At the August 2020 Business/Council meeting, the Science, Knowledge and Technology (SKAT) section of American Sociological Association decided to form an ad-hoc committee to explore how our scholarly community might support anti-racist action. The committee has been meeting regularly and consulted both with current SKAT Council members and past SKAT chairs to develop a proposal for TWO new awards that together will recognize the work … Continue reading Call for Nominations for Two New Awards Established in the Spirit of Anti-racism

Owen Whooley is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. His research uses historical and qualitative research methods to explore questions related to medical knowledge and professional power. Interview by Timothy O’Brien Q. The subtitle of the book is the “politics of not knowing.” What do you mean by the “politics of not knowing” and how might sociologists benefit from closer attention to … Continue reading Q&A with Owen Whooley, 2020 Merton Book Award Winner

SKAT Open Panel Session Organizer:  John Parker Discussant:  Martine Lappe Panelists: Discourses and Practices of Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Genomics in Hawaii Joan H. Fujimura and Ramya M. Rajagopalan Feminist, Generative Sociotechical Dissent: Seed Politics in Colombia Kelly Moore & Nathalia Hernandez Vidal Uncertainty and the Inconvenient Facts of Diagnosis Annemarie Jutel Discussant Remarks Martine Lappé Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science, Technology and Society Cal … Continue reading SKAT @ ASA 2020 – Recap

III.  Pandemic in an Anti-Science Era:  Reflections from and for STS The Trump presidency and its relationship to science and truth have prompted both reflection and action by STS scholars, including contributors to a recent thematic collection published in early 2020 in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.  For this newsletter, we requested that the contributors to that collection re-visit the arguments made there in a … Continue reading Anti-Science Nationalism and the Critical Role of STS

III.  Pandemic in an Anti-Science Era:  Reflections from and for STS The Trump presidency and its relationship to science and truth have prompted both reflection and action by STS scholars, including contributors to a recent thematic collection published in early 2020 in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.  For this newsletter, we requested that the contributors to that collection re-visit the arguments made there in a … Continue reading Viral Geography and Political Calculus

III.  Pandemic in an Anti-Science Era:  Reflections from and for STS The Trump presidency and its relationship to science and truth have prompted both reflection and action by STS scholars, including contributors to a recent thematic collection published in early 2020 in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.  For this newsletter, we requested that the contributors to that collection re-visit the arguments made there in a … Continue reading Two Meditations in Coronatime

III.  Pandemic in an Anti-Science Era:  Reflections from and for STS The Trump presidency and its relationship to science and truth have prompted both reflection and action by STS scholars, including contributors to a recent thematic collection published in early 2020 in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.  For this newsletter, we requested that the contributors to that collection re-visit the arguments made there in a … Continue reading Listening to Experts

III.  Pandemic in an Anti-Science Era:  Reflections from and for STS The Trump presidency and its relationship to science and truth have prompted both reflection and action by STS scholars, including contributors to a recent thematic collection published in early 2020 in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society.  For this newsletter, we requested that the contributors to that collection re-visit the arguments made there in a … Continue reading Weathering the Storm? The Trump Administration Anti-Science Disaster & COVID-19

By Katherine Darling, University of Maine at Augusta In the chaos of a pandemic, how do we teach the virus? Ann Fausto-Sterling laid down this challenge on Twitter as we were all flung into “emergency remote teaching” in March 2020. The pedagogical and logistical challenges of closing our universities and going online were compounded by much deeper societal, ethical and existential quandaries about how to … Continue reading How do we “teach the virus”? Challenges and Resources for teaching COVID-19

Coordinated by Danielle Giffort Joanna Kempner is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She studies, speaks and teaches about the politics of medicine, science, the body, and inequality. She is the author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health, an award winning book that examines the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, … Continue reading “On Publishing”: An Interview with Joanna Kempner