marks: The real challenge for STS is to find a way to respond to requests to collaborate and participate without being seen as in service to others.
we will be back in 10 minutes
Next session beginning with introductory remarks.
John Beatty: A surprising thought–at UBC, the new horizon is integrating philosophy into a leadership role with STS.
John Beatty: Although there are intellectual challenges with integrating philosophy into STS, some of the difficulties are personality-based. Some philosophers just don’t want to play ball. But if they do, there are opportunities for productive collaboration.
Question for those following the live feed: what role should philosophy play in STS?
John Beatty: this is not your father’s Oldsmobile—this is a new philosophy!
And the conference goes multimedia with our first full video courtesy of Stefan Helmreich.
The video can be found here: http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/9502-dv-lab-2011
And here’s the website of his program: http://web.mit.edu/unseen/
Myles Jackson: STS at NYU has been indelibly shaped by the memories of the Sokal affair.
Jackson: New undergraduate program being developed at NYU–STEMS (science, technology, environment, and medicine).
Jackson: what is the moral responsibility of producing graduate students at a time when there are not a lot of available faculty positions?
Lakoff: the ecology of Southern California—an island on the land—offers interesting opportunities for STS insights.
Lakoff: New programs being developed in STS at USC: an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate.
Lakoff: STS scholars can strategically use the fact that scientists are very worried about issues such as the public understanding of science.
Clark Miller: ASU is taking seriously 2 fundamental STS propositions. The first is that the university is a site where the modern world is being constituted and is adjusting what it is doing accordingly.
The second is that we should challenge the idea that the university should have a single model. It’s odd that the United States has 150 Research 1 universities organized along the same model. ASU is seeking to create new models, and STS has been centrally involved.
Miller: by creating new types of programs, ASU is training STS-informed students who are going into a broad array of academic, public, and private sector positions. This is an interesting way that STS ideas can be spread.
Manjari Mahajan: what is striking so far is the variety of models presented. What kinds of opportunities are created in centers that might not exist in a department?
David Winickoff: There is a new effort to create STS at Berkeley that is focusing on pedagogy. This is a different approach than he has seen taken by other institution
Jasanoff: One of the insights of STS is that knowledge is being created in new ways as universities change and disciplines change. What implications does this have for the practice and institutionalization of STS?
Xaq Frolich asks: how might the discussion here (which is US-focused) relate to creating centers abroad?
Rob, do you have an answer?
How about some input from our colleagues watching in Portugal, Taiwan, India, and Italy?
If you are having trouble with the video feed, try this link: http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/1999/01/89004/liveClassroom.shtml
Richard from York, Toronto: Most comments are about research or graduate studies. What about undergraduate programs and how might they fit into our conversations?
Kaushik Sunder Rajan: Thinking about STS in India, one realizes there is very little institutional standing of the field as we know it in the west, but that there is very vibrant engagement with the issues STS scholars care about.
Kaushik Sunder Rajan: Thinking about STS in India, one realizes there is very little institutional standing of the field as we know it in the west, but that there is very vibrant engagement with the issues STS scholars care about.
After a quick coffee break, we’ll be back for the concluding wrap-up with Mike Lynch
Again, for those experiencing a problem with the live feed, we encourage you to try the alternative feed: http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/1999/01/89004/liveClassroom.shtml
The main live stream is now back online. If you want to pre-load Mike Lynch’s slides, you can grab them here: http://goo.gl/YrO4r
We are back!
Last Session
Mike Lynch presents an editorial view of STS
He will be speaking about trends in STS
STS moving away from HPS towards anthro. and cultural studies
Previous contentious arguments are fading into the background.
STS literature is engaging the ‘global south’ but most of this work is being published by scholars outside of the ‘global south’.
Great point by Michael Lynch: interconceptuality not interdisciplinarity.
Michael Lynch: STS is unified in Hybridity
How should STS deal with political crtique that focuses on scientific uncertainty?
Mike Lynch: symmetry and impartiality mean that STS could crtique the construction of uncertainty as well as certainty
Mike Lynch the agenda of the last 20 years was set by writings in the previous 20
Ulrike Felt (outgoing Editor of STHV) responds to Mike Lynch
Questions from our virtual audience?
Goodbye everyone!
Thanks for participating!
Thanks to Sam and all the other livebloggers. It was really valuable to be able to follow the conference virtually!
Fully agree! Thanks for making our virtual presence possible.
Any estimates when the recordings will be made available?
Right, Thank you so much for your efforts to make the live feed/blogging available to us!
Yes, there will be recordings posted. We’ll try to get them up as soon as possible, but will likely be at least a week.
Thanks to all of our virtual participants! If you have comments on the Provocation, to share them. We’ll also be putting up the provocations from the Friday panels at some point.