Syllabus: Science, Society, and Technology



Department of Sociology, Fall 2011

Instructor: Dan Lainer-Vos, lainer-vos@usc.edu

Class: Monday, Wednesday 10:00-11:50 KAP 144

Office Hours: Monday 3:20-5:20 or by appointment, KAP 348E

SOCI 210g: Science, Technology, and Social Conflict

Science and technology play immensely important roles in our lives. Scientific knowledge and ideas shape both policies dealing with “scientific issues,” like climate change and cancer treatment, but also seemingly non-scientific issues like social welfare, economic development, and security policies. Scientific and technological artifacts also influence how we communicate with others and how we think of ourselves as human beings.

However, understanding how science, technology, and society work together in shaping our world is not easy. One reason for this is that we tend to think of science and society as belonging to entirely different spheres. Facts are thought to belong to nature, not to society. Scientific facts seem somehow “above” the messiness and conflicts of ordinary social life, and for this reason, it is hard to understand how they are interrelated. Or perhaps the difficulties in thinking about science and society is that science is so intimately woven to the fabric of our social lives that we take it for granted. Either way, the relationship between science, technology and society evade serious scrutiny.

This is not a course in science, but about science as a social institution and about the social issues that arise in response to the advancement of science and technology.  We will try to untangle the interaction between science, technology, and society, by examining key controversies that reflect this complex dynamics. Rather than ask whether a particular scientific claim is true, we will ask how scientists produce facts, and how these facts shape our life. The course will be divided along three key themes. In the first part of the course, we will ask what is so unique about modern science and what makes scientific facts so strong in comparison with other truth statements. Equipped with a better understanding of what science is and how it is done, in part two and three we will explore a number of interesting controversies at the intersection between science and society. In part two, we will explore how science changes the way we understand the world around us and our relation to our society. We will examine topics like the invention of “nature,” climate change, carbon trading, the making of genetically modified food and war-making in the age of information. In part three, we explore how science changes our understanding of who we are as human beings. Specifically, in part three, we will explore the development of prenatal technology, the intersection of race and genetics, the relationship between science and mental illnesses and how computers change the way we interact and work with each other.

Course Requirements and Grading:

The course will consist on lecture and class discussion. You are expected to attend class regularly, participate in class discussions, and contribute to the course blog. To help you prepare and follow the lecture, I will post lecture outlines on Blackboard a day before the class meetings (class outlines are not a summary of the class!).

The materials and concepts covered in this course are broad and not easy to grasp.  At times, you may feel a bit lost. Please make an extra effort to attend the required discussion sections with your TA to gain a deeper grasp of the materials, and get help on how to respond to the assignments. You should also take advantage of my office hours.

Your grade for the class will be based the following factors:

• Participation in class and online discussions (10%)

• Two seven page essays (20% each)

• A take home midterm (20%)

• Final exam (30%).

The course blog is designed to foster discussion, not to examine your understanding of the readings. Please use it to raise questions and point to interesting things that came up in the reading. Your blog posts should be short. Please do not write more than a paragraph or two.

The midterm and final exams will consist of concept definitions and short and specific questions. In the essay assignments you will be required to critically discuss one or more of the key readings in the course. The essays are your opportunity to construct arguments and defend them based on the readings and on class discussions. Grading the essays will be based on the following criteria: 1) clear statement of the argument of the essay; 2) clarity in the presentation of the relevant theories; 3) critical engagement with the theories; 4) overall readability; 5) selection and use of references; 6) originality, logic, and coherence of the argument.

Statement for Students with Disabilities

Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.

Statement on Academic Integrity

USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. Scampus, the Student Guidebook, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A: . Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can be found at: .

Readings

Biagioli, Mario. 1999. The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

The required books are available at USC bookstore. Reading marked with an asterisk are available on Blackboard. The rest of the readings are available online through USC’s libraries online.

Course outline and readings

Part I: What is Science? How do scientists produce facts?

Week 1) August 22, 24: The rise of modern science: Emancipation or apocalypse?

Weber, Max. 1958[1918]. “Science as a Vocation,” pp. 129-156, in From Max Weber, edited by Gerth, H.H. and W Wright Mills, Oxford: Oxford University Press.*

Screening: “The Day After Trinity”

Oppenheimer, Robert. 1950. “Encouragement of science.” Science 111:2885, 373-375 (recommended).

Week 2) August 29, 31: Scientific progress and scientific revolutions I

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (chapter 1-8)

Week 3) September 7: Scientific Progress and Scientific revolutions II

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (chapter 9-13)

Week 4) September 12, 14: What do scientists do all day?

Latour, Bruno. 1987. “From weaker to stronger rhetoric.” Pp. 1-17 in Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.*

Latour, Bruno. 1998. Give me a laboratory and I raise the world.” Pp. 258-275, in Mario Biagioli The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. 1986 [Second edition]. “An anthropologist visits the laboratory.” Pp. 43-88 in Laboratory Life Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Week 5) September 19-21: The construction of objectivity

Lynch, Michael. 1988. "The externalized retina: selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences.” Human Studies, 11(2/3): 201-234.

Daston, Lorraine. 1998. “Objectivity and the escape from perspective.” Pp. 110-123, in Mario Biagioli The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Daston, Lorraine and Peter Gallison. 1992. “The image of Objectivity,” Representation 40: 81-128.

Field trip to “Inscriptifact” laboratory (on campus)(September 21)

Week 6) September 26, 28: Feminist perspective on science and the problem of tacit knowledge

Haraway, Donna J. 1999. “Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Pp. 172-188, in Mario Biagioli (ed.) The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Collins, Harry. 1974. “The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks.” Science Studies, 4: 165-186.

