Knowledge and Society
S&TS/Soc 4531
Dr. Christine Leuenberger
Department of Science & Technology Studies
Class meets: W 10:10-12:05
Classroom: RCK B15
Office Hours: W 12:30-1:30 and by appointment
Office: 131 Rockefeller Hall
Course Description
What is real? How is one to know? In this course we explore these questions by focusing on the
intersection between knowledge, society, culture, and politics. Knowledge is central to the
organization of society. It not only constitutes everyday, common sense, and indigenous
practices, but also professional and scientific endeavors. We will discuss classical theoretical
debates and empirical studies of how knowledge partakes in the construction and experience of
reality, personhood, identity, interaction, religion and the emotions, and how it builds and
sustains the artistic, scientific and technical professions.
Course Requirements
1. Attendance and participation in seminars (10%).
2. Weekly responses (up to 2 pages) to readings to be posted on blackboard’s discussion board
(course web site for STS 4531) (15%).
3. Presentation (4-5 pages) in class of one week’s readings (must include at least two articles).
Presenter will also lead class discussion (15%).
4. Mid-term exam 6-7 pages (25%)
5. Final take-home paper 8-9 pages (35%). Preliminary Research Topic due Sep 21st (Week 5).
Outline due Oct 19th (Week 9).
Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic
Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the
student’s own work. The URL for the student code of academic integrity is:
http://www.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html. The URL for how to use sources correctly is:
http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm and for guides to citation styles see:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/services/citing.html.
Supplementary Course Material
In this course we will use (time permitting) visual and audio material that either pertains to the
topic being discussed or it will be used as a basis for sociological analysis. Documentaries and
films: Is Science Fiction?; Ken Gergen: What is Social Construction?; Analyses of Political
Speeches; The Miracle of Life; Greatest Miracle of Life; Woody Allan: What everybody always
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wanted to know about sex; Modern Marvels: Inviting Disaster, The History Channel: Where the
Past comes alive (a History channel production); Stuart Hall: Race: a floating Signifier?; Stuart
Hall: Representation and the Media; In Search of Ourselves; Rodney King Trail; Consuming
Kids, Many Ways to See the World, You Tube: Peter Berger: Faith Seeking Understanding:
Religious America, Secular Europe?
Course Web site
Information, reading materials, and details about all assignments will be posted on the course
Web site, which should be periodically consulted to check for announcements. The URL is:
https://blackboard.cornell.edu Course Name: STS4531KnowledgeandSocietyFall11
(login and enroll in S&TS 4531).
Required Readings
Berger P. and Luckmann T. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge (available at the Campus Store).
Course Reader (available at the Campus Store)
Additional required reading materials are available on the Blackboard website for STS 4531.
Topics covered
August 24th
(1) Introduction
August 31st
(2) What is the Sociology of Knowledge?
Required for Discussion:
Berger P. and Luckmann T. "Introduction." The Social Construction of Reality. 1984:13-30.
Karp, David A. et al. "Culture and the Organization of Everyday Life." Sociology in Everyday
Life. 1993:5-36.
McCarthy E. D. "Introduction", Knowledge as Culture, 1996:1-10.
Mannheim K. "The Sociological Conception of Thought." Ideology and Utopia, P. 1-5.
Recommended:
McCarthy, “What is Knowledge”, Knowledge as Culture. 1996, pp. 11-26.
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Heritage J., "The Phenomenological Input", in Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. 1984: 37-74.
Schutz A. and T. Luckmann The Structures of the Life World, Vol I, 1973: 243-331.
Schutz Alfred and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life World, Vol I& II.
September 7th
(3) The Cultural Production of ‘Psy’ Knowledge: A Case Study
VIDEO IN SEARCH OF OURSELVES
Rose Nikolas “Assembling the Modern Self.” Rewriting the Self by Roy Porter (eds.).
Routledge. 1997: 224-248.
Porter Roy (eds.) Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present. 1997:1-28.
September 14th
(4) Knowledge and Reality
Required:
Berger P. and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
Knowledge, 1984 (Part 1 and II: The Foundation of Knowledge in Everyday Life - Conceptual
Machineries of Universe-Maintenance. Part 3: Society as Subjective Reality- Internalization of
Social Structure).
Recommended:
Harre Rom (ed). The Social Construction of Emotions, 1988: 2-14; 120-134.
Sweder R.A. and Miller J.G., "The Social Construction of the Person: How is it possible?", in
Gergen K.J. and Davis K.E. (eds.), The Social Construction of the Person. 1985: 41-69.
