Social Studies of Science最新文献

The Nonhuman Unchained. 被释放的非人类。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-10-30 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261496296

Emma Dahlin, Steve Woolgar

引用次数: 0

Scientific Remix: Epistemic Idioms and the Spread of Data Science. 科学的混合：认知的习惯用法和数据科学的传播。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-10-20 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261489301

Anissa Tanweer

{"title":"Scientific Remix: Epistemic Idioms and the Spread of Data Science.","authors":"Anissa Tanweer","doi":"10.1177/03063127261489301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261489301","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship on science has long contained a tension between accounts emphasizing convergent forces and those highlighting divergent practices. This article addresses that tension through an ethnographic study of data science. It advances the concept of epistemic idiom-a recognizable and portable pattern of practices that evolve alongside knowledge-making tools, analogous to musical idioms arising from the interaction of material affordances and learned techniques. Through analysis of a project attempting to sequence chromosomal centromeres, I show participants enacting the nomad idiom of data science: a data-led approach involving tools for iteration and exploration, cross-disciplinary borrowing, bricolage construction of bespoke assemblages, and the motivation to scale. Though the project failed to sequence centromeres, it generated unexpected discoveries, challenged established theories, and yielded lasting changes to scientific practice. The case reveals how epistemic trends can spread without being totalizing-the nomad idiom enabled both convergence (shared technical toolkit) and divergence (local adaptations, surprise outcomes) simultaneously. The epistemic idiom concept complements existing STS frameworks by explaining how practices can migrate across epistemic communities, while those communities retain distinct cultures. It speaks to concerns over computational universalism and epistemic monocultures, demonstrating that alternatives exist-ways for scientific trends to be borrowed rather than imposed, becoming remixes instead of replacements.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261489301"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149228885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Big AI-Based Mathematics and the Redistribution of Epistemic Labor. 大人工智能数学与认知劳动的再分配。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-10-07 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261482050

Michael Friedman, Kati Kish Bar-On

{"title":"Big AI-Based Mathematics and the Redistribution of Epistemic Labor.","authors":"Michael Friedman, Kati Kish Bar-On","doi":"10.1177/03063127261482050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261482050","url":null,"abstract":"The use of AI-based technologies is reshaping mathematics in ways that extend but also strain the classic Big Science analogy. As in Big Science, the new AI-based mathematical work relies on concentrated computation, specialized and hierarchical teams, sociopolitical justification, and large-scale collaboration. But AI also changes how epistemic labor is distributed and attributed: Systems now generate constructions, explore proof spaces, and formalize arguments, prompting mathematicians to renegotiate how credit, authority, and accountability are assigned across hybrid human-machine assemblages. This reconfiguration redistributes epistemic authority toward corporate labs and elite hubs that control models, data, compute, and narrative, thereby gating which problems appear tractable and legitimate. Analyzing four dimensions (resource concentration, division of labor, political embedding, and collaboration), and examining recent cases, we argue that AI-based mathematics constitutes a novel sociotechnical regime we call 'Big AI Mathematics', in which truth claims are increasingly mediated by opaque pipelines and institutional power, making the future of mathematical knowledge as much a governance problem as an epistemic one.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261482050"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149129204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Money-Work: Science Funding as Relational Socioeconomics. 金钱-工作：作为关系社会经济学的科学资助。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-10-01 Epub Date: 2026-05-25 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261442991

