Backchannels

Backchannels provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community.

Workshop: Markets for Collective Concerns - Copenhagen Business School, Dec. 11-12, 2014

Report-backs / Daniel Breslau

In our current era, states are more frequently turning to market mechanisms to achieve social aims. Rather than socializing unmet needs, states are establishing new markets to correct the failures of old markets; markets as interventions, markets upon markets.

6S: The Graduate Student Organization of 4S, Revitalized

Reflections / Bryn Whitely

2015 marks a year of revitalization for 6S, the student organization of 4S. To this end, we are planning to host three events at the upcoming 4S meeting in Denver.

On the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

Projects / Jim Collier

Jim Collier explains the purpose and goals of SERRC: "Social epistemology, after all, understands knowledge as a principle for social organization and action, and welcomes the reformist impulse."

Discutiendo la agenda de desarrollo sustentable

Projects / Mariano Fressoli & Valeria Arza

El Centro de Investigaciones para la Transformación (CENIT) asociado a la Universidad de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) trabaja desde 2008 en conjunto con el Centro STEPS – Universidad de Sussex, del Reino Unido en temas que vinculan la ciencia, la tecnología y la innovación con el desarrollo sustentable e inclusivo. (Spanish, with English summary)

Taking Care of Business Cat

Reflections / D.E. Wittkower

Problematizing stuff is great. Open up concepts, get down underneath ideology, deconstruct—important stuff. Viva la différance and all that. Today, though, let’s solvatize something. And it’s this: what’s up with all these cats online? A philosopher reflects on the business cat internet meme.

“Emotional Bodies. A Workshop on the Historical Performativity of Emotions” Geneva, 20-22 October

Report-backs / Beatriz Pichel

“Emotional Bodies: a Workshop on the Historical Performativity of Emotions” (20th-22nd October, 2014) aimed to contribute to this debate by focusing on how emotions understood as cultural practices have the affective power of creating emotional bodies.

Interview with Karin Knorr Cetina

Reflections / 4S Admin

Former 4S Secretary Wesley Shrum is building a series of video interviews with former 4S Presidents. These in-depth interviews are a rich source of information and perspective, not only about the illustrious careers of these scholars, but about currents of thought within the field over time. In this episode from the 4S 2009 meeting in Washington DC, Shrum interviews Karin Knorr Cetina, who was president in 1996 and 1997.