MRES.B.01 Science, Technology, Society: From History to Policy (MRES.B.01)
Christos KARAMPATSOS
This course module introduces students to the Science, Technology and Society (STS) interdisciplinary field. First, students are introduced to key concepts of the field such as the Social Construction of Technology, Technopolitics, and Sociotechnical Imaginaries. Then these concepts are applied to selected case studies that pertain to concrete aspects of the relation between society and scientific and technological change. Such aspects include (a) Production technologies (b) Environmental technologies (c) Transport technologies (d) Energy technologies (e) Information Computation and Telecommunication Technologies (f) Biotechnologies.
The lectures are also based on 19th and 20th century Greek and international history. Students are introduced to select narratives from labour history, economic history, social history and diplomatic history.
All lectures are designed to produce debates on current problems and challenges. This includes the discussion of contemporary topics such as (a) Geopolitics and International Relations (b) Class, Racial and Gender discrimination (c) State policy (d) Emigration (e) The environmental challenge. Such topics come to the fore in every lecture via selected abstracts taken from the daily press, and are discussed in conjunction with their often obscured technical aspects.
[Photo: US Army nurse attending to a patient in an Intensive Care Unit; Baghdad, Iraq, circa 2004. Source: Wikimedia commons.]
LessThis course module introduces students to the Science, Technology and Society (STS) interdisciplinary field. First, students are introduced to key concepts of the field such as the Social Construction of Technology, Technopolitics, and Sociotechnical Imaginaries. Then these concepts are applied to selected case studies that pertain to concrete aspects of the relation between society and scientific and technological change. Such aspects include (a) Production technologies (b) Environmental technologies (c) Transport technologies (d) Energy technologies (e) Information Computation and Telecommunication Technologies (f) Biotechnologies.
The lectures are also based on 19th and 20th century Greek and international history. Students are introduced to select narratives from labour history, economic history, social history and diplomatic history.
All lectures are designed to produce debates on current problems and challenges. This includes the discussion of contemporary topics such as (a) Geop
This course module introduces students to the Science, Technology and Society (STS) interdisciplinary field. First, students are introduced to key concepts of the field such as the Social Construction of Technology, Technopolitics, and Sociotechnical Imaginaries. Then these concepts are applied to selected case studies that pertain to concrete aspects of the relation between society and scientific and technological change. Such aspects include (a) Production technologies (b) Environmental technologies (c) Transport technologies (d) Energy technologies (e) Information Computation and Telecommunication Technologies (f) Biotechnologies.
The lectures are also based on 19th and 20th century Greek and international history. Students are introduced to select narratives from labour history, economic history, social history and diplomatic history.
All lectures are designed to produce debates on current problems and challenges. This includes the discussion of contemporary topics such as (a) Geop
Before each lecture, students are required to read a chosen article and answer specific questions that have been posed by the instructor beforehand. Each student thus delivers a 2-page essay before each lecture. The instructor reads the students’ essays before the lecture and uses them to organize a discussion. The final grade derives from these short essays.
Students can find sample evaluation material for this course module under the "DOCUMENTS" in the left frame menu.
What do we even mean by the word "concepts"? Technology as a "hazardous concept". Introduction to key concepts of the STS interdisciplinary field. Technological determinism. Large technological systems.
Introducing further concepts. The Social Construction of Technology. Technology in use. Technopolitics. Socio-technical imaginaries. Actor Network Theory.
Machinery of the first industrial revolution: The steam engine, the spinning mule, the watch. The historicity of the concept of "time". Disassociating labour from nature and the emergence of the factory. "Moral economy" and technological revolutions.
Machine-tools and other machinery of the second industrial revolution. Management, engineering and the organization of work: a history. Computation and the workplace. Taylorism today: Software platforms and "smart" technologies in work and leisure.
Origins of the assembly line. Spaces of production and spaces of reproduction of labour power. The emergence of a fordist world. Immigration during a technological revolution: from the early 20th to the early 21st century.
The early twentieth century transport revolution and the emergence of “geopolitics”. Technological accidents. Social ramifications of the “self-driving” car. Geopolitics and transport technologies today: the Chinese “belt and road” initiative.
Energy and geopolitics. The transition from coal to oil. The rise of petroleum geology: A deeply political discipline. Oil in the World Wars of the 20th century. Hydrocarbon exploration, energy transition and war in the 21st century: The Greek case.
Material configurations and state policies - the case of French nuclear reactors. International relations in the Cold War and the Bretton Woods treaty. Experts, expertise and technopolitics. Contemporary notions of “nuclear”: Australian nuclear submarines and certain obscure ramifications of the AUKUS treaty.
Computation and labour. Computing in the Cold War. The historicity of “computing”. Social gender and technology.
The emergence of the “environment” – another “hazardous concept”? Energy technologies and the environment. The environment and public policy. Climate change and energy transitions. Geopolitics and environmental concerns in the Ukranian war and beyond.
Artificial intelligence and the “end of work”. Historical and philosophical dimensions of the Turing machine. Video games –between work and the reproduction of labour power. A world of “big data”.
“Genealogy”, “power”, “knowledge” and “technology” according to Michel Foucault. “Performativity”, as seen in the case of anti-epidemic masks. The Intensive Care Unit: History of a peculiar “black box”. Technology and expertise in the recent pandemic.
Course overview. Past and future of the relation between society and technology.
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