HUM596 Seminar I: Science in Democracy Fall 2008
This course is linked to the 1st quarter of the 2008-09 Science Studies Network seminar on Democratizing Science, a year-long faculty and graduate seminar, sponsored by the Simpson Center, that will meet every second week through the academic year.
The focus of the Fall quarter seminar is a cluster of questions about the role of scientific experts and expertise in democratic deliberation that have long been contentious. For example, how can the power of scientific inquiry be effectively mobilized for the public good without ceding authority to scientific experts?; and how are non-experts to adjudicate the technical advice offered by scientific experts? A complementary set of questions have to do with scientific accountability: what responsibilities do scientists have to those who are affected by policies based on their advice, or on knowledge, technologies, and forms of practice that they play a role in producing? Debates about these issues have roots, in the American context, in Deweyan pragmatism, and they have drawn the attention of political theorists concerned to understand how deliberative processes work in democracies, as well as science studies scholars who are interested in the role of contextual values in the sciences.
Readings for this quarter were drawn from Jasanoff’s States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order (2004), Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States (2005), and Collins and Evans’ discussion of "The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience" (2002).
Related discussions can be found in collections such as Moore’s Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 (2008); Mirowski, and Sent’s Science Bought and Sold (2002); Kincaid, Dupre, and Wylie’s Value-Free Science?: Ideals and Illusions (2007); Rabinow’s Marking Time: The Anthropology of the Contemporary (2007); and Strathern’s Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics, and the Academy (2000).
Information about the Science Studies Network and the year-long seminar on Democratizing Science of which it is a part is available at: http://depts.washington.edu/ssnet/.
Requirements and Logistics
Graduate students who enroll in HUM596 will be expected to attend all the bi-weekly Science Studies Network seminar meetings in the Fall quarter, as well as two additional meetings with core faculty at the beginning and end of the quarter. Each bi-weekly SSNet seminar meeting will be a discussion of precirculated readings lead by members of the core organizing group; the two graduate seminar meetings will be on topics and readings selected by the student participants in the seminar. Writing requirements will include a series of short response papers to selected readings and a summary reflection on the seminar as a whole.
Instructors
Fall Seminar Faculty Fellows:
Leah Ceccarelli (Communication), Sarah Elwood (Geography), Simon Werrett (History), Joanne Woiak (Disability Studies/History)
Instructors of record:
Phillip Thurtle (History/CHID); Simon Werrett (History); Alison Wylie (Philosophy)
Seminar meetings
Simpson Center seminar room (Communication 202)
Mondays, 2:00-1:30 (see SSNet calendar for dates)
Credit: 2 hours; C/NC