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Exploring Parallels Between Technoscientific and Social Scientific Knowledge Production
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).