STS reading group 2012-2014

The PhD reading group on STS literature has been running for several years.

Its organisers have included Louise Torntoft Jensen, James Maguire, Anne Kathrine Vadgård Nielsen, and Nanna Gorm Jensen.

The aim of the reading group is to critically engage with pertinent STS related topics and discussions, focusing especially on the making of material-semiotic arrangements that contend, or partially connect, with different emerging technologies and social identities. Our projects, for example, variously turn on different engagements with respectively ‘Electronic Voting’ and ‘Energy Futures’. Participants from all disciplinary backgrounds with an interest in STS are welcome to join the reading group.

The meetings take place on a more or less a monthly basis at the IT University of Copenhagen. Participants from all disciplinary backgrounds with an interest in STS are welcome to join the reading group.

If you want to participate or have any questions, please send us an email.

2014

• Helen Verran (2012): “Number”, Lury, Celia & Wakeford, Nina: Inventive Methods. The happening of the social. London & New York: Routledge
• Lippert, Ingmar: “The Calculative Enactment of Certainty. Achieving Environmental Data in a Fortune 50 Company” (work in progress/forthcoming)
• Asdal, Kristin (2008):”Enacting things through numbers: Taking nature into account/ing. “In: Geoforum. Vol. 39 No. 1. January 2008.

8 May 2014 ‘Valuing’

23 March 2014 ‘The role of place and landscape in knowledge production’

• Ingold, T (2010) Epilogue, in Conversations with Landscape (eds) Benediktsson and Lund
• Clark, N (2012) Chapter 1: the Earth in Physical and Social Thought, in, ‘Inhuman Nature, The Social Life of a Dynamic Planet’

28 February 2014 ‘Latour: Modes of Existence’

• Chapters 14, 15 and 16 from “An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence. An anthropology of the moderns” by Bruno Latour

2013

29 November 2013 ‘Hope as a Method?’

• Hirokazu Miyazaki, The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2004).
• Casper Bruun Jensen:  Experiments in good faith and hopefulness. Toward a Postcritical Social Science. (Forthcoming, Common Knowledge, spring 2014).
• Isabelle Stengers, “A ‘Cosmo-politics’: Risk, Hope, Change,” in Mary Zournazi, ed., “Hope: New Philosophies for Change” (New York: Routledge, 2002

8 November 2013 ‘Perspectivalism/Perspectivism’

• “Binary License” by Marilyn Strathern in: Common Knowledge 2011 Volume 17, Issue 1: 87-103
• “One, Two, Three: Cutting, Counting, and Eating” by Annemarie Mol in: Common Knowledge 2011. Volume 17, Issue 1, 111-116
• Mol, Annemarie (1999) “Ontological politics: A word and some questions”. In John Law & John Hassard (eds.) Actor network theory and after. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

30. May 2013: A Turn to Ontology

• Martin Holbraad (2009) “Ontography and Alterity – Defining Anthropological Truth”. Social Analysis. 53(2): 80-93.
• Michael Lynch (2008) Ontography: Investigating the Production of Things, Deflating Ontology. Prepared for: Oxford Ontologies Workshop, Said Business School, Oxford University.
• Michael W. Scott (2013) “To be a Wonder: Anthropology, cosmology, and alterity”. Under review for publication in Contemporary Cosmologies: Critical Re-Imaginings in Anthropological Theory and Analysis, ed. Allen Abrahamson and Martin Holbraad.

27. June 2013: Post-reflexivity

29. August 2013: After Nature

18. April 2013: Politics and the Political

• Andrew Barry (2001) “Technology and Politics”, in Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London and New York: Continuum.
• Mattei Candea (2011) “Our Division of the Universe: Making a Space for the Non-Political in the Anthropology of Politics”, Current Anthropology 52(3): 309-334.
• Bruno Latour (1986) “The Powers of Association”, in John Law (Ed.) Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge.

 

• Gerard de Vries (2007) “What is Political in Sub-politics?: How Aristotle Might Help STS” Social Studies of Science 37(5): 781-809.
• Bruno Latour (2007) “Turning Around Politics: A Note on Gerard de Vries’ Paper”, Social Studies of Science 37(5): 811-820.

21. March 2013: Dealing with Heterogeneity

• Bruno Latour (1997): “On actor-network-theory: A Few Clarifications plus more than a few Complications”, Soziale Welt 47(4): 1-14.
• Andrew Pickering (1993) “The Mangle of Practice” in The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, & Science. Chicago & London: The University og Chicago Press.
• Tim Ingold (2012) “When ANT meets SPIDER: social theory for arthropods” in Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London and New York: Routledge.
• George E. Marcus and Erkan Saka (2006) “Assemblage”, Theory, Culture & Society 23(2-3): 101-106.

