Science & Technology Studies
Course description
Interpreting, explaining, and reconstructing the dynamics of science, in specific sites and in their broadest social context, raise many challenges to conventional strategies of representation and the intellectual division of labor within and among the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. This seminar aims to translate and extend critical perspectives across these divides, by exploring recent literature (especially, but by no means exclusively, from science studies) on issues such as the the following: the tension between textual and materialist discourses; undermining the authority of the representer; theorizing the heterogeneity of constructive processes; implicit models and images of agency and of individuals; disciplining, without collapsing "unruly complexity;" and developing a reflexive standpoint for interpretations, explanations, and interventions.
Outline of topics:
1. Introduction: text, images, interpretation, explanation, rhetoric, intervention
(Taylor & Blum)
2. Language vs. production; discourse & practice
(Markus, Hacking, Baudrillard)
3. Crises of representation
(Marcus & Fischer, Crapanzano, Woolgar, Hirschauer)
4. Heterogeneous constructions vs. unitary contextual determination
(Taylor, Latour, Sewell)
5. Representation, intervention and representation-intervention
(Markus, Hacking, Keller, Rorty)
6. Making up individuals: images of agency
(Robinson, Latour, Henriques et al., Hacking, Marginson, Calhoun)
7. Biography in science studies -- a "crucible of social forces?"
(Young, Moore, Richards & Schuster, Keller, Shapin, Fischer)
8. Unruly complexity and its disciplining
(Taylor, Wolf, Star, Yurick, Haraway, Davis)
9. Exploring methods for explanation, counterfactual analysis included
(Rosenberg, Taylor, Unger, Fish, Schuster, Moore, )
10. Exposing methods of interpretation and narration
(Haraway, Foucault, Landau, Clifford, Marcus, Gilbert & Mulkay, Myers)
11. Situated standpoints, practical reflexivity, and reconstructing interventions
(Taylor, Fish, Haraway)
12. Who/ where are "we"? Moving the natural sciences towards crises of representation-intervention
13 & 14. Student presentations and/or themes raised by students
Draft 1 of reading list -- suggestions welcome
1. Introduction: text, images, interpretation, explanation, rhetoric, intervention
Taylor, P.J. and A.S. Blum. "Ecosystems as circuits: Diagrams and the limits of physical analogies." Biology & Philosophy (1991): 275-294.
2. Language vs. production; discourse & practice
Markus, Gyorgy. "Editorial preface & Preface." In Language and Production, Pp. vii-xv. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986.
Hacking, Ian. "Why does language matter to philosophy?" In Why does language matter to philosophy?, Pp. 157-187 + notes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 .
Baudrillard, Jean. The mirror of production. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975.
3. Crises of representation
Crapanzano, Vincent. "Hermes Dilemma." In Writing culture, ed. James Clifford and George Marcus. Pp. 51-76. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Marcus, George and Michael Fischer. Anthropology as cultural critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Woolgar, S., ed. Knowledge and reflexivity. 1988.
Hirschauer, Stefan. "The manufacture of bodies in surgery." Social Studies of Science 21 (1991): 279-319 and his commentary on composing this paper given at the 1991 meetings of the Society for Social Studies of Science (ms.).
4. Heterogeneous constructions vs. unitary contextual determination
Taylor, P.J. "Technocratic optimism, H.T. Odum and the partial transformation of ecological metaphor after World War 2." Journal of the History of Biology 21 (1988): 213-244.
Taylor, P. "Building on the metaphor of construction in analytic science studies," Ms.
Latour, Bruno. "Irreduction of 'the sciences'." In The Pastuerization of France, Pp. 212-236. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Latour, B. Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987.
Sewell, William H. "A theory of structure: Duality, agency and transformation." American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992): 1-29.
5. Representation, intervention and representation-intervention
Markus, Gyorgy. Language and Production. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986.
Keller, E. "Feminist perspectives on science studies." Science, Technology & Human Values 13 (1988): 235-249.
Hacking, I. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton University Press. Princeton, 1979.
plus Reading Rorty : critical responses to Philosophy and the mirror of nature (and beyond) Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1990.
6. Making up individuals: images of agency
Robinson, S. "The Art of the Possible," Free Associations (Pilot Issue), 1984.
Latour, Bruno. "Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world." In Science observed: Perspectives on the social study of science, ed. K. Knorr-Cetina and M. Mulkay. Pp. 141-170. London: Sage, 1983.
Latour, Bruno. "The impact of science studies on political philosophy." Science, Technology & Human Values 16 (1, 1991): 3-19.
Henriques, Julian, Wendy Holloway, Cathy Urwin, Couze Venn, and Valerie Walkerdine. "Constructing the subject." In Changing The Subject, ed. Julian Henriques, Wendy Holloway, Cathy Urwin, Couze Venn, and Valerie Walkerdine. Pp. 92-118. London: Methuen, 1984 .
