Seminar on Science, Technology and Knowledge in Society

Year
1
Academic year
2018-2019
Code
03017698
Subject Area
Sociology
Language of Instruction
Portuguese
Other Languages of Instruction
English
Mode of Delivery
Face-to-face
Duration
SEMESTRIAL
ECTS Credits
10.0
Type
Compulsory
Level
3rd Cycle Studies

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

The seminar deepens the critical analysis and promotes the debate with the active participation of students on core concepts and other theoretical trends of social studies of science presented in the first semester. The seminar is based on the collective debate following the presentation of international scientific papers previously made available to the students. The evaluation of the curricular unit is based on the individual oral presentation of the paper and the student’s participation in the debates.

Learning Outcomes

The goal of this seminar is to expand and deepen the work developed during the first semester, through an exploration of new directions in science and technology studies (STS). Through the presentation and discussion of topics proposed by the lecturers, proposals, possibilities and limits of different contributions of social studies of science to approaches to topics of particular relevance at the intersection of science, technology, politics and society. Students are expected to develop skills in using STS approaches for the identification and critical study of emerging themes and objects in areas at the intersection of disciplines and practices. Among these particular themes of intersection identified include genetics, biosciences, health and economics.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

The Constitutive Normativity of Science

1 – Responsibility: a new normative ethos for the sciences? 2 - Feminist studies of science and the importance of matter: reinventing materialism and naturalism. 3 - Biovalue and bioeconomy: the predicament of science under neoliberalism.

Genetics and Society.

1 – Genetics and the Surveillance Society. 2 – Scientific Cultures and Civic Epistemologies. 3 – Biobanks and Public Participation. 4 – Ethical, Social and Economic Dimensions of Genomics.

Mental Health and Governmentality.

Knowledge and Performativity: The Case of Economics.

Science, Policy and Democracy.

Head Lecturer(s)

João Carlos Freitas Arriscado Nunes

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Other: 25.0%
Synthesis work: 75.0%

Bibliography

Barad, K. 2003. Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs 28 (3): 801-831.

Barad, K. 2011. Erasers and Erasures: Pinch’s Unfortunate ‘Uncertainty Principle’. Social Studies of Science. DOI: 10.1177/0306312711406317. 

Gilbert, S, and A. Fausto-Sterling. 2003. Educating for social responsibility: changing the syllabus of developmental biology. Int. J. Dev. Biol. 47: 237-244.

Haraway, D. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 575.

Hilgartner, S.; C.A. Miller; R. Hagendijk. 2015. Science and Democracy: Making knowledge and making power in the biosciences and beyond. Routledge: New York.

Hird, M.J. ‘Feminist Engagements with Matter’, Feminist Studies, 2009, 35(2): 329-346.

Lemke, Thomas. 2011. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. New York: New York University Press.

 

Lynch, Michael, Simon Cole, Ruth McNally, and Kathleen Jordan. 2008. Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Mackenzie, D. 2009. Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Nunes, J.A. 2008. O resgate da epistemologia. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 80: 45-70.

Porter, Theodore M. 1996. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rose, N. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. Free Association Books: London.

Santos, B.S. 2007. Para além do pensamento abissal: das linhas globais a uma ecologia de saberes. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 78: 3-46.

Taylor, P.T., Fifield, S.J and Young, C.C. 2011. Cultivating Collaborators: Concepts and Questions Emerging Interactively from an Evolving, Interdisciplinary Workshop, Science as Culture, 20:1, 89-105