The perspectives shared in individual posts on this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the SKAT section, nor of the American Sociological Association. All posts are the sole responsibility of their author(s). Continue reading Perspectives in SKAT blog posts
Dead Reckoning is an historical ethnography of the life course of the air traffic control system from system emergence through 2017. Based on archival research and fieldwork in four air traffic control facilities, the book focuses on how historical institutional conditions, assemblages of social actors, and events in the system’s external environment – political, economic, technical, cultural – impact the air traffic organization, changing it, and how in turn those changes affect not only the social, technological, and material arrangements of the workplace, but also controllers’ interpretive work, cultural understandings, and work practices. Far from a top down model, the analysis shows how controllers respond to these events, implementing repairs in response to the liabilities of technological and organizational innovation. It expands what we know about knowledge production, boundaries and boundary work, culture and cognition, expertise, and the changing nature of technical work over time. Continue reading Q&A with Diane Vaughan, Author of Dead Reckoning
Interviewed by Larry Au on November 4, 2022 for the Fall 2022 SKATOLOGY Newsletter Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is a founding faculty member of the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute and a co-founder of the Computational Social Science program, as well as the Associate Director of the Latin American Studies Program. He … Continue reading Q&A with Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Author of The Quantified Scholar
Professor Vertesi specializes in the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology. Her primary research site is with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams as an ethnographer. Her books, Seeing like a Rover: Images and Interaction on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (Chicago, 2015) and Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams (Chicago, 2020) draws on her ethnographic studies of missions to Mars, Saturn, and the … Continue reading Q&A with Janet Vertesi, Author of Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams
Kathleen C. Oberlin is a researcher based in Chicago. Formerly, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Grinnell College. In Creating the Creation Museum, Kathleen C. Oberlin shows us how the largest Creationist organization, Answers in Genesis (AiG), built a museum—which has had over three million visitors—to make its movement mainstream. She takes us behind the scenes, vividly bringing the museum to … Continue reading Q&A with Kathleen (Casey) Oberlin, Author of Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life
Jeremiah Morelock is an instructor of sociology at Boston College’s Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences and Woods College of Advancing Studies, and a Project Coordinator at Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing. He is the editor of Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism and How to Critique Authoritarian Populism: Methodologies of the Frankfurt School. With a focus on I Am Legend and Day of the … Continue reading Q&A with Jeremiah Morelock, Author of Pandemics, Authoritarian Populism, and Science Fiction
Fernando Domínguez Rubio is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego who situates his research around the outer rims of sociology, science and technology studies, anthropology, art, design and architecture. His book, Still Life, offers a comprehensive and intriguing ethnographic account of the conundrums that museum workers face when enduring artworks are posed with the possibility of disintegration, disappearance … Continue reading Q&A with Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Author of Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum
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
Official website of the Science, Knowledge, and Technology section. 