bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bilateral Summit Diplomacy in Western European and Transatlantic Relations, 1956–63
Authors: Giauque Jeffrey G.
Published: February 2009

This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of summit diplomacy in both theory and practice. The focus is bilateral summitry among the Western allies during the Cold War, but the theoretical arguments are applicable to other regions, time periods and contexts. After weighing the theoretical arguments on personal diplomacy by heads of government and state, the article analyses a series of case studies drawn from the late 1950s and early 1960s. These include meetings of British, French, West German, and US leaders and the article draws on archival research in all four countries. The meetings considered include both successful instances of personal diplomacy, such as the 1956 encounter between Konrad Adenauer of West Germany and Guy Mollet of France which led to the creation of the European Common Market, and failed summits, such as those between Charles de Gaulle of France and Harold Macmillan of Britain in 1962 on the subject of Britain’s entry into the European Community.
Fluid Identities in Central European Borderlands
Authors: Thaler Peter
Published: February 2009

This article examines transitional identities in pre-1945 Central European borderlands on both an individual and a collective level. These territories traditionally contained a zone of ethnic contact and passage. Numerous nerve lines linked different cultural groups, and ethnicity often became a matter of personal choice. The renewed strength of ethnicity and nationalism in Eastern Europe during the late twentieth century has rekindled interpretations that focus on the persistence and resiliency of these social sentiments. By drawing attention to malleability and fluidity, the examination of transitional populations balances this view.
Polish Military Plans for the Defeat of Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939–41
Authors: Prazmowska Anita
Published: February 2009

After the defeat of Poland in September 1939 the Polish leaders were determined to fight the two enemies. A government-in-exile was formed in Paris with the aim of creating military units that would fight with Poland’s allies and establish Poland’s right to have a say in matters relating to the war and post-war decisions. General Sikorski’s position as Prime Minister of the government-in-exile, though supported by the French, was never secure and he and his policies were subject to constant criticism. Two dilemmas preoccupied the Polish leadership. The first focused on the trustworthiness of France and Britain to defend Polish interests.The second concerned the Polish units. Were they to be used to liberate Poland or to build up a debt of gratitude? Germany’s attack on France cut short these debates and effectively reduced the Polish government’s political choices to that of dependence on Churchill’s decisions.
The Ethics of Biobusiness, Technology, and Genetic Engineering
Authors: Koehn Daryl
Published: February 2009

When we think of ethics in medicine or business, we typically focus on whether the dignity and autonomy of patients and stakeholders are being respected. Ethicists have devoted a great deal of energy to showing how particular practices either foster or damage healthy personal relations. It is my contention that these analyses, while sometimes insightful, do not grapple with the key question: What does it mean to act in an increasingly technological age? Is it legitimate simply to apply some set of standard ethical categories to evaluate good and bad practices in medicine or business? This article argues that this type of applied ethics completely misses the larger ethical issues arising from the fact that our practices, including medicine, have become thoroughly technological in character. Technology by its very nature transforms our practices and our selves. What is more, it alters us in such a way that we simultaneously lose our capacity to judge the meaning and consequences of this transformation.
Visual Morality and Tradition: Society’s New Norms
Authors: Stivers Richard
Published: February 2009

Modern morality is fundamentally a visual morality. Moral paradigms are embedded in the visual images of the mass media, which have supplanted language as the primary context for moral knowledge. A technological civilization is ultimately one whose only value is that of power. The visual images of the mass media are the “language” of technology; as such, they are about what is (material reality) and what is possible (always a technological possibility). The tension today between what is and what ought to be has been replaced by that between what is and what is possible.
A Vision of Industrial Ecology: State-of-the-Art Practices for a Circular and Service-Based Economy
Authors: Nakajima Nina
Published: February 2009

