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Science and Technology Studies

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Science and Technology Studies

Science and Technology Studies, often termed simply STS, can be defined as the

interdisciplinary study of the social, cultural and political dynamics that inform and shape

science and technology, and how these in turn inform and shape future society, politics and

culture. The premise adopted in STS is that science and technology are not value-free, apolitical

activities as has tended to be assumed in ‘realist’ accounts. Rather, science and technology are

assumed to be informed by values, to be ‘framed’ in ways that privilege particular (often expert)

groups, to reflect particular ‘ways of seeing’ the world, and to ‘perform’ social relationships. For

this reason, much of STS has sought to develop ‘socially constructivist’ approaches aimed at

understanding the role of science in apprehending, measuring, defining and legitimating social

reality.

In this short entry I examine briefly the history of STS and how it has come to constitute a

distinctive body of thought, such that now it can reasonably be considered a sub-discipline with

its own professional societies (notably The Society for the Social Studies of Science [or 4S], and

The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology [or EASST]), a number of

high profile interdisciplinary journals (including Social Studies of Science; Science, Technology

and Human Values; Science as Culture; Minerva; Public Understanding of Science; Science and

Public Policy), a series of Handbooks of Science and Technology Studies, and a growing array of

university departments, courses and degree schemes.

Phase 1: The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Throughout the 1970s a programme of research was developed aimed at destabilising the

epistemological belief that scientists had special access - through the application of the proper
use of the scientific method, empirical observation aimed at the development of theory, and so

on - to underlying and unquestionable truths. Conceiving of science as a social practice, and

building on the discipline of the history and philosophy of science, practitioners in the sociology

of scientific knowledge (SSK) sought to unravel the ways in which scientific fact and theory

emerge out of various and multiple social processes. Rather than assume an a priori objectivity,

in which scientific knowledge is presented as a mirror of external reality (i.e. nature), SSK

developed a method and approach in which all knowledge claims were to be examined with

equivalent and symmetrical scepticism, and where the object of inquiry was to examine the

conditions under which claims to knowledge came to be seen as legitimate and true. Particularly

associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes and Donald MacKenzie (Edinburgh), with Harry

Collins and Trevor Pinch (Bath), with Mike Mulkay Malcolm Ashmore, Steve Woolgar and

Trevor Pinch (York), with Bruno Latour and Michel Callon (Paris), and Weibe Beijker

(Netherlands), a ‘strong programme’ developed committed to a relativist and empirical

programme aimed at studying the micro-social dynamics of science through which scientific

reality came to be socially constructed through laboratory study and experiment.

Perhaps not surprisingly, such an overt attack on the authority of science led to a concerted

counter-attack from many in the scientific establishment who tended to criticise such

interventions as unjustified, premised on faulty logic, sloppy in scholarship and even politically

motivated. The so-called ‘science wars’, between ‘postmodernists’ or social constructivists on

one side and scientific realists on the other, raged especially throughout the 1990s in a number of

largely unproductive and often acrimonious exchanges. One highly published event was the

‘Sokal affair’, arising from a paper written by the physicist Alan Sokal purportedly to argue that

quantum physics supported constructivist criticisms of the objectivity of science. Following

publication in the journal Social Text, Sokal revealed the paper to be a hoax, and cited the

publication as demonstrable evidence of the poor standards and dogma that existed in

postmodernist circles.

The field known as ‘science studies’ extended its gaze to embrace the ‘technological’

through a series of formative publications that included: Social Shaping of Technology (Donald

MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, (eds.), 1985) and The Social Construction of Technological

Systems (Weibe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch (eds.), 1987). Arguing against

technological determinism – the belief that technologies follow their own developmental path

and trajectory, outside of human influences – this body of work sought to highlight the human

choices and values that are embedded in technological design, that constrain or enable innovation

pathways, and that open the `black-box' of technology to allow the socio-economic patterns

embedded in innovation processes to be exposed and analysed.

Phase 2. From Epistemology to Politics and Public Engagement

Throughout the 1980s a body of scholarship developed, concerned less with ‘internalist’

matters of epistemology and scientific truth, and more with ‘externalist’ matters concerning the

use of scientific knowledge in ‘live’ public arenas and the role for wider public involvement in

scientific and technical decision-making. This more overtly political variant of STS, with a

normative commitment to social change, arose out of a dynamic interplay between SSK,

controversy studies, legal scholarship and risk theory. The analysis of public controversy proved

to be fertile ground for STS scholarship.

Brian Wynne (Lancaster) was a formative influence as a scholar who sought to mobilise

STS insight to assist wider recognition of marginal voices and conflicting framings of the scope
and meaning of controversial issues. Analysing the controversy over the proposed reprocessing

plant THORP at the 1977 Windscale public inquiry, Wynne realised that the argument between

the objectors and the protagonists was ostensibly one of framing: whereas the official and expert-

derived terms of reference related to the risks and implications of this plant alone, for the

objectors the issue concerned the wider consequences of its construction, including the use of

reprocessed plutonium for future bombs and the transport of spent fuel and other dangerous

materials in the so-called ‘plutonium economy’. Without taking an explicit stance, Wynne

argued (unsuccessfully as it happens) for a wider debate as to the extent to which the public

inquiry should deliberate on these wider responsibilities. A similar account was provided of the

North Sea Brent Spar oil platform controversy, analysed by STS scholars as a conflict over the

framing as to what constitutes the salient issue. For Shell and the UK Government, the salient

issue concerned the risks posed by the dumping of a single oil platform in the deep Atlantic,

while for Greenpeace and other objectors, the core issue concerned the precedent the dumping

would provide for all kinds of wastes, including nuclear. Further STS insight was brought to

bear on, inter alia, the importance of framing to the BSE mad cow controversy, HIV-AIDS,

genetically modified foods and crops, xenotransplantation, nature conservation and wildlife,

whether fluoride should be added to public water supplies to prevent tooth decay, and intelligent

design.