Janet Vertesi, David Reinecke

{"title":"Money-Work: Science Funding as Relational Socioeconomics.","authors":"Janet Vertesi, David Reinecke","doi":"10.1177/03063127261442991","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127261442991","url":null,"abstract":"Accounts of scientific work at the lab bench largely overlook or sideline the considerable time and effort that scientists devote to the acquisition, management, and dispersal of funding. While multiple studies explore the subject of scientific funding from the political economic, historical, and comparative policy perspectives, we develop an approach premised upon relational socioeconomics and grounded in ethnographic study at the bench. We focus our attention upon what we call 'money-work'-scientists' everyday practical work, action, and interaction about funding. To illuminate how scientists regularly engage in mundane activity that is simultaneously scientific and economic we apply Zelizerian concepts of earmarking, making good matches, and the development of valuation criteria. Our framework for contemporary laboratory ethnography investigates a political economy of science funding in which science and money do not occupy 'separate spheres' or 'hostile worlds', but rather lead intimately connected lives. Given the current crisis in science funding, such a perspective on relational work, currency fluctuation, and valuation in exchange is essential for the next generation of science studies scholarship.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"676-703"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148018782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Feeling the Field: Disconcertment, Epistemic Adhesion and Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities. 感受领域：困惑，认知粘附和深刻的智力和多重残疾。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-09-26 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261487387

Allan Lidström

{"title":"Feeling the Field: Disconcertment, Epistemic Adhesion and Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities.","authors":"Allan Lidström","doi":"10.1177/03063127261487387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261487387","url":null,"abstract":"This paper draws on two affectively charged fieldwork encounters in a Swedish daily activity centre for persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) to explore how affect intervenes in fieldwork and reconfigures what becomes knowable. Situated within Science and Technology Studies (STS), the analysis reflects on how moments of discomfort, intimacy, and apprehension unsettle a research orientation initially shaped by material semiotics, prompting renewed attention to questions of complicity and the epistemic terms of practice-oriented analysis. Rather than treating affect as noise or private response, it is approached as a register through which broader histories of segregation and exclusion become palpable in the encounter. Tracing how affect shapes what is registered as relevant or knowable, the paper develops epistemic adhesion as a conceptual companion to disconcertment-understood here as moments of felt epistemic disruption-to name the ease or alignment through which dominant orientations are affirmed rather than troubled. In attending to how disability is rendered affectively and epistemically available, the analysis offers a situated reflection on the stakes of knowing-and not knowing-with PIMD.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261487387"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149065690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Assembling Topic Models: Material Political Economy and the Genealogy of an Algorithm 集合主题模型：物质政治经济学和算法的谱系

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-09-09 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261469570

Bolun Zhang

{"title":"Assembling Topic Models: Material Political Economy and the Genealogy of an Algorithm","authors":"Bolun Zhang","doi":"10.1177/03063127261469570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261469570","url":null,"abstract":"Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies—ranging from topic models to today’s large language models like GPT—have rapidly entered the social sciences, reshaping methodological practice. Yet researchers often overlook the stark political-economic contrasts between academia and the AI research-industry symbiosis. Identical algorithms, once embedded in different institutional settings, acquire different meanings and standards of evaluation. This paper shows the divergence by examining topic modeling, a classical NLP technique in computational social science. Social scientists grapple with the instability of applying topic models to the same corpus, whereas in the AI industry such variability matters little, given different evaluative priorities. Through a comparative analysis of topic modeling’s trajectory across AI and social science, I show how organizational contexts and goals shape the development of the same algorithms, and why framing instability as a purely technical issue is problematic in the social sciences. The findings reveal that algorithms are not simply technical tools but products of material political-economic regimes. Recognizing this, I argue that STS scholars have a vital role to play in computational social science: not only by critically examining and developing methods, but also by interrogating the material-political-economic regimes in which algorithms are enacted, and by working toward more just alternatives.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148909128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Imaginaries of Writing and Pain: The Backstage of a Ghostwritten Paper. 写作与痛苦的想象：一篇代写论文的后台。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-09-07 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261474457

