Science and technology studies

Abstract

Science and technology studies (STS) is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the study of science and technology mainly, but not exclusively, in contemporary society. The field's preferred methods are associated with social constructivism , although most of its leading practitioners were originally trained in the natural sciences and engineering but subsequently came to be disenchanted with how science's material entanglements compromised its normative integrity. In STS, social epistemology appears as a normative approach to science and technology policy. STS characteristically treats science and technology as a composite entity, technoscience , which is thoroughly integrated in all social processes. Within STS, a “low church” and “high church” can be distinguished, depending on whether the focus is on turning STS into, respectively, a movement aimed at transforming the role of science and technology in society or an academic discipline pursued for its own sake. (See science as a social movement .) Low church STS harks back to the original use of “technoscience” in the 1960s as a synonym for what C. Wright Mills called the “military-industrial complex”, in which the trajectory of scientific research was being shaped according to the imperatives of capital expansion and Cold War strategy. This became noticeable in terms of scientists' employment patterns, which reflected a scaled-up, specialized and targeted research culture, the fruits of which could have immediate impact on ordinary lives, be it as goods or weapons.