Beyond deference and demystification in the sociology of science and technology: A reply to Otero

A response to Otero's criticism of the thesis of the nonrevolutionary character of biotechnology is developed within a larger consideration of the relatively small amount of attention high technologies have received within the sociology of science. It is argued that the new sociology of science of the past decade has been a major advance on midcentury functionalist perspectives that took an essentialist, deferential view toward science. The new sociology of science, based on the demystification of science through a relativist view of scientific knowledge production, is nonetheless limited in several respects in its applicability to contemporary issues relating to high technologies. Otero's criticisms are considered in the light of the continuing need for uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology, and for developing a perspective on science and technology that avoids both uncritical deference and excessive relativization of these forces for social change.     

The Objects of Sociology: A Response to Breslau's "Sociology After Humanism"

Daniel Breslau's essay opens up a valuable space in seeking to align the sociologically impure objects explored in science studies with the practice of a pure sociology. I challenge Breslau's conclusion that the latter can swallow the former and proceed with business as usual. Contrary to Breslau, I argue that confronting head-on the impure objects of science studies can indeed represent a new beginning in sociology as a discipline. I also correct Breslau's misreading of my work as "symmetrical humanism."     

(Im)mobilizing Technology: Slow Science,Food Safety,and Borders

Immobilization is generally thought to result from power and poverty acting against the acceleration produced by science and technology. In this article we explore neglected countervailing trends, such as quarantines, health inspections, and import bans, where science has the effect of restricting mobility, which we refer to as “slow science.” As well as increasing mobility, science can be mobilized for political projects of restricting movement, but this possibility is neglected because of cultural assumptions fundamental to modernity. Both science and technology can be enrolled for projects of slowing mobility as well as increasing mobility. Drawing on actor-network theory, we examine the enrolment of science and technology into restricting movement in various ways. These issues are explored first through an overview of the neglected genealogy of the ways in which science and technology have slowed movement, particularly across national borders, and second through a short case study of how food safety concerns affect the movement of beef across borders. The case study discusses how “slow science” diagnoses threats posed by mobility and develops technologies to immobilize certain entities. These entities have almost always been biological organisms (including humans) or their products due to the self-reproducing qualities of invasive species, bacteria, or viruses. Uniquely, WTO rules about food require that restrictions be based on sound science, resulting in trade disputes focused on scientific interpretations.     

SIGNALING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: THE EFFECT OF ACCESS TO ELITE COLLEGES ON CHOICE OF MAJOR

I propose a model of postsecondary education in which major field of study can be used by individuals to signal productivity to employers. Under this signaling model, I show that geographic areas with high access to elite universities result in fewer science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors among lower ability students at nonelite colleges. This is distinct from the prediction of a full information model in which access to elite schools should only affect high ability individuals directly. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Baccalaureate & Beyond survey, I find evidence that is consistent with the signaling model prediction, specifically a 2.3–3.7 percentage point or 16%–25% decrease in the probability of choosing a STEM major among lower ability students in areas with greater access to elite colleges. (JEL I21, J24)     

High School Is Not Too Late: Developing Girls' Interest and Engagement in Engineering Careers

Although experts increasingly call for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to begin in middle and elementary schools, a 3‐year intervention beginning with high‐achieving female high school sophomores demonstrated that young women can develop a serious interest in engineering in high school. However, subsequent post‐high school study of the participants showed that interest in engineering was not enough for lower‐income minority women to pursue engineering in college. It should be noted that their decision against pursuing engineering in college was not due to their lack of academic preparation or interest in the field, but to a lack of financial resources and social support for engineering, as well as fears of failure. Career counselors and college recruiters have an important role to play in the recruitment and retention of girls of color in engineering and other STEM college majors, including facilitating support and access to appropriate programs and resources at pivotal times.     

Women's Scientific Employment and Family Formation: A Longitudinal Perspective

We focus here on the retention of highly qualified women scientists in science‐based employment in England and Wales. Using linked Census records from the Longitudinal Study 1971–1991 we show that women's education and employment rates in science, engineering and technology increased somewhat, although some fields show persistently low representation. We then compare retention in employing women with health‐related degrees with that of women with degrees in science, engineering and technology, showing that the latter group has markedly lower retention rates. Those who stay on in science‐based employment have children later than other types of graduate and their rates of non‐motherhood are higher. Four‐fifths of women in health‐related occupations were mothers, compared to only two‐fifths in science, engineering and technology. Our findings have implications for policymakers who wish to make best use of the knowledge base: attention should be paid to retention, as well as the more usual focus on qualifications and recruitment. The findings also suggest the potential for institutionally based theories to explain why highly qualified women have such low retention rates in science‐based employment.     

