Comments on: Reflections on #4S2011: A Call for Pundits

By: Technoscience As Activism Conference » Cyborgology

Technoscience As Activism Conference » Cyborgology — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:28:00 +0000

[…] after attending the annual meeting for the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), I posted a critique of the traditional conference format. I was frustrated with the apparent hypocrisy of expensive, closed-door conferences full of […]

By: Cyborgology Weekly Roundup » Cyborgology

Cyborgology Weekly Roundup » Cyborgology — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:12:36 +0000

[…] David Banks reflected on the recent Society for the Social Studies of Science meetings in Cleveland […]

By: davidbanks

davidbanks — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:47:13 +0000

Sal,
Thank you for the insightful reply. I have crossed out the “the” in the post, which I understand to be more than a mere semantic error.

You make a great point about the Radical Science and the Science for the People Movements. Both of these are not only crucial ingredients in making STS what it is today, but also stand as historical moments that I think we can learn a lot from today. Such movements offer tools and ideas that are desperately needed to fight the increasingly asymmetrical convergence of industry and academia.

By: Sal Restivot

Sal Restivot — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:01:51 +0000

One of the problems with 4S members is that after almost 40 years people aren’t focused enough on their field to know that we are the Society for Social Studies of Science, NOT the Society for THE social studies of science. The late David Edge and I had to point this out repeatedly to our colleagues, and here the mistake appears again; and it appeared again recently when someone started a 4S group on Linkedin. I hope I don’t have to explain why this is important. It is symptomatic of a field in which newcomers fail to commit themselves fully to S&TS as their field of inquiry and have only vague and often mistaken ideas about the field and its social and political impacts. 4S members, including this commentator, have been involved in changing the nature, structure, and policies of the National Science Foundation, the National Academies, multicultural educational initiatives around the world, AAAS, the science and technology arms of the U.S. Congress (notably, we were active in the development of the Office of Technology Assessment; we could not keep it operational, however, in the face of political – primarily Republican – resistance). Many of us have been consultants to national science policy groups around the world throughout the entire history of 4S and S&TS. There are many links from S&TS to social change that are unfortunately but perhaps necessarily part of the informal, shadow part of the organization of the field. Regarding the origins of the field and the society, there is a general awareness of the 1960s context but not enough attention to the roles of the Radical Science Movement and the Science for the People movement. And the earliest meetings were well attended by leading science policy agents, notably from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. None of this is to deny the validity of some of the “complaints” registered here. Since its beginnings, STS has undergone numerous modifications and reincarnations, yet the initial work stands as an early articulation of its continuing provocative potential. We need to understand the dynamics whereby the “disobedience” fostered by STS can flourish and persist (STEVE WOOLGAR, 4S founding member and Bernal Prize receipient, 2004). Yours, Sal Restivo (4S founding member and former president) and the ghost of David Edge (4S founding member, former president,and Bernal Prize recipient).

By: Gareth Edel

Gareth Edel — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:26:50 +0000

I agree there needs to be more and better conversation among and between groups about the roles and effects of science and technology in society
But as an alternative, I feel that trying to take STS research into other disciplines like communications, science writing, and education is in some ways a more useful step than making us all go directly to the public. I wonder if (inspired by the comic strip) your applying unfair demands on an academic discipline such as STS. If we are like physicists – perhaps we should be like physicists. Physicists rarely have to be both researchers and popularizers, and while Brian Green and others do manage it, they are not average. Perhaps a more fair statement would at least give credit for the demand that more STS practitioners double up on job description. I’m just saying, as a phd candidate, I’m interested in teaching, and research, and may even try to write for a popular audience, but when was the last time you insisted that a research physicist do better at communicating and participating in public discourse? I don’t see a distinction between the social and natural sciences in the role of the “Scientist”. Whole seperated disciplines are at work putting out material into the culture to free the “scientist” from the burden of distraction from research, I’d say that they would do well to participate in public discourse, at very least as a mechanism to increasing the volume of discussions if not the quality.
For example, “Science Education” as a practice and as a specialized domain of educators and a separate academic field of research, popular science writers and science writing programs, science communications programs and scholars, all should be in conversation with both the public and research scientists – perhaps you’d do better convincing them to take social sciences approaches to science seriously as an important step to bringing STS to the world, rather than solely by making STS scholars step into the gap that their fields are already designed to fill.
That said, I kept in mind as I chose my dissertation research that I wanted a topic around which i would potentially be able to bring conversation into the public sphere. I have tried going to communications and other conferences outside my discipline, and I admit I’m not doing enough, but I hope that we can talk about institutional responses to broaden public discourse without simply saying researchers need to also be popularizers, both are valuable, and challenging enough on their own. We can’t all be Stephen J Gould.

By: davidbanks

davidbanks — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:16:55 +0000

I, for one, am one chimpanzee who is very proud of his head trauma.

…(I think.)

Ron, I know you made a reply to my XKCD mashup, I still have it, but I figured I’d let you post it if you want to reply in a more creative way.

By: Ron Eglash

Ron Eglash — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:55:24 +0000

This reminds me of the time I was a UCLA undergrad spending a semester at the Catalina Island Marine Biology institute. One day we hiked to the far side of the island to look at the high-impact tidal zone. We at lunch on some rocks, and my friend said “you know I was thinking we are just like a troop of baboons or chimps sitting on a beach; just a different species of primate.” I had been eating on top a high boulder, so I said “not me, I was an anthropologist studying the troop.” And my friend replied “yeah well every time they study a troop of chimps who are having fun eating and playing and having sex there is always that one chimp off to the side banging his head against a rock.”

So while the cartoon could be read as “STS is above it all” I think the image of STS as the one chimp banging its head against the wall is also good to keep in mind. I hate the hubris, arrogance, and elitism that “meta-analysis” invites. Anything we can do to keep those attitudes at bay is a good counter-balance.

I know the up-manship game can be played in both directions; its easy to put down philosophy or social science as “just talk.” But my guess is that *within* STS we need more effort on helping our discipline move towards a more collaborative stance. For a longer rant on the subject see http://homepages.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/SSS/technophilia.pdf

By: Ben Brucato

Ben Brucato — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:32:46 +0000

In STS — as well as in cultural studies, lit crit, and the full host of contemporary interdisciplinary fields overarching the humanities and social sciences — we have developed a language and conceptual toolbox (or maybe I would prefer “knapsack” as a metaphor if only to suggest its need to be unpacked) that are foreign to most undergraduates in our own field, let alone accessible to broader publics. These have provided a linguistic turn for the medieval institutions we inhabit: along with the organizational and social systems of vetting, the rigors of filling out our transcripts, the academic hazing of the dissertation processes, and so on, we now add a hyperspecialized initiatory language that surpasses any Hermetic order. And this is before we enter our field as credentialed experts! Our texts require the degree of translation typical of an alchemist’s notebook to make literate a public reader, and much of the ideas contained would bear little relevance. Perhaps we need not concern ourselves with throwing the pearls to the swine or teaching them how to convert lead to gold. Instead we might endeavor to challenge the value of gold in the first place.