Sociology/G 234

 

“Intellectual Foundations of the Sociology of

Science, Technology, and Medicine”

 

 

Fall 2006

Mondays, 9:00-11:50 am, in SSB 414

 

 

 

Prof. Steven Epstein

Department of Sociology

Office phone: 858-534-0489

E-mail: sepstein@ucsd.edu

Home page: http://sociology.ucsd.edu/~sepstein

Drop-in office hours: Mon 1:00-2:00 pm and Tue 2:00-3:00 pm in SSB 476

 

 

 

 

Description:

 

This course will provide a broad introduction to sociological approaches to the study of science, technology, and medicine (STM). The study of STM has become a substantially interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary enterprise, and this course does not seek to ignore that development. However, the particular focus of the course will be on the following kinds of questions:

 

  • In what ways has sociological attention to the study of knowledge, culture, politics, and social order prompted or informed sociological scrutiny of modern science and technology?

 

  • What have been the dominant approaches to the sociological study of STM? How have different schools developed, what sorts of sociological questions do they ask, what theories do they present, and what analytical tools do they offer?

 

  • How do these various approaches help us understand such topics as the organization of scientific work, the politics of knowledge production, the design and dissemination of technologies, the diffusion and standardization of knowledge products, and the roles of the public in relation to science and technology?

 

  • In which ways are present-day studies of STM consistent with, and in which ways are they in tension with, other ways of understanding knowledge, culture, politics, etc., that are employed within sociology today?

 

 

 

Readings:

 

1) There are two required books:

 

Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

 

            Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

 

These books are available for purchase at the UCSD Bookstore. In addition, copies are on reserve at the library.

 

2) All other required readings will be available from e-reserves (http://reserves.ucsd.edu/). Please note that you are responsible for downloading and printing each item. You can access the files from any campus computer, and you can print them with an ACS laser printing account (see http://sdacs.ucsd.edu/~icc/laser.php). You can also download and print the files from off-campus, but in order to do so you need to specify a proxy in your web browser (an easy process; see http://www-ono.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/). In the case of any problems accessing e-reserves, library staff are available to help you.

 

PLEASE NOTE that there are readings assigned for the first course meeting!

 

 

 

Requirements:

 

Students taking the course for credit are expected to submit a paper (at least 20 pages in length) by 4:30 pm on Wednesday, December 6. It may be an empirical paper that draws on course materials, or it may be framed as a critical review of the literature. Students intending eventually to write a qualifying exam paper or field exam paper in the area of sociology of STM (or a related area) may want to conceptualize this paper assignment as a partial version of that later work.

 

Note that materials listed on the syllabus as “also recommended” may be helpful to read when exploring topics in greater detail for purposes of the paper assignment.

 

You must get the instructor’s approval of your proposed topic by emailing a short written description by no later than Friday, October 27. Please also note that incompletes are heartily discouraged.

 

In addition, each student (including auditors) will be asked to circulate discussion questions in advance of two class meetings during the quarter. These questions must be emailed to all participants in the seminar by 5:00 pm on the day before class. Students will sign up for specific weeks at the first meeting of the seminar.

 

 

 

Schedule and assigned readings:

 

 

WEEK 1 (September 25): Course introduction; Sociologies of knowledge

 

Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1936, pp. 49-78 (Chapter 2, sections 1-6 only).

 

            Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London and New York: G. Allen & Unwin, 1915, pp. 462-496 (Conclusion).

 

 

            Also recommended:

 

            Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” In Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert Tucker (Norton).

 

            Goldman, Harvey. “From Social Theory to Sociology of Knowledge and Back: Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Intellectual Knowledge Production. Sociological Theory 12, no. 3 (November 1994): 266-278.

 

            Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Cambridge, England: Polity, [1972] 1987, pp. 301-317 (“Appendix: Knowledge and Human Interests”).

 

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday, 1967.

 

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, 1980 (esp. “Truth and Power”).

 

            Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

 

            Nico Stehr and Volker Meja, eds. Society and Knowledge: Contemporary Perspectives in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: 1984.

 

            Swidler, Ann, and Jorge Arditi. “The New Sociology of Knowledge.” Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 305-329.

 

 

WEEK 2 (October 2): The Mertonian project and Bourdieu’s critique

 

Merton, Robert K. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 442-459 (Ch. 20: “The Matthew Effect in Science”).

 

Cole, Jonathan R., and Stephen Cole. Social Stratification in Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 37-89 (Ch. 3: “Patterns of Stratification in American Science”).

 

Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason.” Social Science Information 14, no. 6 (1975): 19-47.

 

 

            Also recommended:

 

            Merton, Robert K. Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth Century England. Humanities Press [1970] 1978.

 

Cole, Jonathan R., and Harriet Zuckerman. “The Emergence of a Scientific Specialty: The Self-Exemplifying Case of the Sociology of Science.” In The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton, edited by Lewis A. Coser, 139-174. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.

 

            Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. “Animadversiones in Mertonem.” Pp. 297-301 in Robert K. Merton: Consensus and Controversy, edited by J. Clark, C. Modgil and S. Modgil. London: Falmer Press.

 

Knorr-Cetina, Karin D. “Scientific Communities or Transepistemic Arenas of Research? A Critique of Quasi-Economic Models of Science.” Social Studies of Science 12 (1982): 101-30.