The graying of "sexual health": a critical research agenda

This paper critically interrogates the concept of sexual health as it has evolved in relation to older adults. I draw on social and cultural studies of aging, feminist studies, and science and technology studies to outline a research agenda which treats sexual health as a point of articulation for a range of technologies and processes which shape mid- and late-life sexualities. Such an agenda may be able to more fully interrogate the sites and processes by which sexualities are being shaped, the forms of sexual agency on offer to older people, and the contemporary reconstruction of sexual life courses.     

Shifting STEM Stereotypes? Considering the Role of Peer and Teacher Gender

This study builds on research on the power of counter‐stereotypical cues, as well as intergroup contact theory, to consider whether interactions with a female teacher and female peers in a high school engineering classroom decrease male students' gender/science, technology, engineering, and math stereotypical beliefs and whether this varies according to the initial strength of their stereotypical views. Analyses reveal that among male students who initially reject stereotypes of male superiority, more female peers in the classroom leads to a further decrease in their stereotypical views by the end of the year. In contrast, boys who held strong stereotypical beliefs became less stereotypical by the end of the course when they had a female teacher. Implications for future research and current educational reforms are discussed.     

RATIONALITY AND THE "RELIGIOUS MIND"

The social-scientific study of religion has long presumed that religious thought is "primitive," non-rational, incompatible with science, and (thus) doomed to decline. Contemporary evidence, however, suggests that religious involvement correlates with good mental health, responds to perceived costs and benefits, and persists in the face advanced education and scientific training. Although professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population, the magnitude of this effect is similar to those associated with gender, race, and other demographic traits. Moreover, "hard" science faculty are more often religious than faculty in the humanities or social sciences. ( JEL Z10)     

A Delphi study of the future of new technology research in public relations

New technology has dramatically expanded over the past decade. New features on websites, powerful mobile devices, and the subsequent restructuring of news services have dramatically changed the profession. This study sought to learn about the broader issues of technology, and forecast trends in online communication technologies. In an effort to learn what technology professionals outside of public relations know about new technology and social media, this study used a Delphi methodology and solicited the participation of technology professionals from computer science, professional writing, communication studies, art, business, music and other areas. The first two rounds of the Delphi findings are reported and suggest that public relations professionals need to broaden their understanding of new technology to consider social and relational issues, rather than the current focus on practice.     

Negotiating a third space for participatory research with people with learning disabilities: an examination of boundaries and spatial practices

The focus of this article is participatory research with and by people with learning disabilities. Drawing on discussions that took place across a series of seminars, we use the concepts of space and boundaries to examine the development of a shared new spatial practice through creative responses to a number of challenges. We examine the boundaries that exist between participatory and non-participatory research; the boundaries that exist between different stakeholders of participatory research; and the boundaries that exist between participatory research with people with learning disabilities and participatory research with other groups. With a particular focus on participatory data analysis and participatory research with people with high support needs, we identify a number of ways in boundaries are being crossed. We argue that the pushing of new boundaries opens up both new and messy spaces and that both are important for the development of participatory research methods.     

Trust and technology: the social foundations of aviation regulation

This paper looks at the dilemmas posed by ‘expertise’ in high‐technology regulation by examining the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ‘type‐certification’ process, through which they evaluate new designs of civil aircraft. It observes that the FAA delegate a large amount of this work to the manufacturers themselves, and discusses why they do this by invoking arguments from the sociology of science and technology. It suggests that – contrary to popular portrayal – regulators of high technologies face an inevitable epistemic barrier when making technological assessments, which forces them to delegate technical questions to people with more tacit knowledge, and hence to ‘regulate’ at a distance by evaluating ‘trust’ rather than ‘technology’. It then unravels some of the implications of this and its relation to our theories of regulation and ‘regulatory capture’.     

Understanding African American Students' Experiences in STEM Education: An Ecological Systems Approach

Promoting racial and ethnic minority students' interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers remains a primary workforce goal. To advance this goal, this study examined, through an ecological lens, 18 African American high school seniors' perceptions of their experiences related to their aspirations for STEM careers. All students were enrolled in STEM programs. Using a phenomenological approach to analyze the outcomes of focus group interviews, the authors identified themes at the ontogenic, microsystem, and macrosystem levels. Environmental factors, such as counseling, family expectations, and available resources, played a substantial role in influencing the students' interests, experiences, and perceptions in their pursuits of STEM careers. Implications highlight the importance of counselors in encouraging students of diverse backgrounds to pursue STEM courses and for policy makers to provide resources that support students' STEM goals. Future research is needed to examine the longitudinal effects of high school STEM programs on diverse populations.     

