Sabine Maasen

Mario Kaiser

Martin Reinhart

Das Handbuch gibt einen Überblick über den Forschungsbereich der Wissenschaftssoziologie.

Handbuch Wissenschaftssoziologie

Sascha Dickel

Christoph Schneider

This book introduces the term of TechnoScienceSociety to focus on the ongoing technological reconfigurations of science and society. It aspires to use the breadth of Science and Technology Studies to perform a critical diagnosis of our contemporary culture. Instead of constructing technology as society’s “other”, the book sets out to highlight the both complex and ambivalent entanglements of technologies, sciences and socialities. It provides some tentative steps towards a diagnosis of a society in which individuals and organizations address themselves, their pasts, presents, futures, hopes and problems in technoscientific modes. Technosciences redesign matter, life, self and society. However, they do not operate independently: Technoscientific practices are deeply socially and culturally constituted. The diverse contributions highlight the ongoing technological reconfigurations of rationalities, infrastructures, modes of governance, and publics. The book aims to inspire scholars and students to think and analyze contemporary conditions in new ways drawing on, and expanding, the toolkits of Science and Technology Studies.

Technological Reconfigurations of Science and Society

TechnoScienceSociety

Peter Weingart

Peter J. Richerson

Sandra D. Mitchell

Representing a wide range of disciplines -- biology, sociology, anthropology, economics, human ethology, psychology, primatology, history, and philosophy of science -- the contributors to this book recently spent a complete academic year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) discussing a plethora of new insights in reference to human cultural evolution. These scholars acted as a living experiment of "interdisciplinarity in vivo." The assumption of this experiment was that the scholars -- while working and residing at the ZiF -- would be united intellectually as well as socially, a connection that might eventually enhance future interdisciplinary communication even after the research group had dispersed. An important consensus emerged: The issue of human culture poses a challenge to the division of the world into the realms of the "natural" and the "cultural" and hence, to the disciplinary division of scientific labor. The appropriate place for the study of human culture, in this group's view, is located between biology and the social sciences. Explicitly avoiding biological and sociological reductionisms, the group adopted a pluralistic perspective -- "integrative pluralism" -- that took into account both today's highly specialized and effective (sub-)disciplinary research and the possibility of integrating the respective findings on a case-by-case basis. Each sub-group discovered its own way of interdisciplinary collaboration and submitted a contribution to the present volume reflecting one of several types of fruitful cooperation, such as a fully integrated chapter, a multidisciplinary overview, or a discussion between different approaches. A promising first step on the long road to an interdisciplinarily informed understanding of human culture, this book will be of interest to social scientists and biologists alike.

Between Biology and the Social Sciences

Human By Nature

Jan-Hendrik Passoth

Konnten wir noch vor etwa zehn Jahren die Zurückhaltung der Soziologie in Bezug auf Digitalisierung als gesunde Vorsicht vor dem Hype des "Virtuellen" und des "Cyberspace" rechtfertigen, stellt sich die Lage heute anders dar: Jenseits der gepflegten Rhetorik der Medienrevolution sind um digitale Technologien herum in nahezu allen Bereichen neue Praxis-, Organisations- und Ordnungsformen entstanden, die soziologische Theoriebildung, Methodenentwicklung und empirische Sozialforschung vor handfeste Herausforderungen stellen. Eignen sich unsere an Handeln, Kommunikation oder Praxis orientierten Theorien, um das Mitwirken von Algorithmen zu beschreiben? Sind unsere an Sprache, Bild und gedrucktem Text geschulten Methoden geeignet, um die automatische Modifikation von Text, Bild und Bewegtbild durch Filtertechnologien zu analysieren? Wie gehen wir mit der zunehmenden Konkurrenz in Bezug auf Auswertungs- und Analyseverfahren um? Diesen Fragen geht der Sonderband der Sozialen Welt (ISSN 0038-6073) nach. Mit Beiträgen von Dirk Baecker, Sascha Dickel, Tobias Wolbring, Barbara Sutter, Sabine Maasen, Elke Wagner, Niklas Barth, Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda, Roger Häußling, Udo Thiedeke, Josef Wehner, Nicole Zillien, Bernadette Kneidinger-Müller, Heike Greschke, Jagoda Motowidlo, René König, Patrik Sumpf, Christian Stegbauer, Alexander Mehler, Oliver Nachtwey, Philipp Staab, Andreas Boes, Tobias Kämpf, Alexander Zielger, Sabine Pfeiffer, Anne Suphan, Uli Meyer, Uwe Matzat, Erik van Ingen, Christian Papsdorf, Tanja Carstensen, Jeffrey Wimmer, John Postill, Victor Lasa, Ge Zhang, Evelyn Ruppert

Soziale Welt - Sonderband 23

Soziologie des Digitalen - Digitale Soziologie?

