230162 SE Science, Technology and their Publics (2012S)

This seminar introduces into the multifaceted relations between science, technology and its publics. While this relation is often described as a lack of understanding of scientific knowledge on the side of the public resulting in a lack of public trust in science, STS has critically questioned such images based on empirical and qualitative research. Rather than assuming 'science', the 'public', their communications and relations as quasi-natural categories, STS research has shown that the sciences and publics are mutually co-produced in various encounters. Rather than viewing these encounters as uneven relations between those who know and those who do not know, different ways of knowing, expectations, interests, rationales and politics are negotiated. The aim of this seminar is to provide a basis for critically questioning often taken-for-granted assumptions in the relation between science and the public as a starting point for thinking about alterative routes of how these relations might be shaped. It will do so by introducing into the more classical literature on Public Understanding of Science in STS but also engage with more recent discussions, developments and texts. The seminar will, inter alia, deal with the following issues: Public images of scientists; historical and cultural perspectives on the relations between science and its publics; the public appropriation of and dealing with science/scientific knowledge; the construction of 'scientific citizens' and scientific publics; the turn from transmitting knowledge to the public to the participation of the public; or how regimes that demand an increased engagement with the public feed back on science itself.