SCSO1900: Senior Seminar in Science and Society
W 3:00-5:20PM
SB G01
Prof. Catherine Bliss
Email: Catherine_Bliss@brown.edu
Office: B8 Churchill
Office Hours: Weds 1-3pm
Course Description:
This is an advanced seminar that uses a Problem Based Learning style pedagogy to
explore real-world problems in STS. This semester the course will explore the ongoing
controversy over race and behavior. Students will approach this problem by examining
critical scholarship in areas such as laboratory studies, feminist science and technology
studies, the rhetoric and discourse of science and technology, expertise and the public
understanding of science. Course is intended for Science and Society senior
concentrators, but is open to others with appropriate background.
Course Requirements:
Participation
20%
You are permitted 2 excused absences thereafter, you grade goes down one letter. This
class and the learning you will be doing are entirely structured around weekly presentations
and class discussion. I’m looking for thoughtful contributions that refer directly to the
readings and presentations at hand. Each course will be structured around three discussion
modules: 1) the week’s featured STS theory; 2) presentations of that theory with respect to
your own case material; 3) application of the theory to the race and behavior controversy.
Participation in all three is required.
Presentations
40%
Each week you will give a ten-minute presentation on your case (the subject of your
thesis project) using the week’s featured STS theory. For example, if you study stem cell
research, for week nine you may discuss the boundary politics between researchers and
religious groups or focus in on the ways cord blood applications transfer across
institutional divides. You will also be required to post a one-page summary of the
presentation and your powerpoint on the MyCourses discussion board, Tuesdays by 5pm.
Final Paper
40%
The final is a 20pp paper that applies one of the course theories to your case. You may
expand upon a presentation that you enjoyed most or use a theory you are already relying
on for your thesis project. A significant portion of the paper must analyze primary
sources associated with your case. Discourse is the most readily accessible material to
analyze, but you may use your original interview or ethnographic material to argue how
the concept applies. I want to see an even treatment of the concept, how it applies to your
case, and the social implications.
See MyCourses for detailed writing instructions. Chicago or ASA citation form is
required. See http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html;
http://www.uwp.edu/departments/library/guides/asa.htm.
Required Book:
Biagioli, Mario (Ed.). 1999. The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.
Required Articles:
All articles listed below are available on OCRA.
Course Schedule:
Sep 8: Introductions
Arvey, Richard D., and et al. 1994. “Mainstream Science on Intelligence.” Wall
Street Journal December 13: A19.
Block, N. J. 1996. “How Heritability Misleads about Race.” The Boston Review
20:30-35.
Verkaik, Robert. 2007. “Revealed: scientist who sparked racism row has black
genes.” Independent Dec 10.
Sep 15: The Race and Intelligence Controversy
Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles A. Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve. New York:
Free Press. Selections.
Jensen, Arthur R. 1969. “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic
Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39:1-123. Selections.
Rushton, J. Philippe, and Arthur R. Jensen. 2005. “Thirty Years of Research on
Race Differences in Cognitive Ability.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
11:235-294. Selections.
Sep 22: Critical Perspectives on the Biology of Race and Behavior
Devlin, Bernie, Stephen E. Feinberg, Daniel P. Resnick, and Kathryn Roeder
(Eds.). 1997. Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell
Curve. New York: Springer. Selections.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996 [1981]. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton.
Selections.
Harwood, Jonathan. 1976. “The Race-Intelligence Controversy: A Sociological
Approach I -- Professional Factors.” Social Studies of Science 6:369-394.
Selections.
Lewontin, Richard C., Steven P. R. Rose, and Leon J. Kamin. 1984.
“Introduction” in Not in Our Genes. New York: Pantheon Books. Selections.
Sep 29: Order and Assemblage
Collins, Harry M. 1992. “The Mystery of Perception and Order” and “Science as
Expertise” in Changing order: replication and induction in scientific
practice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 5-28, 159-69.
Rabinow, Paul. 1996. “Anthropology of the Actual” in Anthropos Today.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 55-67.
Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Selections.
Oct 6: Co-production and Coordination
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2006. “Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society” in States of
Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. New York:
Routledge. 13-45.
Galison, Peter. 1999. “Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief.” in The
Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. 172-188.
Oct 13: Situated Knowledge
Haraway, Donna. 1999. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in
Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” in The Science Studies Reader.
New York: Routledge. 172-188.
Haraway, Donna. 1989. “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations
of Self in Immune System Discourse.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies. 1:3-43.
Haraway, Donna. 1992. Primate visions: gender, race and nature in the world of
modern science. New York: Routledge. 1-17.
Oct 20: Normative Structures
Merton, Robert. 1973. The Sociology of Science. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press. Selections.
Mulkay, Michael. 1976. “Norms and Ideology in Science.” Social Science
Information. 15: 637-656.
Oct 27: Scientific Field
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1999. “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social
Conditions of the Progress of Reason.” in The Science Studies Reader. New York:
Routledge. 31-50.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004. “The State of the Question” in Science of Science and
Reflexivity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 4-31.
Nov 3: Boundary Work versus Boundary Objects
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. “Contesting Credibility Cartographically” in Cultural
boundaries of science: credibility on the line. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. 27-64.
Gieryn, Thomas F., and Anne E. Figert. 1986. “Scientists Protect their Cognitive
Authority: The Status Degradation Ceremony of Sir Cyril Burt” in The
Knowledge Society: The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social
Relations, Sociology of the Sciences, Yearbook, edited by G. Böhme and N. Stehr.
Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. 67-86.
Fujimura, Joan H. 1992. “Crafting Science: Standardized Packages, Boundary
Objects, and ‘Translation’” in Science as Practice and Culture, edited by A.
Pickering. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 168-211.
Nov 10: Actor-Network Theory
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-networktheory. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Selections.
Callon, Michel. 1999. “Some elements of a sociology of translation:
domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” in The Science
Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. 67-83.
Nov 17: Biopolitical Paradigm
Epstein, Steven. 2007. Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1-17.
Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and
Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. Selections.
Hacking, Ian. 1999. “Making Up People” in The Science Studies Reader. New
York: Routledge. 161-71.
Nov 24: Triple Helix
Etzkowitz, Henry. 1998. “The norms of entrepreneurial science: cognitive effects
of the new university–industry linkages.” Research Policy 27:823–833.
Hackett, Edward J. 1990. “Science as a vocation in the 1990s: The changing
organizational culture of academic science.” Journal of Higher Education 61:24179.
Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 2003. Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World
of Commerce. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin. Selections.
Dec 1: Review
FINAL DUE DEC 8