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

Latest 4S News

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...

India Going Global: Ayurveda, Standardisation and the Cultural Politics of Globalisation

Published On: Jul 6, 2025

Purbita Das advocates for a policy framework to safeguard Ayurveda’s regionality, plurality and its epistemological richness in light of increasing efforts to standardise its practices for the global health market.

The field talks back: listening to Southeast Asia after the book

Published On: Jun 16, 2025

An STS scholar researching social media and society in Southeast Asia reflects on a whirlwind book tour that became an unexpected journey of “post-publication listening”—where dialogue with regional publics reanimated the book’s arguments and affirmed Southeast Asia as a microcosm of global digital politics.

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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.

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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.

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Transitioning ESTS

Published On: Mar 7 2025

Grant Otsuki, Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Ali Kenner, Angela Okune, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, 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

India Going Global: Ayurveda, Standardisation and the Cultural Politics of Globalisation

Purbita Das
Jul 06, 2025
Purbita Das advocates for a policy framework to safeguard Ayurveda’s regionality, plurality and its epistemological richness in light of increasing efforts to standardise its practices for the global health market.

The field talks back: listening to Southeast Asia after the book

Merlyna Lim
Jun 16, 2025
An STS scholar researching social media and society in Southeast Asia reflects on a whirlwind book tour that became an unexpected journey of “post-publication listening”—where dialogue with regional publics reanimated the book’s arguments and affirmed Southeast Asia as a microcosm of global digital politics.

BOOK REVIEW: 'On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America from Starvation to Ozempic' by Dana Simmons

Aaron Gregory PhD (UC Riverside)
Jun 09, 2025
On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America from Starvation to Ozempic (2025; UC Press) is a timely and compelling contribution to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and History of Science (HOS). Extending common threads woven throughout their prior work on vital minimums, Dr. Dana Simmons addresses an enduring pattern in United States history: the production of hunger. This book traces the production of hunger throughout the nineteenth to the present, articulating the ways in which hunger is c...

Cancer in multiple realities, medical technologies and their political implications

Tainã Queiroz
Jun 02, 2025
Tainã Queiroz discusses the incorporation of medical technologies for oncological treatments in the Brazilian health system, focusing on the challenge of combining multiple realities.

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

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Making and Doing: STS Beyond the Four Corners of the Paper

STS News

Items submitted by the community and emailed to members monthly.

Indiana University | Department Chair in Information and Library Science

Jun 05, 2025
The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, Indiana invites applications for the position of department chair of the Department of Information and Library Science (ILS), to begin January 1, 2026. We seek tenured candidates, at the rank of full professor, who demonstrate an excellent scholarly and teaching record with a forward-looking research and teaching agenda, a documented record of leadership experience in an academic setting, and f...

SFU | Postdoc on social-ecological traps

Jun 10, 2025
In partnership with the Hatchery Modernization Team at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Aquatic Research Cooperative Institute at SFU, the Fisheries Management Lab is looking for a Postdoctoral researcher to lead a project on social-ecological traps associated with hatcheries. This project aims to identify types of socio-ecological traps, risk factors, and potential mitigations to aid in hatchery modernization efforts. Specifically, this project involves conducting a literature review of s...

CfP | Climate Havens: Humanistic Perspectives on Resilience, Migration, and Resources Symposium

Jun 17, 2025
As climate risks intensify, the idea of “climate havens”—and the identification of regions like the Great Lakes as more resilient to environmental change—raises pressing questions about space, belonging, justice, resources, and community. This symposium will explore climate havens through historical, philosophical, artistic, literary, and cultural perspectives, organized around three central themes: 1. What Is a Haven? 2. Whose Haven Is It? 3. Climate Havens and Natural R...

New Book | Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays in Distributed Agency

Jul 08, 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...
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