Social Studies of Science最新文献_第2页

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

Beyond Balance: An Ethnography of Validity and Engagement in Citizen Science Practice. 超越平衡：公民科学实践中有效性与参与的民族志。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-10 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261465311

Eran N Schwarzfuchs

{"title":"Beyond Balance: An Ethnography of Validity and Engagement in Citizen Science Practice.","authors":"Eran N Schwarzfuchs","doi":"10.1177/03063127261465311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261465311","url":null,"abstract":"Citizen science (CS) is often characterized as involving inherent trade-offs between scientific validity and public engagement. While existing literature has documented these competing imperatives, less is known about the concrete organizational mechanisms that enable their coexistence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the Israel Center for Citizen Science (ICCS), this article examines how hybrid knowledge production is sustained not by resolving this tension, but by structuring it. ICCS functions as a unique scientific site where the primary 'instruments' are communities of human participants. Through analysis of validation processes (mechanical objectivity, standardized protocols) and engagement practices (role-switching, boundary work), I demonstrate that the validity-engagement tension acts as a mechanism rather than a hurdle. The analysis reveals a structure of 'fractal biopower'-nested power/knowledge relations where the division between subject and object repeats at every scale: Nature is subject to participants' observation, participants to institutional management, and institutions to scientific evaluation. This recursive structure allows contradictory logics to operate simultaneously, suggesting that contemporary science increasingly functions through the management, rather than the purification, of hybrid tensions.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261465311"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148702464","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

Toward Differentiated Biological Citizenship: Genetic Controversies and the Creation of Taiwan's Collective Informed Consent Law for Indigenous Peoples. 迈向分化的生物公民权：基因争议与台湾原住民集体知情同意法的建立。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-10 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261461569

Yu-Yueh Tsai

{"title":"Toward Differentiated Biological Citizenship: Genetic Controversies and the Creation of Taiwan's Collective Informed Consent Law for Indigenous Peoples.","authors":"Yu-Yueh Tsai","doi":"10.1177/03063127261461569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261461569","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 1990s, Taiwan has promoted genomics as part of its shift to a knowledge economy. However, controversies concerning Indigenous genetics and genomics extend into political, sociocultural, and historical dynamics. This has prompted a movement among Taiwan's Indigenous activists, culminating in legal reforms that made Taiwan the first country to enact legislation mandating collective informed consent for Indigenous peoples in 2016. This article proposes the concept of 'differentiated biological citizenship' to explain how Taiwan's Indigenous peoples have developed bioethics governance. First, the article analyzes the origin, dynamics, and main events of this controversy, arguing that it should be understood in the context of globalization and Taiwan's evolving identity politics. Second, the article traces how different actors (scientists, Indigenous elites, and government officials) negotiate a series of actionable strategies and develop collective informed consent based on the law. Finally, examining such issues as the relationship between trust and distrust and the power inequality between Indigenous and Han peoples, this article also investigates the difficulty in practicing collective consent as a governance model for Indigenous communities.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261461569"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148702599","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

Historicizing Problematization: The Coexistence of Agrifood Solutions to Malnutrition in the Philippines. 历史性问题化：菲律宾营养不良的农业食品解决方案的共存。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-01 Epub Date: 2025-11-03 DOI: 10.1177/03063127251368759

Shun-Nan Chiang

{"title":"Historicizing Problematization: The Coexistence of Agrifood Solutions to Malnutrition in the Philippines.","authors":"Shun-Nan Chiang","doi":"10.1177/03063127251368759","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127251368759","url":null,"abstract":"This study draws on Foucault's discussion on problematization and the perspective of multiplicity to examine five distinct agrifood solutions to malnutrition in the Philippines: rice biofortification, rice fortification, school gardening, brown rice consumption, and food supplementation. It highlights how these agrifood approaches have repeatedly re-emerged to address different formulations of the malnutrition problem across three historical periods. Furthermore, this research develops the concept of a 'problem-solution constellation' to illustrate how malnutrition and agrifood solutions form a pattern of juxtaposition in each historical period. By tracing problem-solution constellations across these three periods, the study also identifies certain agrifood solutions that did not emerge as viable in specific periods, which I term 'non-solutions'. Overall, this historical analysis of problem-solution constellations advances the theorization on problematization in Science and Technology Studies (STS) in two key ways. First, it demonstrates that solutions often coexist across multiple historical periods, underscoring the importance of foregrounding the interplay of solutions. Second, it suggests that STS researchers 'rescale' their analysis from a technology-centered approach to one that examines problem-solution constellations. This rescaling could provide valuable insight into how we approach global issues as grand challenges.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"619-644"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145440117","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

'Nano Scale [is] Magic Scale': On EPR, Unicorns, and Enchantment in Nanomedicine. “纳米尺度是魔法尺度”：论EPR、独角兽和纳米医学中的魔法。

IF 3.2 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-08-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-21 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261424493

Nicolas Rasmussen, Declan Kuch

引用次数: 0

The Changing Concept of Actionability in Precision Medicine. 精准医学中可操作性观念的变迁。

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-07-15 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261465391

Dominik Hofmann

引用次数: 0

Making Microplastics Matter: Classification, Politics and the Lives of Microplastics as Environmental Objects 制造微塑料：微塑料作为环境对象的分类、政治和生活

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-26 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261459465

