4S Mission
Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.
Latest 4S News
In Loving Memory of Michel Callon
Published On: Aug 13, 2025
We are saddened here at the Society to share the passing of one of our field’s luminaries, Michel Callon. His foundational work in actor network theory has inspired generations of STS scholars, and Callon was president of 4S from 1998 to 2000. He was awarded the Bernal Prize in 2002. We thank the Center for the Sociology of Innovation for sharing this in memorium: https://www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu/en/featured-articles/michel-callon-1945-2025/
Disposable Plastics, Enduring Bonds
Published On: Aug 7, 2025
In this post, Tridibesh Dey reflects on an ethnographic case from summer 2023 in Canning, the last town and railway terminus in India at the fringes of the Sundarban. This post proffers situated insights into why a single-use plastic product continues to be popular.
New Book | Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays in Distributed Agency
Published On: Jul 8, 2025
In recent decades, there has been a call for decentering knowledge in the social sciences and humanities, bringing to light perspectives from previously ignored or undervalued groups or areas of the world. Feminist epistemologies and postcolonial studies have led this trend. However, there has been less interest in the specific infrastructures and practices that make decentering possible. Drawing from science and technology studies, Decentralizing Knowledges examines how to bring about such chan...
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.
Bearly Recognizable: Facial Recognition and the Wild
Emily WandererDepartment of Anthropology, 6614University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
While big tech companies are growing more circumspect about the use of facial recognition for humans, interest in nonhuman facial recognition is surging. The identification...
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...
Agriculture by Algorithm: Big Data, Digitalization, and Biotechnology Under Climate Change
Yıldız Atasoy1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 1763Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Science, Technology, & Human Values, Ahead of Print.
Based on textual analysis of publicly available documents published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, Bayer, and its partner delivery start-ups, this paper provides...
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 &...
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
BOOK REVIEW: 'A Place for Science and Technology Studies: Observation, Intervention, and Collaboration' by Jane Calvert
Disposable Plastics, Enduring Bonds
4S Backchannels is Hiring Assistant Editors!
India Going Global: Ayurveda, Standardisation and the Cultural Politics of Globalisation
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.