233045 SE A Place for Science and Technology Studies (2022S)

Where does Science and Technology Studies belong? STS researchers today spend time in many different places, including laboratories, conference rooms, coffee rooms, art studios, bioethics buildings, policy rooms and perhaps even ivory towers. The aim of this course is to analyse a range of different places for STS, exploring the possibilities and limitations of each, and the opportunities they provide for observation, intervention, and collaboration with scientists and engineers.In the early days of STS, empirical work often took the form of an observational laboratory study. But things have changed. STS research has extended beyond the laboratory to encompass other sites, and it is increasingly likely to involve close collaboration with scientists and engineers or active intervention into policy processes. In this course we will explore these new ways of working in a range of different locations, attending to issues of domestication, critique and autonomy. We will address some of the affective dimensions of collaboration and intervention, which have their discomforts as well as their rewards. We will also ask what, if anything, unites STS research in different places, and whether there is or should be a normative orientation underlying our work. We will engage with a wide range of STS literature as well as readings from anthropology, sociology, geography, science policy and innovation studies. After a tour through several different locations, we will ask whether there is a place for STS which, as an undisciplined field, often finds itself on the periphery of traditional institutions, or dependent on more generously-funded STEM disciplines.The course will employ a combination of lectures, discussion and student presentations. We will start with an exploration of the literature on multi-sited ethnography and interdisciplinarity and then focus on seven different places in turn, weaving in an analysis of the different methodological orientations of observation, intervention and collaboration. Examples will be given from STS engagement with synthetic biology, but students will be able to apply the approach to other scientific, technological, environmental and medical fields. Students will work towards a seminar paper on a place of their choice, either building on an example discussed during the course or coming up with a new place, exploring its constraints and affordances for STS.