Working artefacts: ethnomethods of the prototype

This paper follows recent science studies in theorizing information technologies as socio-material configurations, aligned into more and less durable forms. The study of how new technologies emerge shifts, on this view, from a focus on invention to an interest in ongoing practices of assembly, demonstration, and performance. This view is developed in relation to the case of the 'prototype', an exploratory technology designed to effect alignment between the multiple interests and working practices of technology research and development, and sites of technologies-in-use. In so far as it is successful, the prototype works as an exemplary artefact that is at once intelligibly familiar to the actors involved, and recognizably new.     

White Supremacists and the (Pan-)Ethnic Imperative: On "European-Americans" and "White Student Unions"

Working from literature on the social construction of ethnicity and on white ethnic identity, I explore contemporary white supremacist discourse aimed at presenting whites as a "pan-ethnic" community of European descendants, whose ethnicity is equivalent to that of established ethnic and minority communities. First, I look at how white supremacists struggle with uniting all "whites," negotiate the meanings and boundaries of "whiteness" and "European-American," and conceptualize their putative ethnicity as lamentable. Second, I look at discourse on efforts to organize "White Student Unions." The use of the hyphenated-American strategy and the development of white student unions both reflect tactical breaks with the past and are part of a "new racist" focus on putting forth a more presentable image for white supremacy and presenting whites as an ethnic/minority group, with ethnic-like concerns and traits. If indeed there is an emergent pan-ethnic phenomenon among "European-Americans," then it may prove important to recognize when this phenomenon is rooted in white supremacy and when it is not.     

SMALL ACTS OF CUNNING:

The purpose of this paper is to offer a genealogy of some of the disciplinary practices that constitute the everyday life of contemporary postmodern America. I argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a new economy of illegalities, and with it, an increased tension between exceptional punishment and generalized surveillance. This physics of power is constituted, in part, through a new political technology of the body that directs a gaze of accountability on an individuals "life-style" and is often premised on regulating, probing or, measuring the body's functions, processes, characteristics or movements. In this way, the body is being used as a central element in the localization of contemporary power. All this, I believe, is made possible by the historical moment of late twentieth-century capitalism.     

Correspondence

How can teachers utilize video games in the classroom, harnessing a technology that is gaining “market share” in the lives of our students? This article will provide classroom teachers with a research-based rationale for using video games along with a viable, classroom-tested lesson to teach social studies content using a widely available commercial video game. Specifically, how to use the game Civilization IV in the classroom to allow world history high school students to explore the impact technology has on societal development and the human experience and their place in time. This correlates to NCSS Curriculum Standard II: time, continuity, and change and NCSS Curriculum Standard VIII: science, technology, and society.     

Ethical ‘mess’ in co-produced research: reflections from a U.K.-based case study

Co-producing research is complex and messy. This paper draws on Tina Cook’s argument for the systematic inclusion of ‘mess’ in research accounts as a conceptual framework through which to articulate areas of ethical mess from within a co-produced research project. Through narrating the ‘messy’ ethical complications the paper illustrates a number of specific ethical risks when co-producing research; particularly when working with young people. The paper provides valuable insight into ethical tensions that can emerge when using a co-produced methodology and will be informative for future researchers negotiating their own co-produced research projects. The paper argues for the systematic inclusion of mess in the accounting of participatory research.     

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

Women are less likely than men to graduate with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). We use detailed administrative data for a recent cohort of Ontario high school students, combined with data from the province's university admission system, to analyze the sources of this gap. We show that entry to STEM programs is mediated through an index of STEM readiness that depends on end‐of‐high school courses in math and science. Most of the gender gap in STEM entry can be traced to differences in the share of college entrants who are STEM‐ready; only a small share is attributable to differences in the choice of major conditional on readiness. We then use high school course data to decompose the gender gap in STEM readiness into two channels: one reflecting the gap in the fraction of high school students with the necessary prerequisites to enter STEM, the other arising from differences in the overall fractions of females and males who enter university. The gender gap in the fraction of males and females with STEM prerequisites is small. The primary driver of the gap in STEM readiness is the low rate of university entry by nonscience‐oriented males. (JEL I21, 28, I20)