Normative Claims for a Democratic Science
Spring 2009
In the Spring quarter, the SSNet seminar will address a set of normative questions about why the sciences should be “democratized” and, more specifically, about how the epistemic resources of diverse communities—within and outside the conventional boundaries of established scientific disciplines—can be deployed effectively in the practice of science. We will focus on concrete examples of collaborative research practice in a range of fields in which publics of various kinds figure, not just as beneficiaries of or as a material resource for scientific inquiry, but also as active partners at all stages in the research process, from setting the agenda for a research program through empirical investigation to the dissemination of results. The goal of discussion will be to specify conditions of best practice, and to clearly identify what is to be gained epistemically, as well as socially or politically, from various forms of reciprocity, accountability, and research partnership.
Core Seminar Organizers
Graduate Fellows
- Sara Breslow (Anthropology) [Bio]
Sara Breslow is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, currently writing her dissertation on the political ecology of salmon habitat restoration and farmland preservation in the Skagit River valley of Washington State. As a trainee in the "Multinational Collaborations on Challenges to the Environment" IGERT, she developed and instructed the program's core course, "Introduction to Interdisciplinary and International Environmental Research and Education." She is currently assistant technical coordinator for the Skagit Alternative Futures Project, a participatory, collaborative, and GIS-based visioning and planning process for the future of the Skagit watershed. She is also collaborating with Seattle playwright Todd Jefferson Moore on a theatrical interpretation of her Skagit field work, and recently completed another arts-based collaborative project about Doñana National Park in southern Spain with New York City video artist Lillian Ball. Sara's explorations in participatory research and public scholarship have been largely inspired and supported by the Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships Program, the National Science Foundation, and the UW Simpson Center's Institute on the Public Humanities.
- Julie Homchick (Communication) – distributed fellowship [Bio]
As a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Communication, Julie is currently writing her dissertation. Generally, she is interested in how public audiences come to believe or disbelieve in scientific information. For her dissertation, she analyzes how evolutionary theory museum exhibits and creation science museum exhibits around the United States respond to, reject or appropriate aspects of creation science and how their rhetorical choices affect the public’s understanding of evolution. To conduct this research, she performs close readings of the exhibits by drawing upon work done in the areas of the rhetoric of science, visual rhetoric and the history of science. Homchick serves as the Lead TA in the Department of Communication and has presented work from her dissertation for the History of Science Society, the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology. This winter she will present her work at two more conferences: “Evolution and Religion: Towards an Evolving Relationship” and “Darwin’s Reach: Reflections across the Disciplines.” She is currently co-authoring a piece on lines of argument in creation science with William Keith (U. Wisconsin – Milwaukee) for Keywords and Controversies in the Rhetoric of Science and Technology.
Faculty Fellows
- Malia Fullerton (Bioethics and Humanities) [Bio]
- Mott Greene (Earth and Space Sciences) [Bio]
Mott T. Greene is John Magee Professor of Science and Values at
the University of Puget Sound, and Affiliate Professor of Earth and Space
Sciences at the University of Washington. He Is a historian of science (Ph.D., University of Washington, 1978), and was the first graduate of
the UW to receive a MacArthur Award,(in 1983). He has worked principally
in the history of 19th and 20th century geology, geophysics, and
atmospheric sciences, though he has also published on the sciences in
antiquity. He is currently interested in the radical shift away from
single authorship in the sciences, and therefore in the the necessity of
moving away from the biographical model of the history of science. He
is also interested in current issues in evolutionary theory, and the way
these apply to thinking about how science works.
Stephanie Malia Fullerton, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She received a Postgraduate Diploma (M.Sc.) in Human Biology and a DPhil in Human Population Genetics from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Fullerton served as a University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the
Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, UK, from 1995 to 1998, before
returning to the US to pursue population genetics research focused on
identifying genetic contributions to cardiovascular disease, at Penn State
University, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, at the University of
Chicago, from 1998 to 2002. In 2002, she was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein
National Research Service Award from the National Human Genome Research
Institute to re-train in ethical and social aspects of human genetics at Penn
State University. Her research in this area has focused on the epistemological,
ethical, and historical phenomena underlying contemporary scientists'
understandings of population-level genetic variation and its relation to disease
predisposition and health status. Her broad research interests include
scientific decision-making, the relationship of basic research to clinical
research and practice (especially as it pertains to use of racial and/or ethnic
identification), and research ethics.
