Newsletter of the Society for
Social Studies of Science
June 2024
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Presidential Message, June 2024
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Dear
4S Community,
Looking
forward to being in
community with so many of
you at 4S-EASST Amsterdam
in less than a month’s
time!
As
you can see on the Conference
Programme, it’s
shaping up to be an
extraordinary set of
sessions and events.
Highlights
include:
Tuesday
July 16th
•
Presidential Plenary
featuring Alondra
Nelson and
Brice Laurent speaking
on the topic of “Making
Policy and/as STS
Scholarship”
Wednesday
July 17th
•
Making and Doing
sessions
•
Author-Meets-Critics
sessions for 4S Prize
Winning Books
Carson
Prize: Helena
Hansen, Jules Netherland,
and David Herzberg, Whiteout:
How Racial Capitalism
Changed the Color of
Opioids in America
Fleck
Prize: Shannon
Cram, Unmaking the
Bomb: Environmental
Cleanup and the Politics
of Impossibility
Thursday
July 18th
•
Bernal Lecture
featuring presentations by
Annemarie Mol and Geofrey
Bowker, as well as a
celebration of the life
and work of Adele Clarke
•
Theme Plenary
on Making and Doing
Transformations – scholars
from three institutes that
have been involved for
decades in
transformation-oriented
STS work from three
continents will share
their challenges and
learnings
•
Awards Plenary
4S President Anne Pollock
and EASST President Maja
Horst convene this
celebration of the authors
who have been honoured
with prizes from each of
the societies
•
Forest Festival,
based in the nearby city
forest, the Amsterdamse
Bos [ADD link:
www.amsterdamsebos.nl],
delegates are invited to
enjoy a complementary mini
festival full of delicious
food, lively conversation,
and some nice surprises.
Friday
July 19th
•
4S Business Meeting
all members welcome to
learn about and
participate in the
governance of our society
In
the meantime, 4S has been
continuing to develop our
internationalization in
between our own meetings,
through engagements with
other bodies around the
world. In April, past
Council member Leandro
Rodriguez Medina
represented 4S at the
International Science
Council meeting in
Santiago de Chile, at
which two themes stood
out: science diplomacy and
the integration of
artificial intelligence in
regional scientific
systems. With the
participation of
ambassadors from several
Latin American countries
and the Chilean Minister
of Science and Technology,
the meeting allowed a
rapprochement between
scientific and political
visions on urgent issues,
such as climate change and
work automation, both
framed within regional
cooperation. This event is
the first of its kind in
Latin America and allows
for the forging of broader
and more pluralistic
networks in relation to
technoscientific issues,
which, it is hoped, can
generate synergies between
institutions.
And
then in May, Amanda Windle
and I travelled to
Beijing, for a visit
arranged by our 4S Council
Member Vincent Li and his
extraordinary team of
colleagues at the National
Academy of Innovation
Strategy (NAIS), China
Association of Science and
Technology (CASST), and
the interrelated
organisations the Chinese
Association for Science of
Science and S&T Policy
Research (CASSST), Chinese
Academy of Sciences
(CASSSP), and the
University of Chinese
Academy of Sciences,
Chinese Communication
Centre for Science and
Technology, and the China
Science and Technology
Museum. In addition to
meeting with leaders of
these organisations, we
also visited Tsinghua
University, where I gave a
very well-attended lecture
on “Traditions and
Trajectories of Gender and
Science,” and the
conversations with
graduate students and
faculty were incredibly
engaging. The journey was
an invaluable occasion to
learn more about the
current state of
scholarship in STS and
related fields – notably
S&T policy – and think
together about
opportunities for
developing the ties
between these vital
communities of scholars in
China and international
STS communities in 4S
through conference
participation, further
handbook translation, and
other collaborations.
The
internationalisation of 4S
is an ongoing endeavour
that extends well beyond
our conferences, ever more
fully realising our
society’s mission of fostering
interdisciplinary and
engaged scholarship in
social studies of
science, technology, and
medicine across the
globe.
All
best,
Anne
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Click here
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posts
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Spectacles of Waste
Authored
by Warwick Anderson
Polity
Press
The
modern bathroom is an
ingenious compilation of
locked doors, smooth
porcelain, 4-ply tissue
and antibacterial hand
soap, but despite this
miracle of indoor
plumbing, we still can’t
bear the thought that
anyone else should know
that our bodies produce
waste. Why must we live by
the rules of this intense
scatological
embarrassment?
In Spectacles of Waste,
leading historian of
medicine Warwick Anderson
reveals how human
excrement has always
complicated humanity’s
attempts to become modern.
From wastewater
epidemiology and sewage
snooping to fecal
transplants and
excremental art, he argues
that our insistence on
separating ourselves from
our bodily waste has
fundamentally shaped our
philosophies, social
theories, literature and
art—even the emergence of
high-tech science as we
understand it today.