 

 

WEEK 3 (October 9): Laboratory studies

 

            Knorr-Cetina, Karin D. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981, pp. 33-48 (Chapter 2).

 

Lynch, Michael. Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 143-178 (Chapter 5).

 

            Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 15-53.

 

Traweek, Sharon. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 74-105 (Chapter 3).

 

 

            Also recommended:

 

Lynch, Michael, Eric Livingston, and Harold Garfinkel. “Temporal Order in Laboratory Work.” In Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, edited by Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay, 205-238. London: Sage, 1993.

 

 

WEEK 4 (October 16): SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge): Knowledge, Interests, and Practice

 

            Barnes, Barry. Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 1-7 only.

 

Bloor, David. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1976] 1991, pp. 3-23, 46-54 (chapters 1 and 3).

 

            Barnes, Barry, and Donald MacKenzie. “On the Role of Interests in Scientific Change.” In On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, edited by Roy Wallis, 49-66. Keele: University of Keele, 1979.

 

Collins, Harry M. “The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks.” Science Studies 4 (1974): 165-86.

 

 

            Also recommended:

 

             Barnes, Barry. Interests and the Growth of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.

 

            Barnes, Barry. About Science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

 

Collins, Harry. “The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the Replication of Experiments in Physics.” Sociology 9 (1975): 205-224.

 

            Collins, Harry. 1992. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

            Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

 

 

Week 5 (October 23): SSK (cont.) and technology studies: Credibility, trust, and uncertainty

 

            Shapin, Steven. “Cordelia’s Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Studies.” Perspectives on Science 3, no. 3 (1995): 76-96.

 

MacKenzie, Donald A. Inventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990, pp. 1-26, 340-381 (Chapters 1 and 7).

 

            Pinch, Trevor J., and Weibe E. Bijker. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, edited by Weibe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch, 17-50. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

 

 

            Also recommended:

 

Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

 

            Hughes, Thomas P. 1993. “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems.” Pp. 51-82 in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, edited by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes and T. Pinch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

 

WEEK 6 (October 30): Actor-network theory

 

Latour Science in Action, pp. 1-144. (Introduction and chapters 1-3).

 

            Callon, Michel. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” In Power, Action, and Belief, edited by John Law, 196-233. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

 

Latour, Bruno. “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts.” In Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Weibe E. Bijker and John Law, 225-258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

 

 

Also recommended:

 

Collins, H.M., and Steven Yearley. “Epistemological Chicken.” In Science as Practice and Culture, edited by Andrew Pickering, 301-326. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

 

Callon, Michel, and Bruno Latour. “Don’t Throw the Baby out with the Bath School!” In Science as Practice and Culture, edited by Andrew Pickering, 327-342. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

 

            Latour, Bruno. The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

 

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

 

            Akrich, Madeleine. 1992. “The De-Scription of Technical Objects.” Pp. 205-224 in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by W. E. Bijker and J. Law. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

 

WEEK 7 (November 6): Social Worlds

           

Clarke, Adele. “A Social Worlds Adventure: The Case of Reproductive Science.” In Theories of Science in Society, edited by Susan E. Cozzens and Thomas F. Gieryn, 15-42. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

 

Fujimura, Joan H. “The Molecular Biological Bandwagon in Cancer Research: Where Social Worlds Meet.” Social Problems 35, no. 3 (1988): 261-83.

 

Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420.

 

 

Also recommended:

 

Clarke, Adele. Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "the Problems of Sex". Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

 

Fujimura, Joan H. Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

 

 

WEEK 8 (November 13): Technoscientific Cultures

 

            Sewell, William H. “The Concept(s) of Culture.” In Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, edited by Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, 35-61. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

 

            Mukerji, Chandra. “Toward a Sociology of Material Culture: Science Studies, Cultural Studies and the Meanings of Things.” In The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives, edited by Diana Crane, 143-162. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

 

            Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures, pp. 1-110, 241-260 (Chapters 1-4, 10).

 

 

Also recommended:

 

Gieryn, Thomas F. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

 

            Haraway, Donna J. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989.

 

            Mol, Annemarie. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

 

Oudshoorn, Nelly. The Male Pill: A Biography of a Technology in the Making. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

 

            Carroll, Patrick. Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

 

 

WEEK 9 (November 20): Institutions and social structures

 

Vaughan, Diane. “The Rôle of the Organization in the Production of Techno-Scientific Knowledge.” Social Studies of Science 29, no. 6 (December 1999): 913-43.

 

Frickel, Scott, and Kelly Moore. “Prospects and Challenges for a New Political Sociology of Science.” In The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks and Power, edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, 3-14 only. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

 

            Epstein, Steven. “Institutionalizing the New Politics of Difference in U.S. Biomedical Research: Thinking across the Science/State/Society Divides.” In The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power, edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, 327-350. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

 

            Frickel, Scott, and Neil Gross. “A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements.” American Sociological Review 70, no. 2 (April 2005): 204-232.

 

           

            Also recommended:

 

Frickel, Scott, and Kelly Moore, eds. The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

 

Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 2003. Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (chapters 1, 2, and 4).

 

Keating, Peter, and Alberto Cambrosio. “Biomedical Platforms.” Configurations 8 (2000): 337-387.

 

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

 

Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Mitchell L. Stevens. “Commensuration as a Social Process.” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 313-343.

 

           

WEEK 10 (November 27): Expertise, public understanding, participation, and scientific citizenship

 

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