New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies

As the leading STS intellectual provocateur, Steve Fullers encyclopedic range keeps astounding novices and professionals alike. The book is detailed, analytic, critical, and friendly all at the same time. Fuller himself has been an active participant, and at times an instigator, of some of the most fascinating debates in this domain of research and practice this survey brings out some of his own novel ideas and approaches. In the end, Fuller remains firmly in the liberal-democratic camp, with a utopian dream of knowledge integration, and reaches a deep appreciation of the significant contribution of science to contemporary culture. Raphael Sassower, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Fuller provides a scintillating critique of the fashionable actor network theory and other anti-humanist projects that, their claims to the contrary notwithstanding, threaten to derail the critical and democratic potential of STS. His insightful and lively diagnosis of the past and the present state of the field enables him to formulate an exciting and politically engaged agenda for STS. Zaheer Baber, University of Toronto In recognition of the great changes in science in last two decades, STS has become focused on technoscience and regulatory science and the new institutional realities of science. What has been lost sight of, Fuller points out, are some other topics that have changed along with this change: the public justification and face of science, the ways in which science understands the problem of the unity of knowledge, new meanings of old concepts, such as fraud and consensus, and demands to democraitze knowledge. With an eye to the grand figures of the past, he restates the big issues for the present a much needed effort. Stephen Turner, University of South Florida

Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.

List of Tables and Boxes vi Introduction 1 Part I: The Demarcation Problem 9 1 Science's Need for Revolution 11 2 Science's Need for Unity 53 Part II: The Democratization Problem 83 3 Contrasting Visions 85 4 The Politics of Science Journalism 128 5 So-called Research Ethics 145 Part III: The Transformation Problem 179 6 The Future of Humanity 181 7 The Future of Science and Technology Studies 205 Bibliography 218 Index 230