Science, Technology, and Social Justice

Whether seen as boosting productivity and health, hazarding the destruction of social relations, or quietly constituting the most mundane contours of our lives; science and technology exert inordinate force in shaping the social and material worlds we inhabit and our intimate senses of ourselves. This course interrogates this state of affairs by tracking not only the social impacts of technoscientific interventions but also the social relations, imaginaries, and practices that constitute technoscience itself. Students will be introduced to Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches for studying the ways in which scientific knowledge is created, disseminated, and evaluated. In this course, we will ask: How do new sociotechnical arrangements come into being, get deliberated, and become dominant? How do technoscientific knowledges and practices interact with diverse ways of knowing and being in the world? What roles do science and technology play in historical and contemporary forms of violence, injustice, and inequality? We take up these general concerns through the investigation of different sites of technoscientific intervention such as bodies, disease, ecosystems, built environments, and animals. Across these we will develop frameworks for understanding how technoscience creates knowledge about, intervenes in and transforms our contemporary world. Note: This course is co-taught with undergraduate students but assessed separately.