Ecologies of Knowledge

Susan Leigh Star is Associate Professor of Sociology and faculty affiliate in Women's Studies and Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Affiliate Research Scientist at the Institute for Research on Learning, Palo Alto. She is the author of Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty, and editor of The Cultures of Computing.

"This collection illustrates the robustness of theoretical concerns in the field in their applicability to the diverse subject matter of science studies, well represented here in the inclusion of studies in biological and physical sciences along with technology. Assembled as a set within the context of Star's introductory comments, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."The authors are concerned with the inter-relatedness of the techniques of techno-science and human life and culture, not simply with the impact of science and technology on society. They elucidate HOW the everyday practices of work and its technical aspects, including in varying degrees: bureaucracy, funding organizations, materials supply, particular movements and bandwagons, and politics, including the politics of representation, collectively construct scientific theories and technological artifacts and their applications."—Henderson, Texas A&M University

• Acknowledgments Introduction Susan Leigh StarPart 1: Politics and Problems 1. Science, Social Problems, and Progressive Thought:Essays on the Tyranny of Science Jennifer Croissant and Sal Restivo2. The Politics of Formal Representations: Wizards, Gurus, and Organizational Complexity Susan Leigh Star3. Computerization Movements and the Mobilizaiton of Support for Computerization Rob Kling and C. Suzanne Iacono4. Representation, Cognition, and Self: What Hope for an Integration of Psychology and Sociology? Steve WoolgarPart 2: Materials and Spaces 5. Research Materials and Reproductive Science in the United States, 1910–1940 Adele E. Clarke6. Laboratory Space and the Technological Complex: An Investigation of Topical Contextures Michael Lynch7. Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer Jim Johnson, a.k.a. Bruno LatourPart 3: Workplace Ecologies 8. Engineering and Sociology in a Military Aircraft Project: A Network Analysis of Technological Change John Law and Michel Callon9. Ecologies of Action: Recombining Genes, Molecularizing Cancer, and Transforming Biology Joan H. FujimuraBibliography Contributors Index