Berger Peter, “Identity as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge”, in Curtis et. al. The
Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 373-384.
September 21st
MEET AT URIS LIBRARY CLASSROOM FOR LIBRARY INSTRUCTION SESSION
(5) Knowledge and Religion
Required:
Berger P., The Sacred Canopy. 1967: 13-37; 38-60.
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Snow D. and R. Machalek, "The Convert as a Social Type", Sociological Theory, 1983: 259289.
Beckford J. "Accounting for Conversion." British Journal of Sociology, 29/2. 1978:249-262.
Holstein J. and J. Gubrium. The Self We Live By. 2000:177-186.
Recommended:
Berger P. and T. Luckmann, "Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Knowledge." Sociology
and Social Research 47/4, 1963:417-427.
September 28th
MEET AT JOHNSON MUSEUM FOR MUSEUM SESSION ON CONVENTION AND
NOTIONS OF BEAUTY IN ART
(6) Knowledge and the Professions
Required:
Becker H., Art Worlds. 1982. Chap 2: Conventions, Pp. 40-67
Goodwin Charles, “Professional Vision”, in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 96, No.
3 (Sep 1994): 606-633. (on-line on Blackboard).
Berkenkotter C, and T, Huckin, and J. Ackerman: “Social Context and Socially Constructed
Texts: The Initiation of a Graduate Student into a Writing Research Community”, in Charles
Bazerman and James Paradis, Textural Dynamics of the Professions (Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 191-215.
Recommended:
Abbott A., The System of Professions. 1988: 1-31; 177-211.
Becker H. Art Worlds. 1982. Chapter 1: Art Worlds and Collective Activity, Pp. 1-39; Chapter
11: Reputation, Pp. 351-371.
DeNora T., "Musical Patronage and Social Change in Beethoven's Vienna". American Journal
of Sociology.
Bazerman Charles and James Paradis, Textual Dynamics of the Professions (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
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October 5th
(7) Scientific, Indigenous and Tacit Knowledge
Required:
Shapin S. "Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge." Annu. Rev. Sociol.
1995:289-321. (on-line on Blackboard)
Collins H. M. "What is tacit knowledge?" The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory.
2001:107-119.
Watson H. in D. Turnbull (eds.). Maps are Territories. 1993:28-36.
Watson-Verran H. and Turnball D. "Science and Other Indigenous Knowledge Systems" in
Jasanoff et. al. (eds.) Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. 1995.
Recommended:
Hine, Christine (2005) “Internet Research and the Sociology of Cyber-Social-Scientific
Knowledge”, in The Information Society 21: 239-248.
Mulkay M. Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. 1985:1-26.
Callon M. "Four Models for the Dynamics of Science", in Jasanoff et al. (eds.) Handbook of
Science and Technology Studies. 1995:29-63.
October 12th
(8) Knowledge, Psychology, and Personhood
Required:
Holstein James and Jaber Gubrium, "Formulating the Social Self", in The Self We Live By.
2000: 17-37.
Berger P. et al. The Homeless Mind. 1974:63-82.
Eaton William W. "The Social Construction of Bizarre Behaviors." The Sociology of Mental
Disorders, Praeger. 2001: 1-52.
Recommended:
Lindholm Charles, "The Discovery of the Individual", in Culture & Identity (NY: McGraw Hill,
2001), pp. 19-41.
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Barth L. "Michel Foucault." Key Sociological Thinkers. 1998: 252-265.
Sarup M. "Foucault: Sex and the Technologies of the Self", in Identity, Culture and the
Postmodern World. 1996 (e-book)
Herman E. The Romance of American Psychology. 1995: 1-16;304-315. On-line on
Blackboard.
October 19th
(9) Knowledge, Science, and Politics
Required:
Eghigian Greg, Andreas Killan and Christine Leuenberger, “The Self as Project: Politics and the
Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century”, Osiris, 2007, 22: 1-25. (on Blackboard)
Gerovitch Slava “‘New Soviet Man’ Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design,
and the Construction of Communism”, Osiris, 2007, 22 (on-line on Blackboard)
Doel, Ronald E., 2003. "Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military's Influence on
the Environmental Sciences in the USA After 1945." Social Studies of Science 33, 5, pp. 635666. (on-line on Blackboard)
Leuenberger Christine “Cultures of Categories: Psychological Diagnoses as Institutional and
Political Projects before and after the Transition from State Socialism in 1989 in East
Germany”, Osiris, 2007, 22:1. (on-line on Blackboard)
Recommended:
Mitch Ash, “Kurt Gottschaldt and Psychological Research in Nazi and Socialist Germany”, in
Kristie Macrakis and Dieter Hoffmann (eds.) Science under Socialism: East Germany in
Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Doel, Ronald, Dieter Hoffmann, and Nikolai Krementsov, 2005. "National States and
International Science: A Comparative History of International Science Congresses in Hitler's
Germany, Stalin's Russia”, Osiris 20: 49-76 (on-line on Blackboard)
Jasanoff Sheila “Beyond Epistemology: Relativism and Engagement in the Politics of Science”
Social Studies of Science 26, 1996.
