Keynote Titles and Abstracts

Here are the titles and abstracts for our two keynote talks:

I. Rethinking STS and Culture

Rayvon Fouché, Purdue University

Though scholars in the field of Science and Technology Studies have spent decades exploring the relationships between science, technology, and the wider society and culture, we have reached a historical moment where it may be necessary to reconsider what these relationships mean for future scholarship. By asking how and why cultural communities consume, use and are subjugated by technoscience, we can garner a deeper understanding of how these communities, based on collective cultural needs, desires, aesthetics, and priorities, produce and redefine artifacts, practices, and knowledge that transform the architectured meanings of technoscience.  By focusing on anime and hip hop, black history month and sneaker design, oil embargoes and limited-edition automobiles, and material science and athletics, this talk will prod us to collectively rethink these connections and build unfamiliar linkages between culture and technoscience.

II. The Role of STS in the Post-Truth Era: Doubling Down on the Politics of Knowledge

Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan

Public trust in government, and specifically in science and technology policymaking, has been eroding for decades. In the 1960s, feminists and environmentalists began to question the evidence and expertise used in policymaking, arguing that it did not adequately reflect their concerns. These types of concerns have multiplied in recent years, as citizens worry about the racial bias built into big data and algorithms and the lack of regulatory oversight, and question the safety of vaccines and science of climate change. Science and technology studies (STS) scholars have responded to this citizen engagement by carefully identifying how these concerns are based in alternative forms of knowledge and expertise, and arguing that our governing institutions must consider these alternatives more seriously through more inclusive and deliberative democratic approaches. But what should we make of these efforts in an era of “alternative facts” and “fake news”? Some STS scholars suggest that we should step back from our analyses of the social construction of science, worrying that it will be misconstrued to catastrophic effect in a post-truth era. This talk argues the opposite. It will articulate an STS research agenda designed to develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between science, knowledge, politics, and policy. In particular, it will explore how STS can help us identify the structural limitations of democratization efforts, and ultimately help produce science and technology policies that are more socially just and democratically legitimate.

Contributed Papers: Titles and Authors

We are excited to post the list of the 10 contributed papers for the upcoming workshop. Be sure to check back soon for a workshop schedule and registration details:

Consensus Change on Acceptable Uncertainty and its Implications in Doing STS: Lessons from a case study of a conservative movement targeting drug regulation, Sungwoo Ahn (Virginia Tech)

With Friends Like These: Trustworthy Science Criticism in Distrustful Times, Benjamin Almassi (Governors State University)

Active Ignorance and the Rhetoric of Biological Race Realism, Nora Berenstain (University of Tennesee-Knoxville)

Reasonable Doubt: Deliberation, Unreliable Experts, and the Problem of Public Ignorance, Elizabeth Chatterjee and Greg Lusk (University of Chicago)

Feminist Philosophy of Science: How can we benefit from science in uncertain times?, Sahar Heydari Fard (University of Cincinnati)

Mobilizing Data for Critical Environmental Impact Assessments: Civic Informatics for Questioning Science in Pennsylvania’s Anti-Pipeline Movement (Kirk Jalbert, FracTracker Alliance and Drexel University)

A Pragmatic Approach to Intregrating Values and Science, Will Kidder (Albany)

Questioning and inspiring science: The case of Richard Lewontin, Eric Martin (Baylor University)

Exploring the Politics of Sensing Through Participatory Methods, Jennifer Mokos (Ohio Wesleyan University)

Charlottesville’s open data as an opportunity for STS-informed techno-democracy, Caitlin Wylie, Tolu Odumosu, Sean Ferguson, Sharon Ku (University of Virginia)