Placing STS in and through Turkey

Abstract

Why and how does it matter to undertake an STS praxis in a country where the field lacks adequate institutional recognition and capacity? This article investigates this question by tracing multiple, fragmented and contingent stories of placing STS in and through Turkey. At first sight, discontinuous stories of STS programs established in universities and unrecognized nature of STS as a discipline by the Council of Higher Education draw attention to the “underdeveloped” nature of the field in this country. This article counters such a perspective by rendering visible the works that support STS ethos as well as loose institutions within which STS is expected to flourish. By following people and artifacts in institutional and more-than institutional places of STS, this article acknowledges the efforts both to translate STS into the particular places of Turkey and to use STS as an intellectual space through which technoscientific knowledge can be questioned and translated into the local contexts of the country. The analysis of these translation efforts reveals that STS can be thought of as a space that enables one to be attuned to the sensibilities and realities of the country and search for ways to democratize the processes of technoscientific knowledge production whether it be in the universities or in public spaces.