Social Studies of Science and Technology: Looking Back, Ahead

311 Pages·2003·6.28 MB·English

by  Richard Whitley (auth.)

SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:
LOOKING BACK, AHEAD
/
Sociology of the Sciences
VOLUME XXIII
Managing Editor:
Peter Weingart, Universitiit Bielefeld, Germany
Editorial Board:
Yaron Ezrahi, The Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem, Israel
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.
Bernward Joerges, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Germany
Everett Mendelsohn, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.
Yoichiro P. Murakami, University of Tokyo, Japan
Helga Nowotny, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Max-Planck Institutfiir Wissenschaftsgeschichte,
Berlin, Germany
Terry Shinn, GEMAS Maison des Sciences de I'Homme, Paris, France
Richard D. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University ofM anchester,
United Kingdom
Bjoern Wittrock, SCASSS, Uppsala, Sweden
The titles published in this series are listed at the end oft his volwne.
SOCIAL STUDIES
OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY:
LOOKING BACK, AHEAD
Editedby
BERNWARD JOERGES
WissenschaJtszentrum Berlin,
Berlin, Gennany
and
HELGA NOWOTNY
ETH Ziirich,
Ziirich, Switserland
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+B USINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-1482-6 ISBN 978-94-010-0185-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0185-4
Printed an acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003
Softcover r~rint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2003
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form Of by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface: Yet Another Turn xi
Bernward Joeges and Helga Nowotny
Chapter I: THE SOCIOLOGY or THE SCIENCES YEARBOOK:
A PERSONAL RETROSPECTIVE 1
Richard Whitley
Un Peu d'Histoire
The Changing Context of the Yearbook 5
Part I STS and Society
Chapter 2: SCIENCES, SCIENCE STUDIES AND THEIR PUBLICS: 11
SPECULA TING ON FUTURE RELA nONS
Ulrike Felt
Introductory Remarks II
Distance Lends Enchantment?! - Communicating Science
to 'the Public' 14
Mise en Scene of Science: The Performative Character of Science
Communication 16
Loosing Support for Science: Mise en Sense versus Mise en Scene
of Science and Technology 18
Repositioning: Dialog, Participation and Working the Boundaries 21
Continuities in the PUS Debate 25
Looking Ahead: When STS Meets its Publics 26
Chapter 3: IS THAT POLITICS? 33
Emilie Gomart and Maw·ten Hajer
Making Politics Into an Empirical Question 33
The Issue of Politics in Science and Technology Studies (STS) 35
Policy Making and the Re-Invention of Politics 41
Searching for 'Interesting' Political Practices 46
Form l. The Development of an 'Area-Oriented Sketch' 47
Form 2. Participating in the Determination of the
Draft-Regional Plan 47
Form 3. Air Southbound 49
Form 4. Air Plus 51
Form 5. 'Spatial Organization Hoeksche Waard' 52
Conclusion: Rethinking Politics 54
v
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 4: SCIENCE AND THE POSTMODERN SHIFT IN
CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACIES 63
Yaran Ezrahi
Part II STS and The Social Sciences
Chapter 5: HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE: UNDERSTANDING
MODERNITY AND RETHINKING SOCIAL STUDIES
OF SCIENCE 79
Bjorn Wittrock
Modernity and Origins of Disciplinary Closure 80
Modernity and History: The Rediscovery and Rejection of Global
History 81
Global History and Globalisation: Rethinking Social Theory 82
The Formation of Modernity and the Rise of Social Science 83
The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines: The Social Question,
the Research University, and the New Nation-States 88
Consolidation and Contestation: The Social Sciences in the Context
of the Interwar World 92
Internationalisation, Expansion and Utilisation: Changing Contexts
of Social Science 93
History of Social Science and the Rethinking of Social Studies of
Science 95
Chapter 6: THE 'TRIPLE HELIX' AND 'NEW PRODUCTION OF
KNOWLEDGE' AS SOCIO-COGNITIVE FIELDS 103
Terry Shinn
A Pinch of Reflexivity 104
Methods, Claims and Concepts 106
Sociology versus Introspection 110
Challenges 113
Chapter 7: THE CONUNDRUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: CHANGING
LANDSCAPES OF KNOWLEDGE AT THE TURN OF THE
MILLENNIUM 117
Sabine Maasen
Becoming Conscious of Consciousness 117
Metaphors 121
Metaphors of Consciousness / Consciousness as Metaphor 121
On Metaphor Analysis 123
A Metaphor Analysis of Consciousness 125
Conscious/ness in SCI / SSCI 125
Absolute and Relative Occurrence 125
Fields 126
TABLE OF CONTENTS VII
Journals 128
Titles/Themes 128
Frequency of Words 129
Reviews 130
Most Often Cited Authors 13 I
On Scientific Approaches to Consciousness:
Views From Within 133
Making Claims on 'Consciousness': Neuroscience 133
Rediscovering/Reclaiming Consciousness: Psychology
and Philosophy 135
JCS: An Exercise in Extending & Integrating the Debate on
Consciousness 138
The Legitimating Narrative for a Multidisciplinary Effort 138
Themes and Approaches in Eight Years of the JCS 139
On Scientific-Cum-Humanist Approaches to Consciousness:
Views From Within 143
Editorials 143
Conference Reports (ASSC) 143
Consciousness Studies: A Hybrid Field 145
Chapter 8: IN A CONSTITUTIONAL MOMENT: SCIENCE AND SOCIAL
ORDER AT THE MILLENNIUM 155
Sheila JasanojJ
New Worlds to Order 155
How Constitutions Change 157
Science Studies and Constitutional Law: Minding the Gap 161
Constructive Constitutionalism 165