I. Hacking (1986), "Making up individuals," in Reconstructing individualism ed. T. Heller et al.
Heller, T., ed. Reconstructing individualism : autonomy, individuality, and the self in Western thought. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.
Marginson, S. "The economically rational individual." Arena 84 (1988): 105-114 .
Calhoun, Craig. "Morality, identity, and historical explanation: Charles Taylor and the sources of the self." Sociological Theory 9 (2, 1991): 232-263 .
7. Biography in science studies -- a "crucible of social forces?"
Young, Robert M. "Darwin and the genre of biography." In One Culture, ed. G. Levine. Pp. 203-224. 1987.
Moore, James. "Darwin of Down: The evolutionist as squarson naturalist." In The Darwinian Heritage, ed. D. Kohn. Pp. 435-481. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Richards, Evelleen and John Schuster. "The feminine method as myth and accounting resource: A challenge to gender studies and social studies of science." Social Studies of Science 19 (697-720, 1989):
Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Just what is so difficult about the concept of gender as a social category." Social Studies of Science 19(1989): 721-724..
Shapin, Steven. "Who was Robert Boyle? The creation and presentation of an experimental self." (Manuscript,1991) & Shapin, Steven. "New experiments ethico-theological touching the spring of a natural philosophical life." B. J. Hist. Sci. (1992): (in press)
Young, Robert M. "Biography: The basic discipline for human science." Free Associations 11 (1988): 108-130 .
Sulloway, Frank. "Review of Bowlby's Charles Darwin: A new life, New York Review of Books, Oct. 10, '91.
Fischer, M. "Autobiographical voices (1,2,3) and mosaic memory." Autobiography and Post-modernism. Ed. K. Ashley. 1992 .
8. Unruly complexity and its disciplining
Taylor, P.J. "Community." In Keywords in evolutionary biology, ed. E.F. Keller and E. Lloyd. Pp. 52-60. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Taylor, P.J. (ms.) "Building on the metaphor of construction in analytic social studies of science"
Wolf, E. "Afterword." In Europe and People without History. Berkeley: U. Calif. Press, 1982.
Star, S. "Introduction: The sociology of science and technology." Social Problems 35 (1988): 197-205 .
Yurick, Sol. Behold metatron, the recording angel. New York: Semiotext(e), 1985
Haraway, Donna. "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s." Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65-107.
Davis, Mike. "Chinatown, Part Two? The Internationalization of downtown Los Angeles." New Left Review 164 (July/August, 1987): 65-86 .
9. Exploring methods for explanation, counterfactual analysis included
Rosenberg, C. "Wood or trees? Ideas and actors in the history of science." Isis 79 (1988): 565-570.
Taylor, P. "Re/constructing socio-ecologies: Systems dynamic modeling of nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa." In The Right Tool for the Job: At work in the twentieth century life sciences, ed. A. Clarke and J. Fujimura. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. "Nature and Intentions of the Argument: Explanatory and Programmatic Themes." In False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Pp. 1-41. Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 .
Schuster, J. "Bruno's (no history required) tour of the past." University of Wollongong Science & Technology Studies, Working Paper No. 1,1991 .
Moore, Sally F. "Epilogue: From types to sequences: social change in anthropology." In Social facts and fabrications: 'Customary law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980. Pp. 320-329. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 .
Guyer, Jane I. "Multiplication of Labor: Historical Methods in the Study of Gender and Agricultural Change in Modern Africa." Current Anthropology 29 (2, 1988): 247-272.
Gallison, P. and Stump (eds.) on Contingency
10. Exposing methods of interpretation and narration
Haraway, Donna J. Primate visions : gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Landau, Misia. Narratives of human evolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
Clifford, James and George E. Marcus, ed. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Clifford, James. The predicament of culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Gilbert, G.N. and M. Mulkay. Opening Pandora's box: A sociological analysis of scientists' discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Myers, Greg. Writing biology: texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Foucault, Michel. "Questions of Method: An Interview with Michel Foucault." I&C 8 (1981): 3-14.
11. Situated standpoints, practical reflexivity, and reconstructing interventions
Taylor, Peter. "Mapping ecologists' ecologies of knowledge." In Philosophy of Science 1990, Vol. 2: 95-109
Fish, Stanley. "Anti-Foundationalism, Theory Hope, and the Teaching of Composition." In Doing What Comes Naturally:Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, ed. Stanley Fish. Pp. 343-355. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989.
Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledge: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective." Feminist Studies 14 (3, 1988): 575-599.
12. Who/ where are we? Moving the natural sciences towards a crisis of representation-intervention
13 & 14. Student presentations and/or themes raised by students