This article provides a comprehensive synthesis of state-of-the-art approaches used by industry to improve human, social, and environmental sustainability. Currently available methods such as product stewardship, industrial eco-park design, industrial ecology, Design for Environment (DfE), and others areexplained and their contribution summarized. Particular attention is paid to practices that make the material flows of a society more circular, as in natural ecosystems, and to the idea of companies selling services rather than products. It is concluded that the widespread implementation of these frontier practices are a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving human, social, and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, the methods synthesized in this paper reveal a largely untapped potential for improving industrial practices.
Reflections on Technological Literacy
Authors: Bugliarello George
Published: February 2009

Technological literacy means far more than just the ability to use computers and other machines. It implies an understanding of the factors involved in the creation and development of technologies and of the impacts of technology on society, on individuals, and on the environment. Ignorance of any of these facets can have serious consequences in a future in which technology will play an ever more determinant role. Unfortunately, the importance as well as the intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of technological literacy have not yet been perceived by the educational system and used to enrich the content of school curricula and of traditional liberal arts college curricula. The diffusion of technological literacy is an urgent priority in helping shape our culture, in providing a sense of optimism about our future, and in enabling us to avoid the disasters that the neglect of technology has wreaked historically on other societies.
Science, Technology, and Society: Policy Implications
Authors: Kumar David D. , Altschuld James W.
Published: February 2009

A reanalysis of selected national and state-level STS implementation data is reported in this article. The results indicate that teacher education, suitable curriculum materials, and insufficient class time are major issues affecting STS implementation in the United States. Only three states have addressed 50% or more of the STS implementation criteria in their science curriculum frameworks as recommended by the National Science Education Standards. A closer look at one state (Florida) revealed that approximately half of the school districts had STS in science, nearly a third had it in social studies, and the majority of STS instruction occurred at the middle and secondary levels. Additionally, STS is often taught via environmental concerns, and as such, it may be skewed toward activist positions rather than analyzing all (positive and we negative) aspects of the impact of science and technology on society. Using the data as a base, implications are drawn for teacher education, the development of materials, and general policy concerns regarding STS.
The Car and the City
Authors: Purcell David
Published: February 2009

Transportation systems that rely predominantly on privately owned automobiles are clearly unsustainable, yet the number of such vehicles continues to grow every year. This article explores the causes of this anomaly. The ineffectiveness of “end-of-pipe” solutions to automobile dominance is demonstrated, and more effective strategies are explored. A computer simulation of highway traffic clarifies the fragility of traffic management systems and the inevitability of traffic congestion.
Energy, Environmental Performance, and the Built Environment
Authors: Abush Joshua
Published: February 2009

Efforts to attain sustainability vis-à-vis the built environment are hindered because they are often focused away from the real roots of the various problems. This article analyzes the usefulness of embodied energy as an indicator of environmental performance and suggests that it may not be as useful as its proponents make it out to be. Other indicators and levels of analysis are suggested as being more accurate.
The Ups and Downs of Peer Review: Making Funding Choices for Science
Authors: Foltz Franz A.
Published: February 2009

Although peer review provides the primary mechamism for allocating research funds, very few people have undertaken any serious study of the issue. Most of the literature surrounding peer review comes from individuals who have experienced specific problems with the system. The one detail that does stand out is that though policy makers and researchers seem to view peer review as a specific process, no single form exists. In fact, almost agency and foundation has its own unique process. This presentation will explore the concept of peer review and highlight its strengths and weaknesses.
Fisheries, Wildlife, and Philosophy of Science: An Exercise in Definition
Authors: Cohen Benjamin R.
Published: February 2009

The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences (FWS) graduate program at Virginia Tech held a student-led, discussion-based, 9-week seminar in the philosophy of science during the fall 1999 semester. This seminar presented the sociologist of science with the opportunity to investigate questions such as, How does a contemporary scientific discipline use the philosophy of science? What do scientists hope to gain from an understanding of demarcation issues? And how do they perceive themselves as a science? Issues of demarcation between science and pseudo-science are prevalent in FWS. The role of public funding is at the forefront of the department’s concerns, as governmental agencies are responsible, to a dominant degree, for funding research that the public assumes will benefit them. Thus, the concerns of the department are of utility, or the perception thereof. An investigation of the sort proposed here is practical yet restrictive. The topics are preselected and noncomprehensive because the seminar organizers in FWS chose select readings pertinent to their discipline. Discussions revolved around such topics as the definition of science, methodology, credibility, specialization within FWS, the value (or lack thereof) of theory in FWS, the manager-scientist distinction, and the use of models. The intent of this article is to provide a brief ethnographic view of the seminar. It will review some of the seminar topics and relate them to the broader issue of scientific self-definition and the concept of science as a social mechanism. It is not an evaluative article about FWS but a descriptive article about how a scientific discipline regards itself.
Teaching STS via Internet: A Reflective Evaluation and Policy Implications
Authors: Kumar David Devraj
Published: February 2009