Self: Identity, Community 166
Corporate Rulers, Consuming Citizens 168
Empires of Knowledge 171
Conclusion: Toward Post-National Democracy 174
Part III STS - Emergence of a Field
Chapter 9: GROWTH, DIFFERENTIATION, EXPANSION AND CHANGE
OF IDENTITY - THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE 183
Peter Weingart
Introduction 183
Exponential Growth and its End 184
Growth, Expansion, and Differentiation 187
Growth, Public Communication and Quality Control 190
Growth and Institutional Identity of Science 191
Summary 196
Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 10: INSTITUTIONALIZING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
IN THE ACADEMY 201
Stephen Hilgartner
Present the Intellectual Focus of the Field Clearly 202
Elaborate a Vision of What the Field can Achieve 203
Identify the Structural Barriers to Success 204
Develop Some Core Strategic Principles 205
Address the Objections of Skeptics 207
Conclusion 209
Chapter 11: PROLEPSIS
Considerations for Histories of Science After 2000 211
Michael Hagner and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger
Structuralism versus Constructivism 211
Physiognomies of Experimentation 214
Epistemic Objects 218
Spaces of Knowledge 220
Mentalities 222
Conclusion 225
Chapter 12: JOY IN REPETITION MAKES THE FUTURE DISAPPEAR
A Critical Assessment of the Present State of STS 229
Michael Guggenheim and Helga Nowotny
The Current Joys ofSTS 229
How To Get There: The Missing History of STS 234
What is the 'Science' in Science Studies? 237
The Place (and a Plea) for STS in the Social Sciences 242
The Place (and a Plea) for Social Theory in STS 245
Epilogue: Le Nouvel Esprit du STS 250
Postscript
Chapter 13: REFLECTIONS ON THE MILLENNIUM, CALENDARS,
AND THE GREGORIAN HEGEMONY 261
Bernward Joerges
The Gregorian Timescape and the Millennium Craze 262
Fixing Time the Gregorian Way 262
The Three Strands of the Millennium Craze 264
Calendars and Periodizations a/Social Studies of Science and
Technology 265
Science in the Short Twentieth Century 266
Technology in the American Century 267
The End of Science - Fin-de-Siecle and Millennialism in
Science Studies 269
TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
Heroic Periodization 271
Metropolitan Time, or: Calendric Hegemony 272
Local Calendars/Global Calendars and the Colonization
of Time 272
Resistance from Within 275
Resistance from Without 277
Hegemony, Competition, Revolution, Reform? 279
Macro-Time and Calendars in Social Studies of Science
and Technology 280
More Observations on Time Scales and Calendrics 280
The Study of Macro-Time 282
Calendars as Big Time Machines 284
LIST OF CONTRiBUTORS 293
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 295
AUTHOR INDEX 299
PREFACE
BERNW ARD JOERGES AND HELGA NOWOTNY
YET ANOTHER TURN
The thing that doesn't fit is the
thing that's most interesting.
Richard Fcynman
This volume was originally conceived as a contribution to yet another 'tum', not cap
tured by one of the many adjectives that have served to describe the collective meander
ing of the scholarly community in search of direction, It was meant to mark the millen
nial turn, a seemingly purely chronological event, but one in search for great meanings
and invested with loaded significances. The editors wanted to seize the opportunity of
the moment in order to pause and reflect on the sociology and history of social studies of
science and technology. The moment came and went and the new millennium, barely
nine months later, thrust its historical marker upon the world through a horrendous and
cruel shock in an unforeseen and unforeseeable way. Since then, the world appears more
vulnerable and volatile, fragmented and fraught with uncertainty. The universal values
as bequeathed by the Enlightenment are either refused or appear refuted. The dream of a
universal civilization which has accompanied the unfolding of the existing multiple
modernities in their historically unique trajectories, has been discarded and its promises
in tatters. The belief in a process of progressive rationalization and in the ongoing, al
though repeatedly disrupted, validation of universal cultural forms, which have been
hailed as providing the underlying strength in the relation between science and society
(whatever is understood by these terms), clearly is in need of revision.
At this conjuncture of humanity and its future, is it sufficient to forge ahead at the
frontiers of knowledge, exciting as they are, while social institutions and human agency
need to be re-thought on a global scale? What is the role of science in an age ofuncer
tainty, given the diversity of its contemporary institutional forms and its multiple com
plex layers of practices, driven by the dynamics of scientific ideas and intertwined with
new technologies and instrumentation? There can be no doubt that science is a powerful
institution, still working in close alliance with industry and the state, whose innovative
potential fuels the economic competitiveness and military prowess of nations. Much has
been said about the highly differentiated nature of scientific practices, representations
and beliefs and their assumed malleability, subject to cultural influences, which are in
tum based upon material forms, shaped and driven by instrumentation, technologies and
techniques. Universal theories are challenged to stand up to a recalcitrant societal reality
xi
B. Joerges and H. Nowotny (eds.), Social Studies oj Science and Technology: Looking BackAhead, xi-xvii
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.