Catching up with technoscience studies

Abstract

Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, edited by Don Ihde and Evan Se linger, is well-suited for at least two specific audiences: those familiar with the technoscience studies literature and looking for the current research of major au thors, and those new to the field looking for material to supplement core readings. The book proceeds with special focus on four key technoscience figures: Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, Bruno Latour, and Andrew Pickering. An interview with each of these authors, comparative essays written by technoscience scholars, and an ori ginal article by each of the four primaries are included. The editors' claim that Chasing Technoscience represents "a state of the art" look at the field is justified since, as I show below, the original pieces written by the four key figures represent samples of those authors' major contemporary projects. This book fits into the catalogue of the small but growing field of technoscience studies, where researchers combine philosophical and sociological methods to investigate the roles technologies play in scientific research. Key issues in this field include the ethics of science and technology, and the effects of technology on the directions of science and on our lives more generally. The editors organize the book around the general issue of how the material world figures into scientific study, but all of the main issues of technoscience studies can be seen at work within the volume. For students of this field, such as those in an upper-level or graduate seminar, Chasing Technoscience presents material ideally suited to supplement reading of core texts, especially those written by the four authors focused upon here (e.g., Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women (1991) or her Modest Witness (1997), Ihde's Technology and the Lifeworld (1990) or his Instrumental Realism (1991), Latour's Science in Action (1987) or his We Have Never Been Modern (1993), and Pickering's The Mangle of Practice (1995)). The book provides less a general introduction to the field, than a contemporary review for the already-initiated. The introduction and the interviews will help students to situate the four key figures