Fwd: [EASST-Eurograd] REMINDER: : Announcement WTMC summer school with Prof. Steven Epstein (Northwestern University)| NL-Ravenstein on 26-30 August 2013| registration deadline 12 May
Esther Ortega
From: <euro...@lists.easst.net>
Date: 2013/4/16
Subject: [EASST-Eurograd] REMINDER: : Announcement WTMC summer school with Prof. Steven Epstein (Northwestern University)| NL-Ravenstein on 26-30 August 2013| registration deadline 12 May
To: euro...@lists.easst.net
Netherlands Graduate School of Science, Technology, and Modern Culture (WTMC) Summer School 2013
Participation and The Politics of Difference
with Professor Steven Epstein (Northwestern University)
Soeterbeeck, Ravenstein, The Netherlands, 26-30 August 2013
Scholars from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have pointed out how everyday experiences, marginalized knowledge, or unaccredited expertise may challenge and enrich dominant discourses and practices that claim scientific authority. Following critiques of the unchallenged authority of scientific experts, there have been repeated calls for more participation by (other) citizens in the production of scientific knowledge. These calls are often formulated under the heading of democratizing science or producing socially robust knowledge.
When exploring the interaction between citizens and scientists empirically, it becomes apparent that these relationships are more complex: participation has a panoply of consequences, many of them unanticipated. Participation may create new elites and spokespersons with preferential access to the corridors of power or specialized knowledge. The participatory success of specific actors may come at the expense of other less influential groups; and what it means to be successful is often problematic. Even where non-scientists have been successful in influencing the course of scientific knowledge production, for example through activism, they themselves have often been transformed in this process, having to adjust their claims and to forge novel scientific, political and moral identities.
These processes, and their ironies and tensions, have formed the key focus of the work of Steven Epstein, the anchor teacher for the 2013 WTMC summer school. His widely acclaimed Impure Science (1996, University of California Press), on the involvement of AIDS activists in scientific knowledge production and the ways in which this influenced the definition of the disease, its causes, and treatment, is perhaps the richest and most influential work on the interaction between activists and scientists. Professor Epstein analyses how AIDS activists become ‘lay experts’. Some of the successes of these activists were to raise awareness about the exclusion of certain social groups through the set-up of clinical trials. Since clinical researchers have become increasingly aware of this, an ‘inclusion and difference’ paradigm has emerged in clinical studies that focuses on identifying diverse groups and including them in the knowledge to be developed. The ironies this produces are thoroughly analyzed in the second and equally groundbreaking monograph by Professor Epstein, Inclusion (2007, University of Chicago Press). In this book, he addresses how biopolitical projects that intend to contribute to equity and inclusion lead to new attempts to classify and standardize humans, with far-ranging effects for social justice. In his latest work, Steven Epstein explores how sexuality is metricated and standardized in research practices, and how a notion like ‘sexual health’ is becoming a ubiquitous term with important consequences for how we imagine and regulate sexuality.
The wide-ranging and influential scholarly work of Professor Epstein, provides the backbone of a full-week discussion on topics such as participation in scientific knowledge production, processes of in- and exclusion of race, ethnicity, sex and gender, and truth-making machines of sexuality, but also of more general questions such as the materialization of classifications, standardization of niche categories, and the notion of ‘buzzwords’ in scientific practices – including in STS.
There will be several other guest lecturers at this summer school, including Professor Stefan Hirschauer (U Mainz). In addition, there will be various skill-training activities, including exercises in academic writing, close reading, and interviewing when ‘studying up’.
This event is specifically intended for researchers working on a PhD in Science and Technology Studies, history and sociology of science, or related fields. Priority is given to members of the Netherlands Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). The precise programme will be finalised after registration closes, to accommodate presentations by participants.
The preparation work for this event is estimated at about 80 hours of study. Completion of this Summer School is granted with 5 ECTS.
If you have any practical questions related to the summer school, please contact Marjatta Kemppainen (u.m.kem...@utwente.nl). For content-related questions, contact the co-ordinators Teun Zuiderent-Jerak (zuid...@bmg.eur.nl) or Willem Halffman (w.hal...@gmail.com).
The registration form for this summer school is available online. Please register by 12 May 2013.
Costs for WTMC PhD members:
-meals 10 EUR /day
Costs for everyone else: 1065 EUR including fee, accommodation and meals
Costs for EASST members: 975 EUR including fee, accommodation and meals
There is a small number of stipends available for participants from outside of the Netherlands.
For more information on the stipends, please contact Sally Wyatt, WTMC Director (sally...@maastrichtuniversity.nl). Stipends
cover fees, accommodation and meals. Participants have to cover their own travel costs.
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Esther