4S Mission
Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.
Latest 4S News
The Energy Fictions of Cure and Dependency
Published On: Sep 22, 2025
Can energy enliven political ecology’s relationship to disability? Dr. Emerson Cram has been lingering with this question as they feel through remnants of poor farms, state asylums, and other carceral institutions negating “abnormal” dependencies.
Assemblage Thinking for Studying Digital Artifacts: Promises and Challenges
Published On: Sep 8, 2025
This report shares insights drawn from the panel “Navigating the Grey: Assemblage Thinking and Digital Artifacts” conducted during the 10th Annual STS Italia Conference hosted in Milano (11–13 June 2025). The panelists and authors of this post investigate the ways in which assemblage thinking might assist STS analyses of digital artifacts.
Some recent evidence of the vibrancy of the STS scholarship in Taiwan
Published On: Sep 5, 2025
Click along if you wish to know more about the Taiwanese STS scholarship.
4S Publications
Science, Technology, and Human Values
For more than forty years, Science, Technology, & Human Values has provided the forum for cutting-edge research and debate in the field of science and technology studies.
Between Code and Culture: The Evolving Role of Conversation Designers and UX in AI Development
Elizabeth Rodwell1Department of Information Science Technology, 14743University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies available to consumers have been rapidly advancing but without parallel insight into the social process of their design....
Machine's Eye View: Postmodern Data Science and the Politics of Ground Truth
Jathan SadowskiEmerging Technologies Research Lab, Faculty of Information Technology, 2541Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
This paper advances the critical analysis of machine learning by placing it in direct relation with actuarial science as a way to further draw out their shared epistemic...
Making the Global Local: The Case of Chinese Research and Innovation Evaluation Systems
Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Alan Irwin, Xuan Li
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Starting with China's increasingly prominent role in the global politics of science, this paper considers the case of Chinese policies for the evaluation of Research &...
The Park Multiple: Practices of Coordination in a Conservation–Tourism Partnership in South Africa
Wisse Van Engelen, Annet Pauwelussen, Esther Turnhout
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Conservation–tourism partnerships are often promoted as win–win solutions to the twin problems of underfunded conservation and unsustainable development. Critics on...
“Bogeymen,” “Murderers,” and “Loonies”: Emotions in Dutch Debates on 5G and Health
Floortje Moes, Christian Bröer, Klasien Horstman
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Scientific advice is often solicited in governance, yet it is increasingly challenged in the public domain. Public participation is often suggested to mediate opposing...
Engaging Science, Technology and Society
Engaging Science, Technology, & Society is an online, open access publication of The Society for Social Studies of Science.
Situating Microbes
Published On: Jul 13 2025
Duygu Kaşdoğan, Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Aalok Khandekar, Angela Okune, Grant Jun Otsuki, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York
Issue 11.1 includes the thematic collection “Situating Microbes.” The collected essays on microbe studies in STS aims to situates microbes in complex ecologies beyond their pathogenic formations. All the articles in this issue...
Situating Microbes Within Complex Ecologies
Published On: Jul 25 2025
Jose A. Cañada, Salla Sariola, Matthäus Rest
The role of microbes in society has traditionally foregrounded their pathogenic character. However, this framing is being increasingly problematised as new research has shown the complex and nuanced role they have, not only in...
Development Histories, AMR Futures, and the Biosociality of a ‘Hotspot'
Published On: Jul 31 2025
Andrea Butcher
Paul Rabinow identified ‘practices of life’ as a potent site of twenty-first-century knowledge and power, arguing that instruments of genomic characterisation will reshape contemporary social relations, thus establishing a...
Racism and Vibrio cholerae: A Sociogenic Approach to Understanding Pathogenicity
Victoria Koski-Karell
After its pandemic debut in 1817, cholera became the most feared disease of the nineteenth century. Its source, a toxigenic bacterium: Vibrio cholerae. There is little coincidence that the prolific and far-reaching spread of this...
4S Blog: Backchannels
The Energy Fictions of Cure and Dependency
Assemblage Thinking for Studying Digital Artifacts: Promises and Challenges
Some recent evidence of the vibrancy of the STS scholarship in Taiwan
When does a field not become a field? An Interview with Dr. Jane Calvert on 'A Place for Science and Technology Studies: Observation, Intervention, and Collaboration' (MIT Press, 2024)
Backchannels content is contributed by our members to highlight news relevant to their work.
Making and Doing: STS Beyond the Four Corners of the Paper
STS News
Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.