Science, Technology, & Human Values articles from September 1997

Science, Technology, & Human Values archives from September 1997

Of forms, containers, and the electronic medical record: some tools for a sociology of the formal.
September 22, 1997... Formal adj. 1. Pertaining to the extrinsic aspect of something. 2. Pertaining to the essential form of something. 3. Following accepted conventions or proper form. 4. Characterized by strict observation of forms. 5. Stiff or...

"It's like you use pots and pans to cook. It's the tool": the technologies of safer sex.
September 22, 1997... Safer sex is not an equal opportunity message. Instead, it is a series of sometimes divergent messages that comprise a system of knowledge produced by individuals and groups as well as institutions and national agencies. These messages,...

European biotechnology regulation: framing the risk assessment of a herbicide-tolerant crop.
September 22, 1997... Herbicide-Tolerant Crops as a "Risk" Problem People have felt both fascination and unease about biotechnological developments that promise--or threaten--to transform our world. Both the manner in which problems are defined by...

The Sokal affair in context. (physicist Alan Sokal's experiment designed to determine whether parody of cultural studies will pass as serious academic paper)
September 22, 1997... Most readers of Science, Technology, & Human Values (STHV) are probably aware of what has come to be known as "the Sokal affair," but, nevertheless, a quick review is in order. The May/June 1996 issue of Lingua Franca included a now...

The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA.
September 22, 1997... By Diane Vaughan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 590 pp. $24.95/19.95 [pounds sterling]. This is a lovely book. Indeed, I have not enjoyed a portrait of technical culture in action this much since The Soul of a New Machine,...

Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development.
September 22, 1997... By Alan Irwin. London: Routledge, 1995, 216 pp. 40.00 [pounds sterling] (cloth) 13.99 [pounds sterling] (paper). While I was reading this book, some words penned by the late Edward Thompson, the socialist historian, kept running through my...