How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society.

"This volume emerged from workshops held at Pennsylvania State University in 2003 and Stanford University in 2005"--P. vii.

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. These scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. -/- Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and (...) scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it. -/- Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era. (shrink)

Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

Her shape and his hand -- Distractions -- The other door, it's floods of tears with consolation enclosed -- Not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there -- There are crossroads.

It is argued that the focus within organization studies on wisdom is one-sided in the sense that it ignores stupidity, wisdom's little stepbrother. Too often it is simply taken for granted that an increase in wisdom will lead to a decrease in stupidity. The problem with this assumption is that it is philosophically uninformed. Stupidity and wisdom stand in a deeply paradoxical relationship, which has been studied by philosophers at least since the Stoics. Some recent contributions to this endless debate (...) will be highlighted in this paper. However, the overall aim of the paper is to show that organizations too are familiar with these philosophical paradoxes. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. Her work highlights the diversity of these cultures of knowing and, in its depiction of their differences--in the meaning of the empirical, the enactment of object relations, and the fashioning of social relations--challenges (...) the accepted view of a unified science. By many accounts, contemporary Western societies are becoming "knowledge societies"--which run on expert processes and expert systems epitomized by science and structured into all areas of social life. By looking at epistemic cultures in two sample cases, this book addresses pressing questions about how such expert systems and processes work, what principles inform their cognitive and procedural orientations, and whether their organization, structures, and operations can be extended to other forms of social order. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society. (shrink)

The first edition of this book profoundly challenged and divided students of philosophy, sociology, and the history of science when it was published in 1976. In this second edition, Bloor responds in a substantial new Afterword to the heated debates engendered by his book.

This question leads the book across the geopolitical and technoscientific space in which the deafening disavowal of Marx is being proclaimed today.

Essays by Jurgen Habermas on religion and religious belief.

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers (...) a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)

Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

Develops a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. This book represents an effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

Proust. and. the. Spectacle. of. the. Closet. "Vous devez vous y entendre mieux que moi, M. de Charlus, a faire marcher des petits marins. . . . Tenez, voici unlivreque j'ai recu, jepensequ'il vous interessera. . . . Letitreest joli: Parmiles hommes.

In this study ideas and concepts that can be used to describe the phenomenon of stupidity and explore the possibility that we choose to be stupid, were developed from the social and political philosophy of Western Civilization. The research methods applied were based on the phenomenological school of qualitative inquiry using a narrative style. Finding suggest we choose to be stupid and stupidity can be generally described in the following ways: ;Conceptually, it is a paradox or antilogy that can be (...) behaviorally chronicled in a number of ways. ;Culturally, stupidity is a philosophically implied concept that has consistently been instrumental in shaping our ideas of intelligence. ;Andragogically, stupidity is voluntary behavior that may be conscious and/or unconscious, but is manifestly anti-moral if not immoral and so it is counterproductive. ;Individually and personally, stupidity is a seemingly anatomic behavioral response to serendipitous personal and cultural predicaments. ;Stupidity can result from confused thinking. It can result from a misinterpretation of reality and it can also be generated by the human incapacity to live a moral existence. While stupidity may not be curable, by developing more precise awareness, we can compensate for stupidity by more fully realizing consequences. ;It is suggested the ideas generated in this study are rich in possibility as subjects for more research and theory development of stupidity. Recommendations were made in support of developing more precise definitions of stupidity. The development of schemata and categories of stupidity can be also generated by further research. ;Educationally, the idea of this study supports and encourages changes in learning and teaching process, procedure and theory that represent the universe non-holistically. As an application in andragogy, it is recommended this study be applied as the basis for the generation of methodology that encourages awareness development as an educational process. (shrink)

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to put the development of the World Social Forum within a broad theoretical and historical context. Specifically, my goal is to understand the WSF in relation to the crises of left thinking and practice of the last thirty or forty years. Second, it offers an analysis of some recent debates about the future of the WSF. It raises questions concerning its organizational makeup and asks whether it should continue as it is, or (...) rather give way to other kinds of initiatives and struggles. Against critics such as Walden Bello, I argue that the WSF should continue and, given certain organizational changes, will contribute to the theory and practice of left movements throughout the world in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This volume collects the most intimate writings of one of the foremost French thinkers of the twentieth century on the central topic of his oeuvre.