This course is designed to provide newcomers to S&TS an overview of some of the major themes and issues that occupy it, and an opportunity to investigate ways in which influential scholars in the field have gone about their work.

Requirements:

In addition to active participation in class discussion, students will also prepare in advance of each class a synopsis of the week's reading, identifying arguments, common themes, oppositions, and raising questions worthy of further consideration. These synopses should not overwhelm your efforts in this class, but should help you to develop your understanding of the readings into a vibrant class discussion of the issues.

A term paper will be required by the first day of classes of spring semester 2003; this paper, of at least 5000 words, will consider and attempt to synthesize some of the issues encountered in the course and their place within the larger field of S&TS and related intellectual inquiry. A modest proposal and title for your paper will be due NOV. 19; in that class, each student will briefly discuss their plans for the paper with the rest of the class, so that we can collectively offer feedback and guidance.

Materials:

All of the books used in this course, as well as the anthologies and journals in which articles appear, will be on reserve at Olin Library, in Reading Room 601.

Schedule:

Week 1: Introduction
SEPT. 3

Week 2: A Foundational Text
SEPT. 10

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1st ed. 1962) -- use the 2nd or 3rd ed. with postscript.

Week 3: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
SEPT. 17

Barry Barnes and David Bloor, "Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge," in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (1981), pp.21-47.
David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (1st ed. 1976), 2nd edition (1991), Chs.1-3, conclusion, afterword.
H.M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (1985).

Week 4: A Classic of SSK in Action
SEPT. 24

Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (1985).

Week 5: Actor-Network Theory and After
OCT. 1

Michel Callon, "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay," in John Law (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (1986), pp.196-229.
Bruno Latour, Science in Action (1987), introduction, and Chs.1, 2, 6
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (1993), Chs.1, 2.
David Bloor, "Anti-Latour"; Bruno Latour, "For David BloorÉ and Beyond"; David Bloor, "Reply to Bruno Latour," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30A (1999), pp.81-136.

Week 6: Experiments and Material Constraints
OCT. 8

Trevor Pinch, "Towards an Analysis of Scientific Observation: The Externality and Evidential Significance of Observation Reports in Physics," Social Studies of Science 15 (1985), pp.167-187.
Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (1995), Chs.1, 3.
Peter Galison, Image and Logic (1997), Ch.5 Pt. I.
Hans-Jšrg Rheinberger, "Experimental Systems, Graphematic Spaces," in Timothy Lenoir (ed.), Inscribing Science (1998), pp.285-303.
Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (1998), Ch.1.

Week 7: BREAK
OCT. 15

Week 8: Science and Macro-Politics
OCT. 22

Robert Merton, The Sociology of Science (1973), Chs.12 (1938), 13 (1942).
Yaron Ezrahi, "Technology and the Civil Epistemology of Democracy," Inquiry 35 (1993), pp.363- 76.
Sheila Jasanoff, "Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science," Social Studies of Science 17 (1987), pp.195-230.
Sheila Jasanoff, "Civilization and Madness: The Great BSE Scare of 1996," Public Understanding of Science 6 (1997), pp. 221-232.
David Holloway, "Physics, the State and Civil Society in the Soviet Union," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30 (1999), pp.173-192.

Week 9: Experts and the Making of Science and Politics:
OCT. 29

Brian Wynne, "Misunderstood Misunderstandings: Social Identities and the Public Uptake of Science," in Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne (ed.), Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.19-46.
Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers (1995), Chs.1, 4.
Chandra Mukerji. "The Collective Construction of Scientific Genius." In Yrjo Engestrom and David Middleton (eds.) Cognition and Communication at Work,. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 257-78.
Steve Epstein, Impure Science (1998), Chs. 6, 7, conclusion.

Week 10: Gender as an Analytical Category
NOV. 5

Evelyn Fox Keller, "The Gender/Science System: Or, Is Sex to Gender as Nature is to Science?" (1987), in Mario Biagioli (ed.), The Science Studies Reader (1999), pp.234-242.
Sandra Harding, "Feminist Standpoint Epistemology" (orig. 1991), in Muriel Lederman and Ingrid Bartsch (eds.), The Gender and Science Reader (2001), pp.145-168.
Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991), pp.183-203.
Sergio Sismondo, "The Scientific Domains of Feminist Standpoints," Perspectives on Science 3 (1995), pp.49-65.
Karen Barad, "Agential Realism: Feminist Interventions in Understanding Scientific Practices" (1998), in Biagioli, Science Studies Reader, pp.1-11.
Londa Schiebinger, "Creating Sustainable Science" (1997), in Lederman and Bartch, Gender and Science Reader, pp.466-482.

Week 11: Technology
NOV. 12

Langdon Winner, "Do Artefacts have Politics?" in Winner (ed.), The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (1986), pp.19-39.
Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or, How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other," in Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (1987), pp.17-50.
Thomas P. Hughes, "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems," in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, pp.51-82.
Donald MacKenzie, "Nuclear Missile Testing and the Social Construction of Accuracy," (abridged from 1990), in Biagioli, Science Studies Reader, pp.342-357.
Trevor Pinch and Ronald Kline, "Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States," Technology and Culture 37 (1996), pp.763-795.
Bruno Latour (a.k.a. Jim Johnson). "Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer." Social Problems 35 (1988), pp. 298-310.

Week 12: Culture
NOV. 19

paper proposal due

Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge, Ch.6.
Joseph Rouse, "What are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge?" Configurations 1 (1992), pp.1-22.
Haraway, Primate Visions (1989), Ch.3.
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "The Image of Objectivity," Representations 40 (1992), pp.81- 128.
Thomas Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), introduction and Ch.1.

Week 13: Procedures and Practices
NOV. 26

Michael Lynch, "The Externalized Retina: Selection and Mathematicization in the Visual Documentation of Objects in the Life Sciences," in Lynch and Steve Woolgar, Representation in Scientific Practice (1990), pp.153-186.
Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch, "The Sociology of a Genetic Engineering Technique: Ritual and Rationality in the Performance of the 'Plasmid Prep,'" in Adele Clark and Joan Fujimura (eds.), The Right Tools for the Job (1992), pp.77-114.
Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly, Chs.1, 7.
Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, "Institutional Ecology, 'Translation,' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907- 39" (orig. 1989), in Biagioli, Science Studies Reader, pp.505-524.
Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge, Ch.5.

Week 14: Science out of/without the West: What Stories to Tell?
DEC. 3

Lewis Pyenson, "Science and Imperialism," in R. C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (1990), pp.920-933.
Paolo Palladino and Michael Warboys, "Science and Imperialism," Isis 84 (1993), pp.91-102, followed by a reply from Pyenson, "Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited," ibid., pp.103-8.
Kapil Raj, "Making the Native Mind Matter: Corporeal Techniques in the Cartography of Central Asia in the 19th Century," La lettre de la Maison Francaise #9 (2000), pp.19-29.
Gyan Prakash, "Science 'Gone Native' in Colonial India," Representations 40 (1992), pp.153-178.
Kapil Raj, "Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760-1850," Osiris n.s.15 (2001), pp.119-134.
Sharon Traweek, "Border Crossings: Narrative Strategies in Science Studies and among Physicists in Tsukuba Science City, Japan," in Pickering, Science as Practice and Culture, pp.429-65.
Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge, "Coda: The Obligations of Narrative."