Science in Democracy

Fall 2008

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.

Core Seminar Organizers


Graduate Fellows Faculty Fellows

Readings

Updated list of readings for each meeting. Check here for updates before each meeting. (Requires a UW Net ID for access.)

The following list of sample readings is drawn from the SSNet proposal and is meant to be illustrate the theme “Science in Democracy” rather than to set the agenda for the Fall seminar.

Selections from Jasanoff’s Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States (2005), and States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order (2004); 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).

Schedule