Maintenance & Repair in Science and Technology Studies

This essay contains an overview on worldwide researches on Maintenance and Repair topics in Science and Technology Studies

Science and Technology Studies in Policy: the UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap

In this paper, we reflect on our experience as Science and Technology Studies (STS) researchers who were members of the working group that produced A Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK in 2012. We explore how this initiative sought to govern an uncertain future, and describe how it was successfully used to mobilize public funds for synthetic biology from the UK government. We discuss our attempts to incorporate the insights and sensibilities of STS into the policy process, and why we chose to use the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) to do so. We analyze how the roadmapping process, and the final report, narrowed and transformed our contributions to the Roadmap. We show how difficult it is for STS researchers to influence policy when our ideas challenge deeply entrenched pervasive assumptions, framings and narratives about how technological innovation necessarily leads to economic progress, about public reticence as a roadblock to that progress, and about the supposed separation between science and society. We end by reflecting on the constraints under which we were operating from the outset, and on the challenges for STS in policy

The relevance of the ‘h’ and ‘g’ index to economics in the context of a nation-wide research evaluation scheme: The New Zealand case

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance of the citation-based ‘h’ and ‘g’ indexes as a means for measuring research output in economics. This study is unique in that it is the first to utilize the ‘h’ and ‘g’ indexes in the context of a time limited evaluation period and to provide comprehensive coverage of all academic economists in all university-based economics departments within a nation state. For illustration purposes we have selected New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) as our evaluation scheme. In order to provide a frame of reference for ‘h’ and ‘g’ index output measures, we have also estimated research output using a number of journal-based weighting schemes. In general, our findings suggest that ‘h’ and ‘g’ index scores are strongly associated with low-powered journal ranking schemes and weakly associated with high powered journal weighting schemes. More specifically, we found the ‘h’ and ‘g’ indexes to suffer from a lack of differentiation: for example, 52 percent of all participants received a score of zero under both measures, and 92 and 89 percent received scores of two or less under ‘h’ and ‘g’, respectively. Overall, our findings suggest that ‘h’ and ‘g’ indexes should not be incorporated into a PBRF-like framework

Posthumanist Tendencies in Science and Technology Studies

The article discusses posthumanist tendencies occurring in the so-called Science and Technology Studies (STS), concentrating mainly upon B. Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Postconstructivist conceptions within STS emphasize the crucial role of material situatedness of technoscience that is dependent on non-humans in laboratory practice (allowing to extend and “delegate” cognitive capacities to the environment). What is more, ANT accepts the radical thesis of non-human agency. The text also analyses a larger posthumanist political trend present in STS and in other theories, rejecting the arrogance It emerges as an inevitable reaction towards the problem of possible ecological destabilization (modern systemic risk or axiological/political challenges created by the so-called “wet” technologies, such as biotechnology, biomedicine, pharmacology)

Science and Technology Studies Approaches to Web History

International audienceThis chapter discusses how STS approaches can be applied to Web history, to shed further light on it and enrich it. In its first part, the chapter introduces key STS concepts and notions, and links them to case studies and examples drawn from the history of the Web. The second part of the chapter will delve into the governance of the Web as a particularly interesting case study of how STS notions and concepts can be leveraged to advance the analysis of objects and dynamics central to the Web and its history. The chapter shows how a relational, practice-oriented approach, unpacking black boxes, doing a sociology of assemblages, can be implemented to shed light on the Web as a complex and changing socio-technical system

The role of handbooks in knowledge creation and diffusion: A case of science and technology studies

Genre is considered to be an important element in scholarly communication and in the practice of scientific disciplines. However, scientometric studies have typically focused on a single genre, the journal article. The goal of this study is to understand the role that handbooks play in knowledge creation and diffusion and their relationship with the genre of journal articles, particularly in highly interdisciplinary and emergent social science and humanities disciplines. To shed light on these questions we focused on handbooks and journal articles published over the last four decades belonging to the research area of Science and Technology Studies (STS), broadly defined. To get a detailed picture we used the full-text of five handbooks (500,000 words) and a well-defined set of 11,700 STS articles. We confirmed the methodological split of STS into qualitative and quantitative (scientometric) approaches. Even when the two traditions explore similar topics (e.g., science and gender) they approach them from different starting points. The change in cognitive foci in both handbooks and articles partially reflects the changing trends in STS research, often driven by technology. Using text similarity measures we found that, in the case of STS, handbooks play no special role in either focusing the research efforts or marking their decline. In general, they do not represent the summaries of research directions that have emerged since the previous edition of the handbook.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Informetric

Techno Anthropology:A new move in science and technology studies

From the introduction: I am very honoured to be appointed professor in these two topics: Techno anthropology – a new education -and in STS - a fairly young research field. But this is also a fairly challenging appointment, since both techno anthropology and STS are relatively unknown and rather incomprehensible to the general public. In fact, a consultant from the Danish Federation of Industries recently declared that their member companies would almost certainly not want candidates with new strange combinations such as techno anthropology. The companies, she claimed, would prefer well-established educations such as lawyers, engineers and economists. My talk today is not for the benefit of those who would reject techno anthropology out of hand – or STS for that matter. I take it as a good sign that you have come here voluntarily, and I will therefore assume some measure of good faith on your part

On Theory-Methods Packages in Science and Technology Studies

Our review essay contributes to the long-standing and vibrant discussion in science and technology studies (STS) on methods, methodologies, and theory-method relationships. We aim to improve the reflexivity of research by unpacking the often implicit assumptions that imbue research conduct and by offering practical tools through which STS researchers can recognize their research designs and think through them in a new way. To achieve these aims, we analyze different compositions of theories, methods, and empirics in three different STS approaches-actor-network theory, the biography of artifacts and practices, and ethnomethodology-by employing the concept of a theory-methods package (TMP). A selection of theoretical cornerstone texts and case studies in infrastructure research from each tradition serves as our material. Our findings point, first, to differences between the TMPs of the reviewed approaches and to the internal diversity of theory-method relationships in each approach. Second, we found some intriguing similarities between the approaches and discuss potential complementarities of their theory-method fits.Peer reviewe