Circulating Technoscience
Contemporary science and technology studies, together with the geography of knowledge, has challenged the idea that scientific and technological knowledge is born universal. Regardless of the answer to the philosophical dilemma of whether or not the laws of science are the same in two different places, our knowledge that they are the same does not appear from nowhere. It is created through social processes that are amenable to social scientific investigation. This claim has created space for an array of studies that aim to show how universality is constructed, how facts and artifacts are adapted to local circumstances, and how stability is engineered into ‘immutable mobiles’ (Latour 1987) as knowledge moves beyond its sites of creation. This section takes up this theme of circulating technoscience, exploring the material and social processes by which science and technology moves, and how this has been studied through concepts such as fluidity, networks and zones.
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Papers
Whatmore, S and Thorne, L (1998), ‘Wild(er)ness: Reconfiguring the Geographies of Wildlife’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23 (4): 435-454.
Lindee, M.S. (1999) ‘The Repatriation of Atomic Bomb Victim Body Parts to Japan: Natural Objects and Diplomacy’, Osiris 13: 376-409.
Rajan K.S.(2003) ‘Genomic Capital: Public Cultures and Market Logics of Corporate Biotechnology’, Science as Culture, 12 (1): 87-121.
de Laet, M and Mol, A (2000), ‘The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology’ Social Studies of Science 30(2): 225-263.
Clark, J and Murdoch, J (1997), ‘Local knowledge and the Precarious Extension of Scientific Networks: A Reflection on Three Case Studies’, Sociologia Ruralis 37(1): 38-60.
Barry, A (2006), ‘Technological zones’ European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2): 239-253
Balmer, B (2006), ‘A Secret Formula, A Rogue Patent and Public Knowledge about Nerve Gas: Secrecy as a Spatial-Epistemic Tool’, Social Studies of Science, 36(5): 691-722.