- Phillip Thurtle (CHID & History) [Bio]
Phillip Thurtle is an associate professor in the Comparative History of Ideas program and the History Department at the University of Washington
and an adjunct in Anthropology. He received his PhD in history and the
philosophy of science from Stanford University. He is the author of The
Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in
American Biology 1870-1920 (University of Washington Press, 2008), the
co-author with Robert Mitchell (English, Duke University) and Helen
Burgess (English, University of Maryland) of the interactive DVD-ROM
BioFutures: Owning Information and Body Parts (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), and the co-editor with Robert Mitchell of the volumes Data
Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003) and Semiotic Flesh:
Information and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2002).
His research focuses on the material culture of information processing,
the affective-phenomenlogical domains of media, the role of information
processing technologies in biomedical research, and theories of novelty
in the life sciences.
- Alison Wylie (Philosophy & Anthropology) [Bio]
Alison Wylie is Professor of Philosophy and Anthropology, and Adjunct Professor of Women Studies at the University of Washington. She is a
philosopher of science who works on philosophical issues raised by
archaeological practice and by feminist research in the social sciences:
ideals of objectivity, the role of contextual values in research
practice, and models of evidential reasoning. Her publications include
Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (2002);
edited collections and special issues on Value-free Science? (2007, with
Kincaid and Dupré), Doing Archaeology as a Feminist (Archaeological
Method and Theory 2007, with Conkey), Epistemic Diversity and Dissent
(Episteme 2006), and Feminist Science Studies (Hypatia, 2004); as well as
essays that appear in Agnatology (2008), Evaluating Multiple Narratives
(Springer 2007), the Sage Handbook of Feminist Research (2007),
Theoretical Empiricism (2006), Embedding Ethics (Berg, 2005), and Science and
other Cultures (2003). She is currently working on a monograph, Standpoint
Matters, in Feminist Philosophy of Science.
Sample Readings
Updated list of readings for each meeting. Check here for updates before each meeting. (Requires a UW Net ID for access.)
Sample readings include: Burgess and O’Doherty, Deliberative Public Engagement Related to Governing Biobanks (2007); Dryzek and Niemeyer “Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals” (2006); Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (2007); Sharp and Foster, “Grappling with Groups: Protecting Collective Interests in Biomedical Research” (2007); Stokols, “Toward a Science of Transdisciplinary Action Research” (2006); Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2006).
Schedule
Download a printable version of the full Spring Quarter Schedule (including seminar readings) here.
- April 6: Digital Media Town Hall & Planning meeting for Spring Colloquium [
Agenda Online, Keywords Presentation Online, 
Podcast Online]
- April 13: HUM596 - Legacies and Lineages of Community-based Participatory Research (led by Alison Wylie (Philosophy & Anthropology)) [ Readings Online]
- April 20:Interest-group Liberalism, Stakeholder Politics and the Paradoxes of Democratization of Science (led by Mott Greene (Earth and Space Sciences)) [ Readings & Podcast Online]
- May 4: Intelligent Design - Policy and Politics (led by Julie Homchick (Communication) and Mott Greene (Earth and Space Sciences)) [ Readings & Podcast Online]
- May 11: HUM596 - Space as Analytic (led by Phillip Thurtle (CHID & History)) [ Readings Online]
- May 18: Participatory, Transdisciplinary, and Indigenous Methodologies in Health and Environmental Research (led by Sara Breslow (Anthropology) ) [ Readings & Podcast Online]
- June 1: Biotech Hobbyism - Tinkering, Treacherous, or Transformative? (led by Malia Fullerton (Bioethics and Humanities)) [ Readings, Handout, & Podcast Online]
