Please see the full call here: https://www.asanet.org/2025-annual-meeting/call-for-submissions/papers-extended-abstracts/section-sessions/

Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology

Challenging epistemic institutions: Unruly knowledge, outlaw technology, and fringe-mainstream relations 

We live in epistemically challenged, and challenging, times. The status of various forms of knowledge continues to be contested, as many social actors compete for epistemic authority. Institutions of knowledge production are underfunded and under suspicion. Alternative institutions, peer-to-peer networks, conspiracy communities and counter-knowledges are rife.  Even amongst public institutions, dissenting voices seek to trouble the status quo. Since its earliest days, SKAT inquiry has addressed questions of lay expertise, non-knowledges, pseudo-sciences, alternative knowledge systems, and other heterogeneous constitutions of social facts. Today’s political context inspires a return to these core questions with fresh empirical and theoretical eyes. How do individual and collective actors manage the tension between mainstream and fringe ideas, ways of knowing, and other technoscientific constellations, and what can we learn through an examination of these practices?

This session invites empirically and theoretically engaged work that investigates defiant, oppositional, unruly forms of knowledge, undisciplined technologies, and their relation to more mainstream organizations and institutions. We also welcome work that contests these categories, tracking how powerful groups create or sustain unruly or deviant forms of knowledge and/or technologies. Projects may be contemporary or historical. Global, transnational, and comparative research is encouraged.  Potential topics include but are not limited to: contested knowledges in science, technology, and/or medicine; evasive or alternative technologies; resistance to knowledge-making; creative forms of un-making knowledge and cultivating ignorance; citizen science/lay science; scientist-led movements of dissent maker and DIY communities of scientific and technological practice; open technology; democratic participation and inclusion; activism.

(Session Organizer) Janet Vertesi, Princeton University; Daniel Ray Morrison, University of Alabama in Huntsville

New Directions and Emerging Studies of Politics in Science and Technology: Changes in Governance, Political Economy, Labor, and Work

Studies of political economy are experiencing a revival across sociology, with researchers shedding new light on interactions and contestations between capital, labor, and state actors. Broadly, this scholarship explains how social actors secure and institutionalize power over agendas, resources, and practices. While sociologists of science, knowledge, and technology have historically attended to such dynamics at the local, national, and global levels, recent research and events have revitalized our understanding of the interplay between science, technology, the economy, and the state across locales, scales, and historical periods.

This session builds on this renewed interest and invites work that bridges the study of political economy (broadly construed) with analyses of science, knowledge, and technology. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: how public and private actors shape the governance of science and technology; how structures of capital (e.g. public funding, venture capital, private equity) impact processes of scientific discovery or technological innovation; how labor movements influence technology development and change; and how workers reshape, resist, or adopt technologies of management.

(Session Organizer) Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania; Mariana Craciun, Tulane University; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University

Sociology of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology     

George H W Bush declared 1990 to 1999 the “Decade of the Brain” with the goal of enhancing “public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research”. However, nearly 35 years later, our understanding of the brain through neuroscience and neurotechnology remains elusive. At the same time the implications of the knowledge production and application of new innovations centered on the brain are impacting society from how we diagnose, treat, and experience conditions associated with the brain to the ways in which neuroscience and technology perpetuate social inequalities or define what constitutes normality and pathology.

The tools of sociology of science and technology offer opportunities to critically interrogate all matters related to the brain, neuroscience, and neurotechnology. We invite empirical and theoretical papers that investigate their social, political, economic, and cultural implications—ranging from institutions to neurons and spanning topics from medical therapeutics to surveillance.

Potential topics include but are not limited to: the political economy of neuroscience, neurotechnology, and innovation; studies of neurology, neuroscientists, and neurotherapies; classification and diagnosis; racism, sexism, and justice in research practice; sensors, monitoring, and social control in the neurosciences; social inequalities in relation to neuroscience; as well as neuroscience’s role in mental health discourse. We particularly encourage submissions that explore how neurotechnologies impact marginalized communities, examine the influence of neuroscience on public policy, and discuss the intersections between neuroscience and contemporary discourses surrounding artificial intelligence.

(Session Organizer) Jennifer S. Singh, Georgia Institute of Technology; Oliver E. Rollins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Daniel Ray Morrison, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Torsten H. Voigt, RWTH Aachen University; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University

Liberating, decolonizing, and queering science, knowledge, and technology         

The production and application of scientific knowledge and technology have long been shaped by dominant cultural, political, and economic forces. This session explores critical approaches that seek to liberate, decolonize, crip and queer science, knowledge, and technology. By challenging traditional power structures and epistemologies, these perspectives aim to create more inclusive, equitable, and diverse frameworks for understanding and engaging with the world around us. We invite empirical and theoretical papers that examine how marginalized voices, indigenous knowledge systems, disability theories and lived experiences, and queer perspectives can transform scientific and medical practices, technological innovations, and knowledge production.

Potential topics include but are not limited to: decolonial approaches to scientific research and education; the intersections of disability studies and SKAT; queer theory in STEM fields; Indigenous knowledge systems; feminist and intersectional critiques of technology design and implementation; the role of activism in shaping technoscientific agendas; alternative epistemologies and methodologies in knowledge production; challenging heteronormative, ableist, and cisnormative assumptions in science, technology, or medicine; the impact of colonialism on global scientific discourse; and strategies for creating more inclusive and diverse scientific communities.

(Session Organizer) Martine Lappe, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; Kate Elizabeth Burrows, National Coalition of Independent Scholars; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University

Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables     

We invite participation among our section’s membership in our roundtables. Briefly present a paper and receive feedback from your SKAT peers!

New this year: early stage Work-In-Progress feedback roundtables. Submit your early stage thinking about a fieldsite or research topic and get feedback on how best to accomplish the research.

(Session Organizer) Janet Vertesi, Princeton University