Innovations in science and technology have become prominent in the organisation and functioning of modern society. Consequently, they raise a number of questions which cannot be answered by scientists only. Beyond the sole importance of science and technology policies, other issues (i.e. climate, health, food, urbanism and security-related) call for a reassessment of relations between science and society.
The course is based on science and technology studies and introduces students to the process of knowledge production through anthropological, historical and sociological approaches.
The winter school four-day course is divided into a ten-hour lecture (3+3+2+2) and a series of seminar sessions.
During the lecture, students will explore the diversity of scientific institutions and of reasoning processes, and will analyze the relationship between scientific issues and technological or political stakes, for instance in terms of public expertise. Divided into classes of 24, students will simultaneously take an eight-hour seminar, allowing them to get a more practical understanding of social stakes in science through the study of past or contemporary controversies. Seminars are structured around a limited number of thematic corpora, out of which students will be able to choose one topic on which to concentrate and work in depth.
The evaluation for the seminar will be composed of an individual and a collective grade:
1) students will sit for a individual final written test after the course (2 hours, 50% of the final grade). They will be provided with a dossier documenting a sociotechnical controversy. They will have to describe and analyse it using the toolbox of notions and concepts introduced during the 5 lectures and during the seminars. The analysis will be guided by a series of 2-5 questions. Papers can be written in English or French; the guiding questions will be given in French and English; but the documents will be exclusively in English. We do not need to emphasize the need to attend lectures and courses to be ready to perform well during that final exam (50% of the final grade). Manuscript notes from the course will be allowed during the exam.
2) students will work in a group of 3 in order to produce an approx. 5 to 10-page paper (plus references) on a chosen controversy or on another type of situation involving intertwined political, scientifical and technological actors/objects/issues. The topics (once validated by the seminar teacher) can be inspired by, and the methodology will follow the one taught through, the exploration of the thematic corpus during the seminar (50% of the final grade).
LECTURE 1
Politics by other means: governing human societies with science and technology (3h)
LECTURE 2
Scientists and the making of evidence: social and political perspectives on knowledge-making (3h)
LECTURE 3
Science and its publics: expertise, (mis)trust and ignorance (2h)
LECTURE 4
Global and planetary histories of science (2h)
Sergio Sismondo, An introduction to science and technology studies, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003 (1st ed), 2009 (2nd ed)