Maud Bernisson, Willem Halffman

{"title":"Imaginaries of Writing and Pain: The Backstage of a Ghostwritten Paper.","authors":"Maud Bernisson, Willem Halffman","doi":"10.1177/03063127261474457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261474457","url":null,"abstract":"Ghostwritten medical papers are a cornerstone of pharmaceutical marketing. We trace how one manuscript written under the instructions and supervision of opioid producer Mallinckrodt was produced and eventually published in a medical journal to present a marketing message. We systematically analyse an archive of internal communications made public after litigation through the lens of Ricœur's work on imaginaries. Along his first analytic axis, we show how the ghostwriting process shapes and reshapes identities, ascribing agency and portraying social order. Along the second, legitimacy was constructed by the expert voice of a peer-reviewed article 'authored' by researchers, but written by backstage medical writers. Third, the result was a twisted phantasmagory of both academic writing and pain management. Professional medical writers generated an imaginary of pain management to expand the prescription of opioids by redefining pain categories and reassigning agency and responsibility of actors in pain treatment. Meanwhile, backstage writers also reproduced an imaginary of scientific writing, with efficient writing as an editorial service that misrepresents authorial contribution and responsibility. We suggest that Ricœur's analytic scheme could also be used to disentangle technoscientific imaginaries in other settings.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261474457"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148907964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

From Clues to Algorithms in Clinical Reasoning 从线索到临床推理算法

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-18 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261467733

David Armstrong

引用次数: 0

Symbolic Capital or Social Glue? Recognition in Collaborative High-Energy Physics Research. 象征资本还是社会粘合剂？协同高能物理研究中的认识。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-18 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261474439

Helene Sorgner

{"title":"Symbolic Capital or Social Glue? Recognition in Collaborative High-Energy Physics Research.","authors":"Helene Sorgner","doi":"10.1177/03063127261474439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261474439","url":null,"abstract":"A trend towards more and larger research collaborations in the sciences raises questions about how individual scientists who work primarily in collaborations receive recognition. Experimental high-energy physics is known for exceptionally large research collaborations, with publications featuring thousands of authors in alphabetical order. Consequently, the question of how individual scientists receive recognition has been explicitly discussed in this discipline. In this article, I describe discussions and efforts to improve the recognition of individual researchers in the ATLAS collaboration at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), based on an analysis of documents and interviews with collaboration members of all career stages. I analyze these accounts by introducing a conceptual framework distinguishing between elementary and institutionalized recognition, and recognition as appreciation and admiration, respectively. I show that articulations of recognition are mobilized by the collaboration to reproduce the experiment and the community. Drawing on these observations, I argue for a broader concept of recognition in the social studies of science. Beyond the notion of recognition as symbolic capital for individuals, we should also consider the reproductive and stabilizing capacity of recognition for scientific communities. I also show how receiving community-oriented appreciation creates a dilemma for early-career researchers who desire admiration to compete in academic labor markets. The need to value a broader range of contributions in collaborative research therefore requires structural changes in academic career systems.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261474439"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148801212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Chemical Governmentality: Manufacturing Politics in Oil Refineries 化学治理：炼油厂的制造政治

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-14 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261474843

Sarandha Jain

{"title":"Chemical Governmentality: Manufacturing Politics in Oil Refineries","authors":"Sarandha Jain","doi":"10.1177/03063127261474843","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261474843","url":null,"abstract":"Petroleum products silently govern human relations not only through ideology or policy but through their chemical composition and material form. What is the technical-chemical work that translates geological formations of oil into sociopolitical formations of human relations? How is governmentality encoded into petroleum products during their manufacturing? This article develops the concept of chemical governmentality to analyze how engineering processes in oil refineries govern sociopolitical life. Drawing on ethnographic research in Indian refineries and households, I examine how fuels such as kerosene, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), or Piped Natural Gas (PNG) are chemically and infrastructurally configured to produce distinct forms of domesticity, sociality, and state-citizen relations. Refining processes, product specifications, and testing protocols embed political logics into petroleum products, disciplining consumers through material means. Chemicals cohabit human worlds not just through toxicity, but also through governmentality. My analysis foregrounds chemical engineering as an arena where material machinations participate in the production of everyday government.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0