Science Technology And Culture

We are facing unprecedented challenges today. For many of us, innovation would be our last hope. But how can it be done? Is it enough to bet on the scientific culture? How can technical culture contribute to innovation? How is technical culture situated with regards to what we name collectively the culture of innovation? It is these questions that this book intends to address.

This book introduces students to cultural studies of science and technology. It equips students with an understanding of science and technology as aspects of culture, and an appreciation of the importance of thinking about science and technology from a cultural studies perspective. Individual chapters focus on topics including popular representations of science and scientists, the place of science and technology in everyday life, and the contests over amateur, fringe and pseudo-science. Each chapter includes case studies ranging from the MMR vaccine to UFOs, and from nuclear war to microwave ovens. For students in cultural studies, media studies, sociology and science and technology studies.

To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to explore what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain how we might begin to develop an "ecotechnology" that works with, not against, ecological systems. From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life. Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that "in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences." In Human-Built World, he offers the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values.

Science occupies an ambiguous space in contemporary society. Scientific research is championed in relation to tackling environmental issues and diseases such as cancer and dementia, and science has made important contributions to today’s knowledge economies and knowledge societies. And yet science is considered by many to be remote, and even dangerous. It seems that as we have more science, we have less understanding of what science actually is. The new edition of this popular text redresses this knowledge gap and provides a novel framework for making sense of science, particularly in relation to contemporary social issues such as climate change. Using real-world examples, Mark Erickson explores what science is and how it is carried out, what the relationship between science and society is, how science is represented in contemporary culture, and how scientific institutions are structured. Throughout, the book brings together sociology, science and technology studies, cultural studies and philosophy to provide a far-reaching understanding of science and technology in the twenty-first century. Fully updated and expanded in its second edition, Science, Culture and Society will continue to be key reading on courses across the social sciences and humanities that engage with science in its social and cultural context.

UNESCO pub. Monograph on the impact of science and technology on society and culture - presents a critical appraisal of the cultural significance of science and technology, notably with regard to ethics and aesthetics, and speculates on future prospects. List of participants. Conference held in Paris 1974 jul 9 to 14.

Education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is crucial for taking advantage of the prospects of new scientific discoveries initiating or promoting technological changes, and managing opportunities and risks associated with innovations. This book explores the emerging perspectives and methodologies of STEM education and its relationship to the cultural understanding of science and technology in an international context. The authors provide a unique perspective on the subject, presenting materials and experiences from non-European industrialized as well as industrializing countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Egypt, Brazil and the USA. The chapters offer a wide scope of interpretations and comparative reviews of STEM education by including narrative elements about cultural developments, considering the influence of culture and social perceptions on technological and social change, and applying innovative tools of qualitative social research. The book represents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary review of the current status and future challenges facing STEM education across the world, including issues such as globalization, interdependencies of norms and values, effects on equity and social justice as well as resilience. Overall the volume provides valuable insights for a broad and comprehensive international comparison of STEM philosophies, approaches and experiences.

Lifestyle media – books, magazines, websites, radio andtelevision shows that focus on topics such as cookery,gardening, travel and home improvement – have witnessed anexplosion in recent years. Ordinary Lifestyles explores how popular media texts bring ideasabout taste and fashion to consumers, helping audiences tofashion their lifestyles as well as defining what constitutes anappropriate lifestyle for particular social groups. Contemporaryexamples are used throughout, including Martha Stewart, HouseDoctor, What Not to Wear, You Are What You Eat, CountryLiving and brochures for gay and lesbian holiday promotions. The contributors show that watching make-over television orcooking from a celebrity chef’s book are significant culturalpractices, through which we work on our ideas about taste,status and identity. In opening up the complex processes whichshape our taste and forge individual and collective identities,lifestyle media demand our serious attention, as well as ourviewing, reading and listening pleasure. Ordinary Lifestyles is essential reading for students on mediaand cultural studies courses, and for anyone intrigued by theinfluence of the media on our day-to-day lives. Contributors: David Bell, Manchester Metropolitan University; Frances Bonner, University of Queensland, Australia; Steven Brown, Loughborough University; Fan Carter, Kingston University; Stephen Duncombe, Gallatin School of New York University, USA; David Dunn; Johannah Fahey, Monash University, Australia; Elizabeth Bullen, Deakin University, Australia; Jane Kenway, Monash University, Australia; Robert Fish, University of Exeter; Danielle Gallegos, Murdoch University, Australia; Mark Gibson; David B. Goldstein, University of Tulsa, USA; Ruth Holliday, University of Leeds; Joanne Hollows, Nottingham Trent University; Felicity Newman; Tim O’Sullivan, De Montfort University; Elspeth Probyn; Rachel Russell, University of Sydney, Australia; Lisa Taylor; Melissa Tyler; Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University.

Science and technology culture is now more than ever at the very heart of the social project, and all countries, to varying degrees, participate in it: raising scientific literacy, improving the image of the sciences, involving the public in debates and encouraging the young to pursue careers in the sciences. Thus, the very destiny of any society is now entwined with its ability to develop a genuine science and technology culture, accessible for participation not only to the few who, by virtue of their training or trade, work in the science and technology fields, but to all, thereby creating occasions for society to debate and to foster a positive dialogue about the directions of change and future choices. This book organized on the theme of ‘knowing, sharing, caring: new insights for a diverse world’, which was derived from the observation that globalization rests upon diversity—diversity of contexts, publics, research, strategies and new innovating practices—and aims to stimulate exchanges, discussions and debates, to initiate a reflection conducive to decentring and to be an opportunity for enrichment by providing the reader with means to achieve the potentialities of that diversity through a comparison of the visions that underpin the attitudes of social actors, the challenges they perceive and the potential solutions they consider. Thus, this book aims first and foremost to raise questions in such a manner that readers so stimulated will feel compelled to contribute and will do so. In this spirit, however significant, the results presented and shared are less important than the questions they seek to answer: How are we to rethink the diffusion, the propagation and the sharing of scientific thought and knowledge in an ever more complex and diverse world? What to know? What to share? How do we do it when science is broken down across the whole spectrum of the world’s diversity? The book is recommended for those who are interested in science communication and science cultures in the new media era, in contemporary social dynamics, and in the evolution of the role of the state and of institutions. It is also an excellent reference for researchers engaging in science communication, public understanding of science, cultural studies, science and technology museum, science–society relationship and other fields of humanities and social sciences.