P. Weingart

‘Scientific advice to politics’, the ‘nature of expertise’, and the ‘relation between experts, policy makers, and the public’ are variations of a topic that currently attracts the attention of social scientists, philosophers of science as well as practitioners in the public sphere and the media. This renewed interest in a persistent theme is initiated by the call for a democratization of expertise that has become the order of the day in the legitimation of research funding. The new significance of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’ has motivated scholars to take a new look at the science – politics interface and to probe questions such as "What is new in the arrangement of scientific expertise and political decision-making?", "How can reliable knowledge be made useful for politics and society at large, and how can epistemically and ethically sound decisions be achieved without losing democratic legitimacy?", "How can the objective of democratization of expertise be achieved without compromising the quality and reliability of knowledge?" Scientific knowledge and the ‘experts’ that represent it no longer command the unquestioned authority and public trust that was once bestowed upon them, and yet, policy makers are more dependent on them than ever before. This collection of essays explores the relations between science and politics with the instruments of the social studies of science, thereby providing new insights into their re-alignment under a new régime of governance.

Exploring Novel Forms of Scientific Advice in Political Decision-Making

Democratization of Expertise?

Barbara Sutter

Kann Wissenschaft ein Gegenstand nicht nur für Erkenntniskritik und historische Analyse, sondern auch für die Soziologie sein? Lange hieß es: nein! Spätestens mit Robert K. Merton ändert sich dies: Seither beschäftigt sich eine Wissenschaftssoziologie mit der Frage, wie die Produktion, Verbreitung und Geltung gesicherten Wissens möglich sind. Das erhebliche Inventar an Theorien und Methoden, das zur Beantwortung dieser Frage zur Verfügung steht, verdankt sich der Soziologie als Heimatdisziplin der Wissenschaftssoziologie – angereichert hat sie es durch ihre Eingliederung in eine interdisziplinäre Wissenschaftsforschung sowie durch Kooperationen mit Nachbardisziplinen. Ob Diskurse oder Systeme, ob Organisationen oder Institutionen der Wissenschaft, ob Interaktionen mit Politik oder Öffentlichkeiten, ob neue Medien oder neue Arbeitsweisen, ob Nichtwissens- oder Technowissenschaftskulturen – wie die Beiträge des Handbuchs schlaglichtartig zeigen, widmet sich die heutige Wissenschaftssoziologie diesen und weiteren Themen mit hoher Auflösungskraft und Differenzierung. Die Wissenschaftssoziologie untersucht sowohl die heterogenen Bedingungen und ambivalenten Effekte der Produktion, Verbreitung und Geltung gesicherten Wissens als auch der zunehmenden Wissensbasierung der Gesellschaft insgesamt. Es spricht deshalb einiges dafür, dass sie heute als Bindestrichsoziologie mit gesellschaftsdiagnostischem Potenzial betrachtet werden kann.

Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

Monika Kurath

Nanotechnology has been the subject of extensive ‘assessment hype,’ unlike any previous field of research and development. A multiplicity of stakeholders have started to analyze the implications of nanotechnology: Technology assessment institutions around the world, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, re-insurance companies, and academics from science and technology studies and applied ethics have turned their attention to this growing field’s implications. In the course of these assessment efforts, a social phenomenon has emerged – a phenomenon the editors define as assessment regime. Despite the variety of organizations, methods, and actors involved in the evaluation and regulation of emerging nanotechnologies, the assessment activities comply with an overarching scientific and political imperative: Innovations are only welcome if they are assessed against the criteria of safety, sustainability, desirability, and acceptability. So far, such deliberations and reflections have played only a subordinate role. This book argues that with the rise of the nanotechnology assessment regime, however, things have changed dramatically: Situated at the crossroads of democratizing science and technology, good governance, and the quest for sustainable innovations, the assessment regime has become constitutive for technological development. The contributions in this book explore and critically analyse nanotechnology’s assessment regime: To what extent is it constitutive for technology in general, for nanotechnology in particular? What social conditions render the regime a phenomenon sui generis? And what are its implications for science and society?

Sabine Maasen

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