Published
Nov 1, 2024Page count
192 pagesISBN
978-1529229004Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Nov 1, 2024Page count
192 pagesISBN
978-1529228991Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Nov 1, 2024Page count
192 pagesISBN
978-1529229011Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Science Societies
What role do science and technology play in society? What is the nature of expert knowledge? What is science’s relation to democracy?
This introduction to science, technology, and society answers these questions, and more, by exploring contemporary research on topics such as expertise, activism, science policy, and innovation. It offers a comprehensive resource for considering the place that science and technology have in contemporary societies, and the roles that they can and should play.
Accessible to a non-specialist audience, it draws on a rich range of cases and examples, from nuclear activism in India to content moderation in Kenya. Framing science as always social, and society as always shaped by science and technology, it asks: what worlds do we want science and technology to bring into being?
Sarah R Davies is Professor of Technosciences, Materiality, and Digital Cultures in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. Her work explores the intersections between science, technology, and society, with a particular focus on digital tools and spaces. Her previous books include Science Communication: Culture, Identity, and Citizenship (2016) and Hackerspaces: Making the Maker Movement (2017).
1. Introduction
2. What kind of societies do we live in?
3. The nature of expert knowledge
4. Consuming science: Entertainment and imaginations
5. Co-production: The mutual shaping of (digital) technologies and society
6. Knowledge in crisis
7. Democratising technoscience
8. What kind of societies do we want to live in?
9. Afterword