MacKenzie, Donald and Graham Spinardi. 1995. "Tacit knowledge, weapon design, and the uninvention of nuclear weapons. American Journal of Sociology, 101(1): 44-99.

Week 7) October 3, 5: Between theory and experiment: the use of simulations in science

Shapin, Steven. 1999. “The house of experiment in seventeenth century England.” Pp. 479-504 in Mario Biagioli (ed.) The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Sismondo, Sergio. 1998. “Models, simulations and their objects.” Science in Context 12(2): 247-260.*

Parker, Wendy. 2009. “Does matter really matter? Computer simulations, experiments, and materiality.” Synthese 169(3): 483-496.

Prentice Rachel, 2005. “The anatomy of surgical simulation: the mutual articulation of bodies in and through the machine.” Social Studies of Science 35(6): 837-866.

# First essay assignment is distributed

Part II: Remaking the worlds around us

Week 8) October 10, 12: The invention of nature:

Cronon, Wiliam.1996. “The trouble with wilderness; or, getting back to the wrong nature.” Pp. 69-90 in William Cronon (ed) Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.*

Helford, Reid. 1999. “Rediscovering the resettlement landscape: making the oak savanna ecosystem ‘real.’ Science, Technology and Human Values, 24(1): 55-79.

Film: The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson.

# First essay assignment is due.

Week 9) October 17-19: Climate change

Edwards, Paul. 2001. “Representing the global atmosphere: computer models, data, and knowledge about climate change. Pp. 31-65, in Clark Miller and Paul Edwards (eds.), Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press.*

Mitchell, Timothy. 2009. “Carbon democracy” Economy and Society 38(3): 399-432.

Film: Guggenheim, Davis. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth.

Recommended readings:

Levin, Peter, and Wendy Nelson Espeland. 2002. "Pollution Futures: Commensuration, Commodification, and the Market for Air." Pp. 119-147 in Organizations, Policy, and the Natural Environment: Institutional and Strategic Perspectives, edited by Andrew J. Hoffman and Marc J. Ventresca. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.*

Mackenzie, Donald. 2007. “The political economy of carbon trading. London Review of Books.

Week 10) October 24, 26: Regulating innovation: Patents and intellectual property

Heller, Michael and Rebecca Eisenberg. 1998. “Can patents deter innovation? The anticommons in biomedical research,” Science, 280: 698-701.

Bruce Kogut and Anca Metiu, 2001. “Open-source software development and the development of distributed innovation. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 17(2): 248-264.

Everett, Margaret. 2003. “The social life of genes: privacy, property and the new genetics,” Social Science in Medicine, 56: 53-65.

Lock, Margaret. 2002. “Alienation of body tissue and the biopolitics of immortalized cell lines.” Pp. 63-92, in Scheper-Hughes and L. Waquant (eds.) Commodifying Bodies. Sage: London.*

Specter, Michael. 1999. “Decoding Iceland.” New Yorker Magazine.

Week 11) October 31, November 2: Genetically modified foods

Millstone, Erik, Eric Burnner and Sue Mayer. 1999. “Beyond ‘substantial equivalence.” Nature, 401: 525-526.

Lezaun, Javier. 2004. “Pollution and the use of patents: a reading of Monsanto v. Schmeiser.” Pp. 135-158, in Nico Sther (ed.), Biotechnology: Between Commerce and Civil Society. New Brunswick: Transaction.*

Rabinow, Paul. 1999. "Artificiality and enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality. Pp. 407-416 in Mario Biagioli (ed.) The Science Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Take home midterm is distributed

Week 12) November 7, 9: War making in the digital age

Edwards, Paul. 1996. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in cold War America. Cambridge: MIT Press. (selection)*

Smith, Edward. 2001. "Network-centric warfare: what's the point?” Naval War College Review, 54(1): 59-75.

Take home midterm is due

Lenoir, Timothy. 2002/2003. “Fashioning the military entertainment complex” Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society 10: 14-16.

Lenoir, Timothy. 2003. “Programming theaters of war: gamemakers as soldiers. Pp. 175-198, in Robert Latham (ed.) Bombs and Bandwidth: The Emerging Relationship between IT and Security. New York: New Press.*

# Second essay assignment is distributed

Part III: Making up people and societies

Week 13) November 14, 16: Making the unborn born

Duden, Barbara 1993. Disembodying Women: perspective on pregnancy and the unborn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (selection)*

Ilpo, Helén. 2004. Technics over life: risk, ethics and the existential condition in high-tech antenatal care. Economy and Society, 33:1, 28-51.

Week 14) Monday, November 21, 23: Reinventing people—Genetics, Race and mental health

Nelson, Alondra 2008. "Bio science: genetic genealogy testing and the pursuit of African ancestry. Social Studies of Science 38(5):

Palmié, Stephan. 2007. "Genomics, divination “racecraft” Ethnologist 34(2): 205-222.

Hacking, Ian. 1998. "Making up people." Pp. 161-171 in Mario Biagioli (ed.) Science Studies Reader London: Routledge.

Hacking, Ian. 1995. Rewriting Soul: Multiple Personality Disorder and the Science of Memory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.(selection)*

Week 15) November 28: Living with computers and conclusions

Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson and Martha Feldman, 1998. “Electronic Mail and Organizational Communication: Does Saying ‘Hi’ Really Matter?” Organization Science 9(6): 685-698.

Sirrka Jarvenpaa and Dorothy Leidner, 1999. "Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams." Organization Science, 10(6): 791-815.

Latour, Bruno. 1991. Technology is society made durable. Pp. 103-131, In John Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge.*

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download