Of key concern across the above case studies was the way in which expert and scientific

communities defined, established and maintained official definitions of what is salient and what

is erased from public attention. The politics of research was one of critical engagement with

expert policy framings of significant public issues, themselves often reinforced by reductionist

processes of scientific risk assessment, and where the normative task was one of making public
and other marginalised knowledge claims available to expert groups. A tradition of policy-

oriented academic research emerged, that used small groups as a deliberative space where lay

publics could share their experiences, values and knowledges, and where STS scholars can bring

recognition of such local knowledge in the quest of making decision-making more socially

robust.

Interestingly, and following a series of acute and politically damaging technological risk

controversies (notably in the UK and Europe around BSE and GM foods), such scholarship

contributed towards a more explicitly deliberative turn in technological governance. Whereas

earlier technological decision-making processes had been grounded in notions of ‘sound science’

and expert advice, where public opposition to technological innovation was represented as due to

faulty and unreasonable logic, the new governance regime was more conciliatory to different

kinds of knowledge claims, and where the institutional task was to open up decision-making

processes through dialogue with publics and other stakeholders. A series of influential reports

were written, all calling for more proactive public involvement and deliberation in debates about

the social and ethical dimensions of science and technology. In the UK these included the

formative 3rd report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology on

Science and Society (2000), and the 21st report by the Royal Commission of Environmental

Pollution on Setting Standards (1998), while in Europe this new deliberative move was captured

in a series of reports and action plans on science and society. And indeed, in recent years, a range

of policy institutions have attempted to democratise aspects of their decision-making processes

through assorted participatory mechanisms that include consensus conferences, deliberative

polling, citizen juries, citizen panels and focus groups.

 A number of core intellectual resources have been developed to assist and structure STS

inquiry. These include the concept of ‘co-production’, an idea developed by Sheila Jasanoff and

colleagues to examine the dynamics through which science and social orders become mutually

constituted; the idea of ‘civic epistemology’, again pioneered by Jasanoff to refer to the

culturally specific practices of knowledge production that characterise public life and civic

institutions and that are used as a basis for making collective choices; and the approach of ‘actor

network theory’, developed by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour as a method for analysing the

relationship between things, ideas, people, technologies both as actors and networks.

Phase 3: Critical debates

In more recent years a series of debates have been taking place within STS, concerning its

relationship to institutional practice, to expertise and to innovation R&D. The first concerns the

development of a more critical and reflexive relationship between STS and institutional models

and approaches to public engagement. Whereas STS had previously, and for good reason, tended

to advocate public participation and citizen engagement in science as an a priori good, an

emerging body of scholarship is proposing a more analytically sceptical approach, asking

whether and under what conditions public participation can deliver its promised benefits, such as

enhanced public trust, more socially robust decisions, and better understanding of scientific and

technological risk issues. Harry Collins, Robert Evans and colleagues have initiated a

conversation on the need to distinguish between different kinds of expertise, between different

types of publics or lay citizens, and to the need for more critical scrutiny of the ways in which

public deliberation is being used in science based policy-making. Alan Irwin, for example, has

analysed the ambivalence that exists within policy institutions, who have embraced public
dialogue and transparency on the one hand, while sustaining a professional and expert-derived

‘risk and consequences’ framework on the other.

Brian Wynne has criticised much institutional public engagement activity for its emphasis

on ‘downstream’ questions of risk and harm, calling instead for public deliberation to be directed

‘upstream’, to the scientific visions and ‘imaginaries’ that are shaping the purposes and

trajectories of scientific and technological research. This attempt to provide a more substantive

role for STS in scientific and technological innovation has been developed into programmes of

research in the Netherlands in what is termed Constructive Technology Assessment, and in the

United States in the method called Real-Time Technology Assessment. Both attempt to provide a

method in which relevant actors, including publics, are brought together in a process that aims to

inform and shape innovation and decision-making practices.

Further Reading

Bijker, W., Hughes, T., & Pinch, T. (Eds.) (1987). The Social Construction of

Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge

MA/London: MIT Press.

Irwin, A., & Wynne, B. (1996). Misunderstanding science? The public reconstruction of

science and technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jasanoff, S., Markle, G., Petersen, J. C., & Pinch, T. (Eds.) (1993). Handbook of science

and technology studies. Beverly Hills: Sage. 2nd edition

Hackett, E. J., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M., & Wajcman, J. (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of

science and technology studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 3rd edition.
 House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. (2000). Science and

Society. London: HMSO.

MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (Eds.) (1985). The social shaping of technology. Milton

Keynes, Open University Press.

Royal Commission of Environment and Pollution. (1998). Setting environmental

standards, 21st report. London: The Stationery Office.

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