4S Mission

Fostering interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe.

Latest 4S News

Nominate 4S Council positions

Published On: May 9, 2025

Deadline: May 16, 2025

As a 4S member you can nominate and self-nominate for upcoming 4S Council positions until May 16:
4S: https://forms.gle/rovFdXdRVKqVKGw58
6S: https://forms.gle/Nca8jZJkGsRoFx4a7
More here: https://4sonline.org/4s_elections_2025.php.

Will the bubble burst? Thinking together about hype machines in the contemporary technoscience.

Published On: Apr 21, 2025

Ola Michalec Ph.D. considers the collective excitement surrounding AI and the ways in which the 'hype machine' mobilises resources, enrols new actors, creates pressure to accelerate responses, clouds judgement, conceals power dynamics or detracts from crucial infrastructural work. How might we situate the buzz and buzzwords AI as integral to the hype machine of promotion, exaggerated claims, collective frenzy, leadership and strong emotional responses influencing economic trends, political agend...

Early-bird Registration Extended to May 7

Published On: Apr 30, 2025

Just one week to go to register & receive an đŸ„ early-bird rate for 4S Seattle 2025! đŸ„ Same rates for online + in-person. Purchasing a membership gives you access to reduced rates, so be sure to become a member first. 4S is undertaking many steps to help and support our members during their visit to Seattle for the conference. We have given 100 registration fee waivers this year & we've offered hybridity for those who want to connect online. While these offers come at a significant ...

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.

Transitioning ESTS

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Grant Otsuki, ClĂ©ment DrĂ©ano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Angela Okune, Duygu Kaßdoğan, Sujatha Raman, Tim SchĂŒtz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York

Contributions to this issue focus on a wide range of domains and problematics—environment, extractivism, air pollution, climate change, digitalization, automation, care, surveillance—that offer a thought-provoking commentary...

Volatile Atmosphere: A Tkaronto Archive

Published On: Mar 10 2025

Sophia Jaworski

This article delves into the history of petrochemical-derived gas emissions in Toronto, focusing on their emergence and regulation from the end of World War II and up to 1980. Drawing on archival materials, I trace local knowledge...

Origin Stories of the ‘Grants Uranium District’ in Northwestern New Mexico: Archives, Memoirs, and Exploratory Boreholes in the Production of Geological Regions

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Thomas De Pree

The “Grants uranium district” of northwestern New Mexico yielded more uranium ore than any other mining district in the United States during the Cold War Period (1947-1989). After the national market for uranium collapsed...

Farmers’ Creativity and Cultivated Senses: The Immediacy of Embodied Knowledge in Alternative Agriculture

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Dimas Dwi Laksmana

The Indonesian government has promoted several forms of alternative agriculture in response to the productivity orientation and top-down bureaucratic institutions in intensive agriculture. Implemented in the late 1980s, the Integrated...

4S Blog: Backchannels

Locating STS in Southeast Asia: a Belgian migrant looking for a place of belonging

Auriane van der Vaeren
May 05, 2025
A Belgian, trained in STS at the University of Vienna, shares her experience of locating STS hubs in Southeast Asia after moving to Bangkok.

Will the bubble burst? Thinking together about hype machines in the contemporary technoscience.

Ola Michalec (Bristol Digital Futures Institute, UK)
Apr 21, 2025
Ola Michalec Ph.D. considers the collective excitement surrounding AI and the ways in which the 'hype machine' mobilises resources, enrols new actors, creates pressure to accelerate responses, clouds judgement, conceals power dynamics or detracts from crucial infrastructural work. How might we situate the buzz and buzzwords AI as integral to the hype machine of promotion, exaggerated claims, collective frenzy, leadership and strong emotional responses influencing economic trends, political agend...

The Heartware approach: how cultural values drive sustainable socio-technical change

Zeeda Fatimah Mohamad
Apr 07, 2025
Zeeda F. Mohamad explores the “Heartware approach” in sustainability science: a visualisation tool to enable community-based participation that emphasizes the integration of cultural values into environmental sustainability governance frameworks.

Interspecies Agencies: Controversies, Ontologies, and New Forms of Cohabitation (Part 3)

Gonzalo Correa and Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira
Apr 01, 2025
This report on an EASST/4S 2024 panel is the third in a three-part series about interspecies agencies. Part Three rethinks STS through the lens of multispecies relations.

Backchannels content is contributed by our members to highlight news relevant to their work.

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

Nominate 4S Council positions

May 09, 2025
As a 4S member you can nominate and self-nominate for upcoming 4S Council positions until May 16:
4S: https://forms.gle/rovFdXdRVKqVKGw58
6S: https://forms.gle/Nca8jZJkGsRoFx4a7
More here: https://4sonline.org/4s_elections_2025.php.

CfP | "Negative Space" multidisciplinary special issue

Apr 08, 2025
This proposed special issue invites contributors to explore how “negative space”, whether as a theoretical heuristic or research methodology, produces new meanings, responses, and relationships. In visual arts, negative space refers to the constitutive background, or the surrounding imprint that helps to shape the foregrounded subject or object in a visual field. Inspired by this concept, this special issue brings together multidisciplinary researchers and artists who engage with the...

Early-bird Registration Extended to May 7

Apr 30, 2025
Just one week to go to register & receive an đŸ„ early-bird rate for 4S Seattle 2025! đŸ„ Same rates for online + in-person. Purchasing a membership gives you access to reduced rates, so be sure to become a member first. 4S is undertaking many steps to help and support our members during their visit to Seattle for the conference. We have given 100 registration fee waivers this year & we've offered hybridity for those who want to connect online. While these offers come at a significant ...

New Book | Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age

May 08, 2025
Indigenous Currencies follows dynamic stories of currency as a meaning-making communication technology. Settler economies regard currency as their own invention, casting Indigenous systems of value, exchange, and data stewardship as incompatible with contemporary markets. In this book, Ashley Cordes refutes such claims and describes a long history of Indigenous innovation in currencies, including wampum, dentalium, beads, and, more recently, the cryptocurrency MazaCoin. By looking closely at how...