A reflective evaluation and policy implications of teaching an STS course via the Internet are presented. The course explored the science, technology, and society interactions from personal, social, cultural, historical, political, and value perspectives. The World Wide Web was used to present lecture materials and related STS links. Most of the class discussions took place via an e-mail chat room. The chat room discourses were found insufficient to meaningfully discuss and debate in-depth STS issues. Follow-up telephone conferences were often needed. The interdisciplinary nature of STS, complexity of STS interactions, and dynamics of STS issues require more involved dialogue, analysis, and problem solving than typical online correspondence can provide requiring immersive-level technology applications. More research and development efforts and supportive policies are needed to make the delivery of interdisciplinary courses via distance learning a success.
Consumer Expectations Regarding Emerging Technologies
Authors: Gleason John M. , Ault James T.
Published: February 2009

This article reports the results of marketing research that was undertaken as part of an information technology prototype development project. The project was devoted to the creation of a multimedia-based prototype system to provide timely and accurate information from government geographic information databases to government decision makers and the general public in an easy-to-use interactive visual format. The general public (i.e., private citizens, schools, and businesses—society in general) had to be able to access the product via broadband-to-the-home (-business/-school) technology. Because of significant time and budget constraints, a satisficing approach to the marketing research was adopted. This approach led to the definition of several social categories of the general public whose opinions were thought to be critical to the commercial development of the prototype: (a) elementary and secondary education leaders (both technophiles and technophobes), (b) adults with a record as early adopters of information technologies, (c) adults with no previous interest in (or limited experience with) information technologies, and (d) high school students. Six focus groups were defined based on these social categories. The results of the marketing research devoted to information needs of the focus group participants are reported, and implications related to their expectations regarding emerging technologies are discussed. The research suggests that expectations in the portion of the market on which the success of the technologies depend are often inconsistent with the types of technologies that are being developed for that market.
Universities in the Information Age: Changing Work, Organization, and Values in Academic Science and Engineering
Authors: Croissant Jennifer L. , Rhoades Gary , Slaughter Sheila
Published: February 2009

This article discusses a new program for collaborative study of information technology, commercialization intellectual property and transformations of education research practives in universities. Three themes define the program. First, the authors investigate the ways that information technologies shape content, organization, and delivery of faculty work. Second, they examine the interplay of issues of intellectually property, technology, commercialization, and academic research. Third, ethical issues information raise and the values they embody are explored. The research and training undertaken brings together problems usually treated by sepatate disciplines and focuses on technologies used by researchers and advanced students in various disciplines who shape and even create communications technologies. The intent is to explore these questions through research and teaching and in the process develop a new generation of scholars who are cognizant of changing patterns in the social relations of science and technology.
Intelligent Island Discourse: Singapore’s Discursive Negotiation With Technology
Authors: Lim Alwyn
Published: February 2009

The small nation-state of Singapore has increasingly been referred to in the popular media as the Intelligent Island of the future. With significant state investment in the promotion and dissemination of information-communications technology and attendant social ramifications, this has become an area that can no longer be ignored or taken for granted. This article intends to map the conditions of possibility on which Singapore can be conceived of as an Intelligent Island, in situating the role of information technology and Intelligent Island discourse within the discourses of postcoloniality, technocapitalism, late modernity, and globalization. In particular, this article attempts to show how, in Intelligent Island discourse, the processes of the construction of a Singaporean nation are intricately linked to the shift in political discourse from mobilizing a rhetoric of crisis to one of utopianism.
Permanent Tenure and Academic Freedom in Engineering
Authors: Varma Roli
Published: February 2009