Noah Münster, Ulrike Felt

{"title":"Making Microplastics Matter: Classification, Politics and the Lives of Microplastics as Environmental Objects","authors":"Noah Münster, Ulrike Felt","doi":"10.1177/03063127261459465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261459465","url":null,"abstract":"How do emerging environmental phenomena become actionable amid scientific uncertainty and public urgency? This article argues that to understand how microplastics become governable, we must study classification as a central site where matters of fact, concern, and care are composed. Drawing on comparative assemblage ethnography across scientific conferences, public debates, and European regulatory processes, we trace how microplastics are enacted as epistemic, public, and regulatory objects. In scientific practice, object-centered classifications aim at rendering heterogeneous particles measurable and comparable. In public arenas, labeling condenses plurality into a recognizable and affectively charged issue. In regulatory contexts, source-centered and legally operational categories reorganize the phenomenon into governable segments. These are not translations of a stable object—microplastics—but distinct enactments shaped by different evidentiary standards and institutional constraints. The case shows that classification under conditions of ontological instability does not necessarily lead to closure but enables coordination. We show how governance materializes through classificatory infrastructures that stabilize relations between fact, concern, and care without resolving epistemic indeterminacy. Classification is a political technology through which environmental objects are rendered actionable in the absence of settled knowledge.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148321792","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

Reframing Trust in Citizen Science: Comparative Insights From Two German Initiatives. 重塑公民科学中的信任：来自两个德国倡议的比较见解。

IF 3 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-22 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261461548

Jakob Meyer,Konstantin S Kiprijanov,Silke Voigt-Heucke,Susanne Hecker

{"title":"Reframing Trust in Citizen Science: Comparative Insights From Two German Initiatives.","authors":"Jakob Meyer,Konstantin S Kiprijanov,Silke Voigt-Heucke,Susanne Hecker","doi":"10.1177/03063127261461548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261461548","url":null,"abstract":"Citizen science (CS) is met with a range of expectations regarding trust-building that originate in policy frameworks and academic studies. These tend to understand trust as an outcome of participatory research. Adopting a different approach, our praxeological study examines trust as a context-dependent mechanism. Drawing on qualitative interviews, surveys, and document analysis, we analyze the experiences of project leads and volunteers in two contrasting German CS initiatives. Our comparative case analysis reveals that trust should be understood not as a desirable outcome, but as demands arising from collaboration objectives and contextual factors, and as practices that entail specific commitments from the actors involved. The contrast between standardized data collection in natural science and interpretative methods in health and educational research shows how methodological frameworks generate distinct trust demands. Examining research settings through the lens of trust while considering resource and power constraints exposes tensions between objectives for inclusion, knowledge production, and knowledge transfer. Moreover, interpersonal trust is built partly through critique of conventional research practices, challenging whether generalized trust in CS or in science constitutes an appropriate analytical frame for these situated practices.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":"30 1","pages":"3063127261461548"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148298945","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

The Nine Lives of Trap-Neuter-Return in the Canary Islands. 加那利群岛的九种生活。

IF 2.7 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-10 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261449128

Ferran Pons-Raga, Pablo Alonso González

{"title":"The Nine Lives of Trap-Neuter-Return in the Canary Islands.","authors":"Ferran Pons-Raga, Pablo Alonso González","doi":"10.1177/03063127261449128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127261449128","url":null,"abstract":"Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) is widely promoted as a humane technique for managing free-roaming cats. Yet its legitimacy remains fiercely disputed. Drawing on four months of participant observation and two years of follow-up fieldwork in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), this article re-situates TNR as an assemblage whose coherence is always provisional. We use Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to trace the translations that align heterogeneous actors, while foregrounding the relational, ethical, and affective dimensions of human-cat interactions that sustain (or undo) that alignment. Empirically, we examine how legal statutes, technical guidelines, traps, smartphone chats, ear-tipping, municipal ordinances, veterinary scalpels, feeding routines, and cats themselves operate as co-constitutive actors. Spain's 2023 Animal Welfare Law tried to fix TNR as national policy, but in Tenerife's biodiversity hotspot the statute collides with invasion biology data and local politics. Five sites reveal Callon's translation in action: legal paperwork, licensing cards that recast feeders as 'colony managers', chat-based surgery logistics, the operating room where policy meets flesh, and a fishing village stalled by a trap-savvy queen. Rather than assessing TNR's effectiveness in reducing cat populations, we highlight its emerging networks of heterogeneous more-than-human actors and the everyday, situated labor required to hold it together. In doing so, the article shifts STS debates toward the everyday practices that enact and maintain assemblages.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"3063127261449128"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148213229","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

Re-Formalizing owl:sameas: Iterating Meaning-Making in a Computer Ontology Language. 重新形式化owl：同：计算机本体语言中的迭代意义生成。

IF 2.7 2区社会学

Social Studies of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-21 DOI: 10.1177/03063127261424496

Lindsay Poirier

{"title":"Re-Formalizing owl:sameas: Iterating Meaning-Making in a Computer Ontology Language.","authors":"Lindsay Poirier","doi":"10.1177/03063127261424496","DOIUrl":"10.1177/03063127261424496","url":null,"abstract":"Computer ontology languages aggregate a number of properties that can be used to model knowledge for machine consumption. These languages are increasingly playing a role in gatekeeping the conveyance and dissemination of knowledge. This article presents a cultural analysis of owl:sameas-a property in a computer ontology language that seeks to formalize representations of identity and sameness in online databases. In this article, I examine the 're-formalizing practices' of the community of practitioners that revisited the specifications for owl:sameas after the standard was widely put to use in not so standard ways. Re-formalizing practices refer to the social activities that designers engage as they confront the contingency and mutability of formal representations. I argue that designers engaging re-formalizing practices can at times buckle down on the stability of certain logical properties even while appearing to make knowledge modeling more fluid; at other times, re-formalizing practices can invite more freeplay in a modeling practice, decentering the authors of ontology languages as central to meaning-making. This work furthers understanding of, not only how ontology languages delimit representational affordances, but also how social understandings of the meaning and appropriate use of their properties are enacted and iterate over time.","PeriodicalId":51152,"journal":{"name":"Social Studies of Science","volume":" ","pages":"353-377"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147493970","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