April 26, 2015, by Brigitte Nerlich
STS Concepts
For many years I have been working alongside a number of eminent Science and Technology Studies researchers. During that time I have come across many concepts that at first baffled me, then intrigued me and then prompted me to dig into their conceptual history. This blog provided me with a good space to engage in this type of conceptual digging. However, as my conceptual archaeology is scattered all over the blog, I thought it is time to bring my blog posts on these matters together in one place.
Core concepts
Other interesting concepts
This list represents concepts that have shaped STS from, say, the last ten years or so. It reflects the conceptual toolkit of the various majority of STS researchers who are in some way involved ‘policy-oriented’ research, including science communication. There is really nothing here about the founding debates of the field, say, 20-30 years ago, which referred much more directly the production of scientific knowledge and had a stronger epistemological flavour, e.g. relativism, symmetry — but even boundary work and actor-network, which still have resonance in the field, especially in the journal literature.
I totally agree. I never set out to systematically work through STS concepts. This list is just a list of concepts that happened to take my fancy over the last year or so, and my only intention in this blog post was to bring these random musings together into one place. Now that you have mentioned ‘boundary work’, ‘actor-network’, ‘relativism’, I just wish somebody would go and dissect these concepts a bit too. I am not sure I can do them justice. Actually, I am sure that I can’t! If ever you wanted to contribute a post on one of these, feel free!