230147 VO Science, Technology, Society (STS): Key Questions and Concepts (2016W)

The aim of this lecture is to give students an overview of the basic questions and key issues at the core of the study of the relations of science, technology and society. Throughout the lecture you will be introduced to important approaches and concepts that can be used to address these questions/issues.
We will start by introducing 4 empirical cases which should give us a first feeling for the multifacetedness and the complexities of issues at stake when trying to understand the interactions of science, technology and society. They will accompany us through the lecture and discussion class and serve as shared reference points. The other core classes will also use these cases.

In the following lectures we will address the following issues:
- We will start by asking questions conerning the special status of scientific knowledge and explore what it means to understand science as a specific set of practices, performed in specific places and guided by social processes; this will also lead us to ask for the social organisation of science and its core values.
- We will then move to the area of technologies and investigate how we understand the emergence of new technologies, what societal values are inscribed into them, and how they change and structure of our ways of living in contemporary societies. While gender aspects will be present also in other areas, we will devote some special consideration to this aspect when discussing technological development.
- In the following two lectures we will study how science and technology order the world we live in, on the one hand through processes of standardization and classification, on the other through the development of robust sociotechnical imaginaries which connect our visions of science and technology with our visions of a good life.
- Finally, we will look into the political dimensions of science and technology, and in particular discuss science-society relations, the governance of science and technology, and how citizens can participate in technoscientific societies.