Introduction: Talking STS

Abstract

Talking STS is a collection of interviews and accompanying reflections on the origins, the present and the future of the field referred to as Science and Technology Studies or Science, Technology and Society (STS). The volume assembles the thoughts and recollections of some of the leading figures in the making of this field. The occasion for producing the collection has been the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of Edinburgh’s Science Studies Unit (SSU). The Unit’s place in the history of STS is consequently a recurring theme of the volume. However, the interviews assembled here have a broader purpose – to present interviewees’ situated and idiosyncratic experiences and perspectives on STS, going beyond the contributions made to it by any one individual, department or institution. Both individually and collectively, these conversations provide autobiographically informed insights on STS. Together with the reflections, they prompt further discussion, reflection and questioning about this constantly evolving field.

Translating STS in China. Disciplinary Struggles and Future Prospects

“…"STS Talks," a collection of interviews and reflections published in Volume 4 of the journal, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS), includes a number of important interviews with well-known European and North American STS scholars (Mazanderani et al 2018), from which it is quite clear that there are significant disagreements over the meaning of the STS acronym. Donald MacKenzie, professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh, notes for example, that although the designation "science and technology studies" has become increasingly popular since the 1980s, the alternative "science, technology, and society" is much older and can be dated back to the 1960s (Schyfter and Mackenzie 2018).…”

“…"Science and technology studies" (S&TS) approach science and technology per se as the key target of analysis, while "science, technology, and society" (STS) focuses more on the interaction between science, technology, and social factors (ibid., 321). These disagreements are not just about matters of terminology but reflect deeper methodological and theoretical differentiations that have shaped the development of European and North American STS traditions, turning them into a remarkably heterogenous field of scholarship (Sismondo 2010;Fischer 2016;Mazanderani et al 2018). This heterogeneity did not prevent the field of STS from becoming a globally circulating artifact because there was strong international convergence around the STS acronym, and this convergence opened the way for further translational developments and differentiations in other parts of the world.…”

“…The field of STS-usually rendered as science, technology, and society studies, or simply science and technology studies-is an international interdisciplinary field that emerged in Europe and North America in the 1960-70s as scholars proposed a practice-oriented approach that viewed science and technology not as mere end products of truth and rationality but as historically and socially embedded enterprises. This approach has since developed into a globally circulating field of inquiry featuring multiple sets of approaches, practices, translations, and displacements, and shaped by transnational flows of communication (Sismondo 2010;Fischer 2016;Mazanderani et al 2018). 1 China's engagement with this globally diverse field started in the 1980-90s, the first two decades of the Reform period, but it was only in the early 2000s that there emerged a scholarly debate over how to properly translate the term "STS" into Chinese.…”

Friendship as a scientific method

“…In my research diary I wrote, angrily, that my methodology was ‘asymmetrical’ and ‘unreflective’. This vocabulary denoted my commitment to the local tradition of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) in which I was being trained as a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh (Mazanderani, Fletcher, & Schyfter, 2018). Members of the so-called ‘Edinburgh School’ promote the methodological principles of ‘symmetry’ and ‘reflexivity’ (among others), which imply that sociologists should use the same sociological explanations to account for the existence of all forms of scientific knowledge, including sociology (Bloor, 1976/1991).…”

Trust, scepticism, and social order: A contribution from the sociology of scientific knowledge

“…I employ the term SSK to identify the work of a heterogeneous group of scholars working in Britain who in the 1960s pioneered the sociological study of the organisation and the content of science. To clarify, this article does not review the half a century of SSK research (for such a review, see: Agar, ; Aronova & Turchetti, ; Collins, ; David, ; Mazanderani, Fletcher, & Schyfter, ; Shapin, ; Zammito, ). Instead, I highlight two interrelated themes in SSK, which are key for the study of social order at large (Section ).…”