A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

       B
       return to top

• Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  -David Guston

   

  Combining political-economic, sociological, and historical approaches, Guston provides a coherent new framework for analyzing the changing relationship between politics and science in the United States. After World War II, the "social contract for science" assumed that the integrity and productivity of research were automatic; a belief that endured for four decades. But in the 1980s, cases of misconduct in science and flagging economic performance broke the trust between politics and science. New "boundary organizations" were created to mend the relationship between scientists and politicians.
  
  Read about the author in the October 20, 2000 edition of Rutger's Focus.

   

  See Prof. Guston interviewed about his research on science policy.

       C
       return to top

• Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
  -Editors: Clark Miller and Paul N. Edwards.
  
  "Incorporating historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches, Changing the Atmosphere presents detailed empirical studies of climate science and its uptake into public policy. Topics include the scientific, political, and social processes involved in the creation of scientific knowledge about climate change; the historical and contemporary role of expert knowledge in creating and perpetuating policy concern about climate change; and the place of science in institutions of global environmental governance such as the World Meteorological Organization, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Together, the essays demonstrate fundamental connections between the science and politics of planet Earth. In the struggle to create sustainable forms of environmental governance, they indicate, a necessary first step is to understand how communities achieve credible, authoritative representations of nature." -amazon.com
  
   

• Culture and Technology: A Primer.  NY: Peter Lang (2005).
  -J. Macgregor Wise and J. D. Slack
  
  "Culture + Technology is an essential guide to the fascinating history of these debates, and offers new perspectives that give readers the tools they need to make informed decisions about the role of technology in our lives. In clear and compelling language, Slack and Wise untangle and expose the cultural assumptions that underlie our thinking about technology, stories so deeply held we often don't recognize their influence. The book considers the perceived inevitability of technological advance and our myths about progress. It also looks at sources of resistance to these stories from the Luddites of the 19th century to the Unabomber in our own time. Slack and Wise help readers sift through the confusions about culture and technology that arise in their own everyday lives."
   

       E
       return to top

•  Exploring Technology and Social Space. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (1997).
  -J. Macgregor Wise
  
  Examining the fundamental assumptions that we hold about the role of technology in our lives, Technology and Social Space describes the possibilities and limitations of human agency within the new wired world. In a patient and thoughtful style, author J. Macgregor Wise elaborates a critical, philosophical, and epistemological framework from which to better understand our relations to technology and social space. The book argues that most treatments of technology and society arise from a modernist episteme (or set of assumptions) that radically separates humans from technologies, focusing on questions of determination and identity. In an attempt to provide a clearer view of technology and social space, the book explores alternative perspectives centered on notions of agency. Working from within these alternative epistemes, the book turns its attention to the burgeoning technological assemblage of communication and information characterized by the Internet and cyberspace. Technology and Social Space draws on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and the actor-network sociology of Bruno Latour, and brings together diverse examples from cyborg films, television, museums, cyberspace, and debates over a New World Information and Communication Order.

       F
       return to top

• Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

  -Daniel Sarewitz

  
  In Frontiers of Illusion, Daniel Sarewitz scrutinizes the fundamental myths that have guided the formulation of science policy for half a century -- myths that serve the professional and political interests of the scientific community, but often fail to advance the interests of society as a whole. His analysis ultimately demonstrates that stronger linkages between progress in science and progress in society will require research agendas that emerge not from the intellectual momentum of science, but from the needs and goals of society.

        G
       return to top

• Globalization, Technological Change, and Public Education. New York: Routledge, 2005.

  -Torin Monahan

   

  Through detailed ethnographic research and interviews in a large urban public school system, this book describes examples of "globalization on the ground." Information technologies in the public school environment have generally been seen as enabling tools to help students and nations compete in the global marketplace. Yet a closer look at the interplay of technological change and organizational restructuring suggests the emergence of new, less promising power relations.  With few exceptions, information technologies are used to demand greater flexibility of students and workers to adapt to systems that are ever more rigid and controlling.  Not coincidentally, the training of flexible students accustomed to instability may be exactly what globalization requires.

       H
       return to top

• Human Choice and Climate Change. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press, 1998.
  Editors: Steve Rayner and Elizabeth Malone

        I
       return to top

• Inventing Intelligence: A Social History of Smart. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

  -Paul Privateer

  
  What is intelligence?  What makes humans Homo sapiens – the intelligent species?  Inventing Intelligence is a bold deconstruction of the history of intelligence.  Uncoupling our understanding of this most familiar concept from its traditional social science moorings, this book trains a cultural studies lens on intelligence to expose it as yet another form of representation.
  
  Paul Privateer charts the history of intelligence from its earliest articulations through to postmodern AI.  Individual chapters recount the loving spheres of divine intelligence imagined by Plato, the self-conscious stylings of the Renaissance Man, the politics of intelligence in the Enlightenment, as well as contemporary assessments of digital intelligence and the mysterious adventure of Einstein's brain.  Ambitious in its historical sweep, unflinching in its challenge to conventional wisdom, Inventing Intelligence is for everyone and anyone who used to think that the parameters and the stakes of intelligence – evident in the current controversy over "intelligent" design – had been negotiated and finalized.

• Limited by Design. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

  -Barry Bozeman and Michael Crow

   

  Limited by Design is the first comprehensive study of the varying roles played by the more than 16,000 research and development laboratories in the U.S. national innovation system. Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman offer policy makers and scientists a blueprint for making more informed decisions about how to best utilize and develop the capabilities of these facilities. Limited by Design addresses a range of questions in order to enable policy makers, university administrators, and scientists to plan effectively for the future of research and development.
   

• Living with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003.

  -Editors: Daniel Sarewitz, Alan Lightman, and Christina Desser
  
  Through our technologies, we have sought to free ourselves from the shackles of nature and become its master. Yet science and technology continually transform our experience and society in ways that often seem to be beyond our control. Today, different areas of research and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the rate and magnitude of technological and societal change, with consequences that no one can predict. Living with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and meaning of such change, and our capacity to govern it. As the power of technology continues to accelerate, who, this book asks, will be the master of whom?  Leading writers and thinkers come together to confront this question from many perspectives.

• Prediction: Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000.
  – Editors: Daniel Sarewitz, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Radford Byerly, Jr.
  
  Prediction offers a fascinating and wide-ranging look at the interdependent scientific, political, and social factors involved in using science-based predictions to guide policy making. Through ten detailed case studies, it explores society's efforts to generate reliable scientific information about complex natural systems and to use that information in making sound policy decisions. Prediction is the first book to look at the numerous and varied scientific, social, and political factors involved in making and using predictions relevant to a wide range of current environmental controversies and challenges. It provides much-needed context for understanding predictions and scientific pronouncements, and is an important work for anyone concerned with interactions between science and policy making.