• Bruno Latour (1988) “Opening Pandora’s Box”, in Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society.
• Annemarie Mol (2010) “Actor-Network Theory: sensitive and enduring tensions”, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Sonderheft, 50, 253-269

28. February 2013: Boundary Objects

• Susan Star and James Griesemer (1989): “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39”. Social Studies of Science 19(3): 387-420.
• Susan Star (2010): “This is not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of the Concept”. Science, Technology and Human Values 35(5): 601-617.
• Susan Star (1991) “Power, technology and the phenomenology of conventions: on being allergic to onions”, in John Law (ed) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London and New York: Routledge.

6. December 2012: Michael Serres

• Serres, Michel (2007/1980): ‘Interrupted Meals’, chapter 1 in The Parasite. University of Minnesota Press.
• Brown, Steven (2002): ‘Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite’. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(3): 1-27.

23. November 2012: Isabelle Stengers

• Stengers, Isabelle (1987/1997): Who Is the Author? in ‘Power and Invention’. University of Minnesota Press.
• Stengers, Isabelle (2005): The Cosmopolitical Proposal in ‘Making Things Public’ edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. ZKM
• Stengers, Isabelle (2000): Science and Nonscience in ‘Invention of Mordern Science’. University of Minnesota Press.

25. October 2012: Lucy Suchman

• Suchman, Lucy (2000) Organizing Alignment: A case of bridge-building. Organization 7: 311-327.
• Suchman, Lucy (2011) Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design. Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 1-18.
• Myers, Natasha (2008) Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography. Social Studies of Science 38: 163-199.

• Lucy Suchman, Embodied practices of engineering work. Mind, culture and activity 2000
• Lucy Suchman, Working artefacts: ethnomethods of the prototype 2002
• Newman, Susan (1998) Here, There, and Nowhere at All: Distribution, negotiation, and virtuality in postmodern ethnography and engineering. Knowledge and Society 11: 235-267.

27. September 2012: Donna Haraway

• Haraway, Donna: ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’ in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599
• Haraway, Donna: ‘Modest Witness’ in Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.Femaleman©_Meets_Oncomousetm. (London: Routledge, 1997).
• Haraway, Donna. ‘A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies’ in Configurations 1 (1994): 59-71.
• Haraway, Donna: ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ in Simians, cyborgs, and women : the reinvention of nature, New York: Routledge, 1991.

23. August 2012: Doing ANT and STS: theory and/or method?

• Law, John 1999: After ANT: complexity, naming and topology. in Actor-Network Theory and after.
• Latour, Bruno 1999: On Recalling ANT. in Actor-Network Theory and after.
• Gad, Christopher and Bruun Jensen, Casper 2010: On the Consequences of Post-ANT. in Science Technology and Human Values 35.
• Lee, Nick and Brown, Steve 1994: Otherness and the Actor Network. in American Behavioral Scientists, Vol. 37 No. 6, pp 772-790

• Krarup, Troels and Blok, Anders 2011. Unfolding the social: quasi-actants, virtual theory, and the new empiricism of Bruno Latour. in The Sociological Review 59:1.

22. June 2012: Studying partially existing objects

• ‘Researching partially existing objects. Ontologies for developing things’  by Casper Bruun Jensen. Its the 2nd chapter in his book: “Ontologies for Developing Things. Making Health Care Futures Through Technology” (2010)
• ‘On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-existing Objects’  by Bruno Latour. Its a chapter in the book: “Biographies of Scientific Objects” – Lorraine Daston (editor), Chicago University Press (2000)
• ‘Futures of the present – from performativity to Prehension’ by Mike Michael from the edited book: “Contested Futures. A sociology of prospective techno-science” (2000)
• As a relevant supplementary reading we suggest chapter 3 from Caspers book (“Ontologies for developing things”, 2010): “The Birth of a Future-Generating Device: On Electronic Patient Records and Expectations”.

24. May 2012: Representation and Intervention

• Jespersen, A. P. et. al (forthcoming): ‘Guest Editorial: Cultural Analysis    as intervention’ in: Science Studies, special issue on “Cultural Analysis as Intervention”
• Jensen, T. E. (forthcoming): ‘Intervention by Invitation. New Concerns and New Versions of the user in STS’, , in: Science Studies, special issue on “Cultural Analysis as Intervention”
• Munk, A.K. & S. Abrahamsson (forthcoming): ‘Empiricist interventions: strategy and tactics on the ontopolitical battlefield’, in: Science Studies, special issue on “Cultural Analysis as Intervention”
• Verran, Helen & Winthereik, Brit R. (forthcoming): Ethnographic Stories as Generalizations that intervene

10. May 2012: Ordering and Agency

• Callon & Law: ‘Agency and the hybrid Collectif’
• Mol & Law: ‘Situated Bodies and Distributed selves’