Email:
warwick....@sydney.edu.au
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The Path to a Strong Global Plastic Treaty
Authored
by Margaret Spring,
Chair of the ISC expert
group on plastic
pollution
The
path to a strong Global
Plastic Treaty - Margaret
Spring, Chair of the ISC
expert group on plastic
pollution, shares
takeaways from the 4th
session of the
Intergovernmental
Negotiating Committee on
Plastic Pollution
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Palestine
Forum
Recently
published content
includes:
Mapping
a Catastrophe
Authored by Christine
Leuenberger
The
working group on war and
genocide includes: Vivian
Choi, Zheng "Vincent" Li,
Michal Nahman, Anne
Pollock, Amit Prasad,
Misria Shaik Ali, Maka
Suarez, and Lucy Suchman.
Email to suggest content
for this page (in...@4sonline.org).
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Cracking
the Bro Code
Authored
by Coleen M. Carrigan
Cracking
the Bro Code is a bold
ethnographic study of
sexism and racism in
contemporary computing
cultures theorized through
the analytical frame of
the “Bro Code.” Drawing
from feminist anthropology
and STS, Coleen Carrigan
shares in this book the
direct experiences of
women, nonbinary
individuals, and people of
color, including her own
experiences in tech, to
show that computing has a
serious cultural problem.
From senior leaders in the
field to undergraduates in
their first year of
college, participants
consistently report how
sexism and harassment
manifest themselves in
computing via values,
norms, behaviors,
evaluations, and policies.
While other STEM fields
are making strides in
recruiting, retaining, and
respecting women workers,
computing fails year after
year to do so.
MIT
Press: Get 20% off with
the code READMIT20
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Click here
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Announcements
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International
Science Council
(ISC)
1.
Deadline: June 28, 2024
Call:
application
Apply
for IANAS
Young Scientist Research
Award for Women for
Science
2.
Deadline:
July 1, 2024
Call:
application
Call
for esearch focusing on
the Middle East
3. Deadline:
September 15, 2024
Call:
application
Apply
for the International
Union for Quaternary
Research’ Fellowship
Program supporting
early-career scientists
and scientists from low-
and middle-income
countries to gain
international quaternary
research experience at a
foreign institution for
the duration of 3–6
months.
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Serbian
Academy of Sciences and
Arts conference
Dates
of Event:
September 30 to October 1,
2024
Location:
Belgrade, Serbia
Serbian
Academy of Sciences and
Arts conference “100 Years
of the Paratethys –
Conceptual History and
Modern Challenges”
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Science
and Technology
Diplomacy Summer
School
Deadline:
June 30 to July 5, 2024
Location:
Barcelona, Spain
Contact:
Aurélien
Luciani
Our
Science and Technology
Diplomacy Summer School is
back for its 2024 edition,
and we would like to share
this program with you
because we believe it
could be of interest to
members of your network
and institution.
The Summer School is a
joint effort by SciTech
DiploHub and IBEI, the
Barcelona Institute for
International Studies,
along with Barcelona’s
leading organizations in
science and international
affairs. After 6
successful consecutive
editions, this year it
will take place in person
at one of the world's
innovation hotspots:
Barcelona, from June 30th
to July 5th, 2024.
The Summer School offers a
valuable opportunity to
examine the most relevant
advances in science
diplomacy while getting
certified through this
university-accredited
training. The program is
led by world-leading
practitioners in science
diplomacy and tailored to
provide hands-on
experience to the next
cohort of leaders in this
emerging field. In
addition, it provides
ample networking
opportunities with
professionals in the field
and hands-on experience
with visits to top-leading
institutions in the city.
The participation in the
Summer School also
includes an invitation to
take part in the World
Science Diplomacy Summit,
taking place that same
week in beautiful
Barcelona.
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Click
here
to see all STS Event Calls
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Call
for for Abstracts:
En/Countering Tracking.
Resisting spatiotemporal
media operations in
computational cultureA
special issue of
Computational Culture, a
Journal of Software
Studies
Edited
by Kathrin Friedrich and
Sebastian Randerath
Deadline:
September 15, 2024 (for
750-word abstracts)
Tracking
takes place ubiquitously
and at different scales –
from satellite-based
wildlife tracking (Benson
2010) to automated
monitoring of supply chain
workers through
radio-frequency
identification (RFID)
(Hayles 2009; Kanngieser
2013) and to ubiquitous
self-surveillance through
self-tracking apps (Lupton
2021). With the expansion
of sensor-based geomedia
as well as embodied
computing, tracking also
becomes a key media
operation for
environmental sensing or
virtual reality
experiences (Egliston and
Carter 2022; Gabrys 2019).
The computational logics
of tracking result in new
aesthetic and operational
regimes that diminish
sensory perception and
privilege logics of
calculation, which in turn
co-constitute mobile forms
of (non-)human action and
tactical interventions
(Crandall 2010; Hansen
2015).
We
invite critical encounters
through and of tracking,
enabling new perspectives
on computational
infrastructures, software,
(non-)human aesthetics and
operative interactions, by
means of theoretical
reflections, critical
making or activism. We aim
at gathering submissions
that 1) render existing
tracking operations
perceivable; 2) disrupt
tracking infrastructures;
or 3) operationalize
tracking itself for
resistance. The special
issue invites theoretical,
conceptual and
performative approaches
from fields such as media
studies, visual studies,
artistic research,
sociology and critical
geography to address the
question of how tracking
becomes a repressive,
subversive or activistic
media operation.