The tenure system exists in most public and private universities and 4-year public colleges in the United States. The American Association of University Professors has argued that tenure provides the most reliable means of assuring academic freedom, faculty quality, and educational excellence. However, budgetary constraints and the end of mandatory retirement in the ’90s have resulted in questioning the merits of the tenure system. It is argued that tenure entrenches a lazy professoriate, encourages the creation of temporary faculty positions, and supports research over teaching. This article examines the tenure system as practiced in engineering institutions in the United States because engineering faculty serve as an interesting case study of 21st-century technology and 19th-century values. It illuminates issues underlying the tenure system beyond the traditional justification of academic freedom.
Science and Technology for Individuals, Societies, and the Environment and Satellite Technologies: Advanced High Resolution Picture Transmission Applications for the Science Classrooms
Authors: Park Do-Yong , Busch Richard M.
Published: February 2009

This article introduces a satellite technology, High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT), for a science activity. HRPT is a digital data stream transmitted from environmental satellites. The HRPT imagery is capable of providing real-time studies of regional geology, glacial processes, atmospheric processes, ocean circulation, coastal processes, hydrology, and so on. Obtaining and manipulating HRPT data creates a variety of exciting experiences in science classrooms. A Science and Technology for Individuals, Societies, and the Environment (STISE) teaching model was developed to use satellite technologies for science activities. STISE is a conceptual model for addressing key cognitive and affective parameters when designing science lessons. STISE is designed to encourage students to understand science and technology from their levels of cognition, then relate their understanding to the environment, levels of societies, and their lives. Relationships among science, technology, and society become both obvious and interesting to students as they process and interpret the HRPT imagery.
The Polder Model in Dutch Economic and Environmental Planning
Authors: Schreuder Yda
Published: February 2009

In an attempt to solve some serious economic and environmental problems, the Netherlands has embarked on an unique experiment over the past few decades. Based on a tradition of cooperation, consensus building, and democratic self-rule, the Dutch have revitalized a corporatist approach to economic and environmental planning. They refer to the polder model to describe the particular characteristics of this approach. Although the polder model is rooted in the past (i.e., the Golden Age of the 17th-century Dutch Republic), its more recent application in planning efforts finds its start with the Wassenaar Accord in economic planning in 1982. A similar approach was used in environmental planning with the introduction of the first National Environmental Policy Plan in 1989. The key feature of the environmental plan is a covenant between business and government. In this article, the author compares the application of the polder model in both areas and concludes that there are serious challenges ahead for its survival. The article attempts to assess whether the model would work in the United States and why the approach used by the Dutch is the favored approach of Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman.
Science, Technology, and Public Policy in Africa: A Framework for Action
Authors: Wakhungu Judi Wangalwa
Published: February 2009

Underdevelopment in Africa continues to be one of the most perplexing issues of this century. Conventional development policies have failed throughout the continent, and lack of scientific and technological capabilities is considered among the primary causes of the prevailing crisis. Attempts to address underdevelopment have been conducted in terms of what is scientifically and technically feasible in industrialized countries instead of what is socioeconomically and culturally desirable in Africa. Undue reliance on foreign scientific and technological expertise hinders local innovation and creativity, which are crucial to self-sustained development. Redefinition of science and technology policies is urgently needed. Africa should not circumvent the use of science and technology in the quest for development, but it is crucial that African policy makers determine in whose interests science and technology will be developed.
Transdisciplinarity: The New Challenge for Biomedical Research
Authors: Flinterman J. Francisca , Teclemariam-Mesbah Rebecca , Broerse Jacqueline E. W. , Bunders Joske F. G.
Published: February 2009

