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Exploring Parallels Between Technoscientific and Social Scientific Knowledge Production

Saturday, 21 July 2018: 08:30-10:20
Location: 709 (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology (host committee)

Language: English

Sociology of Technology and Science has advanced our understanding of processes in which scientific knowledge is (re-)produced. Scholars have delved deeply into scientific practices in many areas of the natural and technical sciences. But more recently, we have found increasing scholarly interest in studying social or “soft” sciences. These publications (along with earlier work in the sociology of knowledge) point to the importance of sociological self-reflection. They reveal the entanglement of social scientists with the “objects” they are trying to describe and the implications of social scientific knowledge for the understanding of society (e.g. interpretations of social inequality). Therefore, this session aims to bring together new developments in the sociological study of “social sciences/sociologies.”

How and under what circumstances is sociological knowledge produced? How are paradigms in sociology constructed? In what ways are power relations interwoven into the manufacturing of sociological knowledge - both, on the level of enabling research (e.g. political agenda setting, funding, working conditions, academic hierarchies) and disseminating results (e.g. perceptibility, review processes, digital distribution, status of authors)? Are there any technologies that have been normalized in producing sociological knowledge? What are the characteristics of academic sociology communities? How are networks of sociology shaped by actors/actants involved?

Above are some of the questions we expect to address during the session. We welcome any papers - both theoretical and empirical - that address the issues and topics in the sociology of sociologies as well as social sciences (e.g. economics, political science, psychology. philosophy, anthropology).

Session Organizers:
Danny OTTO, University of Rostock, Germany and Jing-Mao HO, Cornell University, Department of Sociology, USA
Oral Presentations
‚Knowing‘ Society. the Making of Sociological Knowledge
Reiner KELLER, University of Augsburg, Germany; Angelika POFERL, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany
Attempts at Indigenizing Sociology: Achievements and Impediments
Mohammad Hossein PANAHI, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Iran
Production of Science in Africa: Decisive Indicators
Radhamany SOORYAMOORTHY, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
How Non-Sociologists Study the Social: The Case of Social Neuroscience
Natalia BESEDOVSKY, University of Hamburg, Germany
Patterns of Shaping Disciplines: The Trajectories of Seven Disciplines from the Social Sciences and Humanities in Seven European Countries Plus Argentina
Matthias DULLER, University of Graz, Department of Sociology, Austria; Christian FLECK, University of Graz, Dept of Sociology, Austria