Topics
and projects might
include:
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Inventive methods that
repurpose tracking
infrastructures,
sensors, software and
data to research
computational culture
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Detailed empirical and
critical studies
exploring the relations
of en/countering
tracking in
computational culture
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En/countering tracking
in labor resistance and
platform capitalisms
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Critical theoretical
conceptualization of
tracking or countering
for the study of
computational culture
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Critical explorations of
the chronopolitics,
timescapes and
spatiotemporal regimes
of tracking
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Activist media,
countersurveillance,
tactical media,
decolonial, (glitch)
feminist and resistant
epistemologies of
tracking
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En/countering relations
between political
economy, racialized
capitalism and tracking
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Visual cultures,
(in-)visualities and
aesthetics of
en/countering tracking
-
En/countering tracking
in media art and
artistic activism
Computational
Culture is an
online open-access
peer-reviewed journal of
interdisciplinary enquiry
into the nature of
cultural computational
objects, practices,
processes and structures.
Contact:
en_counteri...@uni-bonn.de
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Call
for Contributions:
Contesting Artificial
Intelligence —
Communicative Practices,
Organizational Structures,
and Enabling Technologies
Deadlines:
September 30, 2024 (for
abstracts); Mar
31, 2025 ( for full
papers); and December 2025
(expected
date of publication)
For
this interdisciplinary
research topic we are
looking forward to
contributions addressing
concepts, approaches, and
techniques of AI
contestability in the
context of organizational
and cross-organizational
communication. This may
involve interventions from
research fields such as
science and technology
studies, organizational
sociology, critical
algorithm and data
studies, applied ethics,
legal studies, data
science, software
engineering,
human-centered computing,
and critical design.
Frontiers Research Topics
are collaborative
initiatives by multiple
journals gathering
contributions on one
thematic area or issue. In
our case, accepted
contributions can be
published in one of the
following peer-reviewed
journals: Frontiers
in Communication (lead),
Frontiers in Artificial
Intelligence, Frontiers
in Sociology, Frontiers
in Big Data, Frontiers
in Computer Science and
Frontiers in Human
Dynamics. You can
decide for yourself which
journal to submit to. If a
considerable number of
articles are collected,
they will additionally be
published as a special
issue / ebook.
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Click here
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Proposal Calls
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Center
for Critical Computational
Studies (C3S) at
Goethe-University in
Frankfurt/Main
Deadline
for applications: July 4,
2024
The
Center for Critical
Computational Studies
(C3S) at Goethe-University
in Frankfurt/Main is
seeking to fill three
Professorships for the
Critical Reflection and/or
Governance of
Computational
Technologies.
Calls will be open
discipline and open rank
(W1 to W2 Tenure Track; W2
to W3 Tenure Track; W3).
Key disciplinary
backgrounds include, but
are not limited to:
Digital Anthropology,
Digital Geography, Digital
Sociology, IT Law, Science
and Technology Studies
(STS), Political Theory,
Ethics in Computation,
Philosophy of Media,
Science, and Technology.
From
October 8th-10th, 2024, we
are conducting an
Exploratory Workshop to
allow candidates to
showcase their expertise
and interdisciplinary
interests. By the end of
July 2024, the
successfully selected
candidates will receive
their respective
invitations to the
workshop.
Contact:
Johanna
Fankel
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Click here
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Postdoctoral
Fellow in Intersectional
Feminist STS at Yale
University
Deadline:
July 10, 2024
We
are seeking a postdoctoral
fellow in intersectional
feminist Science and
Technology Studies, with a
focus on the topical areas
of either critical data
studies, artificial
intelligence and
automation technologies,
or social science of
medicine and medical
technologies.
Applicants
must hold or receive a
Ph.D. in a relevant field
before the start of the
appointment. Ph.D. must
have been received within
the last three years.
Contact:
Kalindi
Vora
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Research
Fellowship: Rice
University, Houston,
TX
Deadline:
August 15, 2024
Applicants
are requested to submit a
proposal of research to be
undertaken during the
fellowship period. The
principal selection
criteria are scholarly
creativity and excellence,
the applicant’s record of
productivity, and a
clearly expressed research
plan to address questions
at the forefront of their
field of study. The
proposed research should
encompass independent
research ideas and explore
new directions beyond the
applicant’s Ph.D.
Contact:
Email
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Click here
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Postdocs
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Submit items for Technoscience and
the 4S web site to submi...@4sonline.org.
Deadline for Technoscience
is the 12th of each
month. Items
may be edited for length.
Please include a URL to
the complete and
authoritative information.
Want to feature your recent
article in a monthly
community announcement
post consisting of our
members' recent
publications? Please email
submi...@4sonline.org.
Message
sent by Managing Director, m...@4sonline.org
Society
for Social Studies of
Science | 114 Friendly
Hall | University of
Oregon | Eugene, OR 97403
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