Syllabus
Lessons‘ topics:
1. Introduction: pre-modern forms of knowledge and modern science
2. The origin of scientific disciplines
3. Intellectuals and the intellectual field (Pierre Bourdieu)
4. Professions and professionalization
5. Bureaucracy and the process of bureaucratization
6. Ideologies and the critique of ideology
7. Science and power, science and the state (Michel Foucault)
8. Critique of technical knowledge (Bruno Latour, Ullrich Beck)
9. Social constructionism and the critique of scientific knowledge
10. Feminist and post-colonial analyses of science
11. Knowledge-based society and its inner contradictions
12. Conclusion: the evolution of science and historical sociology Course materials Course readings, slide decks used for each class, and webcasts summarizing select classes can be downloaded from Moodle (https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=7681). Recommended further readings: Beck, Ulrich, Risk Society: Towards a New Moderity, transl. Mark Ritter, London: Sage
1992. Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1979. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, transl. Alan Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Penguin
1991. Freeden, Michael, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press
2003. Hacking, Ian, The Social Construction of What? Harvard: Harvard University Press
2000. Harding, Sandra (ed.), The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Durham: Duke University Press
2011. Illich, Ivan, Deschooling Society, New York: Harper & Row
1971. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
1970. Latour, Bruno, Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press
1987. Sismondo, Sergio, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, 2nd ed., Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell
2010. Yearley, Steven, Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social Study of Science, London: Sage
2005. And the readings required for lessons.
Annotation
The course introduces students to how historical sociology is analyzing modern science. Upon completing this course, the students will be informed about the basic historical transformations that science and scientific knowledge have undergone in modern society and will be able to identify and grasp the main analytical methods applied in social studies of science.
The first part of the course focuses on key structural presuppositions of modern science: scientific disciplines, intellectual market, professions and bureaucracy as ways of organizing knowledge, and political ideologies. Second part focuses on the main methods used in analysis and critique of scientific knowledge: the approach of Michel Foucault, sociology of science, social constructionism, post-colonial and feminist studies of science.
The course concludes by a discussion of contemporary society as a “knowledge-based society”.