Rose Nikolas, "Individualizing Psychology", in John Shotter and Kenneth Gergen (eds.) Texts
of Identity, (Sage, 1992), pp. 119-132.
J.C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have
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Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). (Pp 1-8, 193-222, 342-358).
Eghigian Greg, “Was there a Communist Psychiatry? Politics and East German Psychiatric
Care, 1945-1989”, Harvard Review of Psychiatry 10/6 (2002). On-line on Blackboard.
October 26th
(10) Knowledge, Culture and Technology:
Required:
MacKenzie et al. “Introductory essay: the social shaping of technology”, in D. MacKenzie and
J. Wajcman (eds.) Social Shaping of Technology. 1999:3-27.
Pinch Trevor and Wiebe Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the
Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other”, Social
Studies of Science, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 399-441. (on-line on Blackboard).
Winner L. "Do Artifacts have Politics", in D. MacKenzie and Wajcman J. (eds.) Social Shaping
of Technology. 1985:26-38. (on-line on on Blackboard).
Wajcman, J. "Feminist Theories of Technology", in Jasanoff et. al. Handbook of Science and
Technology Studies. 1995:189-204.
Cowan R.S. "The Industrial Revolution in the Home", in Social Shaping of Technology.
1985:181-201. On-line on Blackboard.
Recommended:
Collins H. and T. Pinch: “The naked launch: assigning blame for the Challenger explosion”, in
The Golem at Large: what you should know about technology. 1998:30-56.
Wiebe, Bijker (2007). "Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics”. Isis 98: 109–123. (on-line on
Blackboard).
November 2nd
(11) Knowledge, Common Sense, and Everyday Reasoning
Required:
Heritage J. "Harold Garfinkel." Key Sociological Thinkers. 1998: 175-188.
Heritage J. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. 1984: 179-231.
Garfinkel H. "Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities." Studies in
Ethnomethodology. 1967:35-75.
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Recommended:
Smith Dorothy E. "K is mentally ill." Sociology Vol 12/1.
1978:23-54.
Lynch Michael, “Introduction” and “Ethnomethodology”, Scientific Practice and Ordinary
Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
November 9th
(12) Knowledge, Conversation, and Rhetoric
Required:
Hutchby I. and R. Wooffitt. "What is Conversation Analysis. Conversation Analysis. 1998:1337.
Atkinson M.J. "Claptrap." Our Masters' Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics.
1984:47-85.
Sacks H. "On doing being ordinary", in M. J. Atkinson et.al. (eds.) Structures of Social Action.
1984:413-429.
West Candace and Don Zimmerman, “Women’s Place in Everyday Talk: Reflections on ParentChild Interaction”, Social Problems, 24/5, 1977, pp. 521-529. (on-line on Blackboard)
Recommended:
West Candace and Angela Garcia, “Conversational Shift Work: A Study of Topical Transitions
between Women and Men:, Social Problems, 35/5, 1988, pp. 551-575. (on-line on Blackboard)
Pinch T. "Rhetoric and the Cold Fusion Controversy" in Krips et.al. (eds.) Science, Reason, and
Rhetoric. 1996:153-176.
November 16th
(13) Knowledge, Culture, and Gender
Required:
McCarthy E. D. "Engendered Knowledge." Knowledge as Culture. 1996: 85-105.
Keller E. F., "The Origin, and Politics of the Subject Called 'Gender and Science'", in Handbook
for Science and Technology Studies. 1995.
Martin E., "Body Narratives, Body Boundaries", in Grossberg (ed.) Cultural Studies. Pp. 409423.
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Fox M. F., "Women and Scientific Careers", in Handbook for Science and Technology Studies,
1995: 205-224.
Recommended:
Haraway D., "Teddy Bear Patriarchy", in Primate Visions. Routledge. London. 1989.
Bordo Susan, "Hunger as Ideology", in The Consumer and Society Reader, (New Press. 2000).
Harding Sandra, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political
Controversies, (New York: Routledge, 2004).
Haraway D., "Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of
Partial Perspective" in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 1991: 183202.
November 30th: Summary Discussion
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