(no subject)

From: J. Hughes (jhughes@changesurfer.com)
Date: Fri Mar 09 2001 - 07:11:58 MST


Please find below the final call for papers for this year's meeting of the
Society for the Social Study of Science. The meeting will take place in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, from November 1-4. The deadline for submission of
abstracts is March 31, 2001.

Fashioning the Future: Science, Technology, and Visions of Progress

                         November 1-4, 2001

                         Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Scientists and engineers have played a central role in refashioning the
material and social worlds of modernity. They have provided key resources
with which human beings and institutions imagine, and in part realize,
particular visions of progress. These resources can also destabilize
identities, threaten security, and arouse resistance. For example, in
biomedicine, genetic breakthroughs may allow us to remake the human body,
profile individuals and populations, and commodify nature in unprecedented
ways; in the information sciences, new technologies promise to provide ready
access to vast realms of information, facilitate new forms of human
interaction and consumption, and enable new forms of state and corporate
surveillance; in the military sphere, smart technologies may offer
unprecedented accuracy and striking power to the armed forces of
post-industrial states. These new knowledges and technological forms are
materializing at the same time that processes of globalization are
mobilizing novel flows of capital, commodities, ideas, technologies, and
human migration across borders and so giving rise to new forms of social
and technoscientific experimentation.

The risks, possibilities, and intellectual puzzles of such a moment invite
conversation across disciplinary and intellectual boundaries. Science and
technology studies has been an interdisciplinary field since its inception a
quarter century ago. In this anniversary year, we welcome contributions
from scholars in such fields as sociology, anthropology, history,
philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies,
communication studies, cultural studies, and law, as well as from
practitioners of science, engineering or public policy. While panels
showcasing particular issues or perspectives are always welcome, we also
encourage panels that cross conventional boundaries, whether by combining
perspectives from scholars of different nationalities, by juxtaposing
participants from different disciplines, or by staging dialogues between
practitioners and social analysts of science. We invite proposals for
entire panels and for individual papers.

Broad theme areas include:
· Technology Studies
· Science, Technology & Environment
· Information Technologies
· Ethics and Law
· Medicine and Genetics
· Science, Technology and War
· Science Policy and Politics
· Innovation Studies
· Theory and Philosophy of Science
· Race, Gender, and Class
· Public Understanding of Science

Deadline for Submissions: March 31, 2001.
Each panel will be allotted 1.5 hours and should contain no more than 3 or 4
papers. Abstracts for panel sessions should be no more than 250 words and
should contain a list of panelists with their institutional affiliations and
proposed paper titles. Abstracts for individual papers should likewise be
no more than 250 words. Submissions received after March 1 will be
considered on a space-available basis.

For more detailed information, visit the conference website at

web.mit.edu/sts/www/4s

For inquiries contact:

Hugh Gusterson,
STS Program,
MIT, E51-296F,
77 Massachusetts Avenue,
Cambridge, MA 02139.
Tel: 617-253-7270;
fax: 617-253-5363.
Email: Guster@mit.edu.

PLEASE NOTE: Watch our website in coming weeks for an update on cheaper
accommodation alternatives in Cambridge.

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----------------------------------
Dr. J. Hughes
Changesurfer Radio
www.changesurfer.com
jhughes@changesurfer.com



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