During the past decade, patient participation became an important issue in the medical field, and patient participation in biomedical research processes is increasingly called for. One of the arguments for this refers to the specific kind of knowledge, called experiential knowledge, patients could contribute. Until now, participation of patients in biomedical research has been rare, and integration of patients’ experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge—in the few cases it takes place—occurs implicitly and on an ad hoc basis. This is illustrated by describing and analyzing the activities of the German patient group on retinitis pigmentosa. The authors argue that to be able to optimize the use of experiential knowledge of patients in biomedical research, a systematic approach is required. Transdisciplinary research provides such an approach, systematically, explicitly, and deliberately integrating knowledge from different scientific and nonscientific sources. In this article, the concept of transdisciplinarity is elaborated upon. The authors propose a possible procedure, identify necessary conditions and skills, and evaluate the feasibility of its implementation and institutionalization. Finally, the authors introduce a recent research project to further investigate and implement transdisciplinary research in the biomedical field.
Ethical Issues in the Global Economy
Authors: Gilleo Margaret P.
Published: February 2009

With the increasing focus on globalization of the economy, ethical issues are often submerged by the goal of increasing profitability. This article explores the implications of globalization and its effects on both the Earth’s poor and the Earth itself. It illustrates how poverty goes hand in hand with environmental degradation. The economic and moral impacts of international financial and regulatory organizations are analyzed and discussed. The article demonstrates how the economically marginalized suffer not only from the obvious lack of food, clothing, and shelter but also from polluted air, an unpotable water supply, and macro issues such as global warming. It concludes with the recommendation of looking to the economy of the Beatitudes of the New Testament for solutions.
On the Historical Relationship Between the Sciences and the Humanities: A Look at Popular Debates That Have Exemplified Cross-Disciplinary Tension
Authors: Cohen Benjamin R.
Published: February 2009

This article discusses popular and academic debates that turned on the merit of either science or the humanities. The author uses four cases to provide this history: the Huxley-Arnold debate of the 1880s, the science education reformation (and neglect-of-science) debates in Britain in the 1920s, the two-culture debate of the 1960s, and the science wars of recent years. Each of those debates (on one side, at least) sought to establish the supremacy of science for society’s welfare, and the first three (on both sides) necessarily excised interdisciplinary approaches from their proposed solutions. More recently, the science wars have drawn comparison to the two-culture debate, even though this recent skirmish cannot be distinguished from a concern over the effects of interdisciplinary scholarship. The purpose of this article is to trace the relationship of the debates and comment on their role for the future of STS.
The Use of Self-Directed Learning to Promote Active Citizenship in STS Classes
Authors: Pearce Joshua M.
Published: February 2009

The purpose of this article is to outline the viability of a student-directed assignment within collegiate-level STS curricula for the improvement of the utilization of scientific knowledge and technology in society. The assignment, christened the Do Something! assignment, is a novel teaching tool that utilizes students’ individual interests to encourage in-depth learning across disciplines and capitalizes on their personal skills and talents to solve real-world problems. The Do Something! assignment has been utilized in two STS courses at The Pennsylvania State University (STS 100: The Ascent of Humanity and STS 200: Critical Issues in STS). The structure of this assignment allowed students to make small but concrete contributions toward a sustainable future by applying STS principles. Outcomes indicated that (a) students had an overwhelming positive attitude toward the assignment; (b) students developed an in-depth understanding of STS issues outside of their individual fields of study; (c) students perceived a high level of attainment, which resulted in personal fulfillment; and (d) this positive perception encouraged students to attempt similar socially beneficial actions outside of the classroom.
Genetic Technologies and Women: The Importance of Context Inmaculada de Melo-Martín St. Mary’s University
Authors: Hanks Craig
Published: February 2009

Bioethicists, like many other academics, have a tendency to try to make things general and simpler by eliminating context. Particulars, such as race, economic class, and gender, often seem to be lost in this ocean of generality and abstraction. But in losing them, we are neglecting the analysis of serious moral problems and, with it, the possibility of offering some kind of solution to such problems. This article argues that particulars do matter very much. We will focus ourattention here on gender. We will argue that ignoring questions of gender when evaluating genetic technologies is seriously problematic because it might lead to further injustices against women. Proceeding with a noncontextual understanding of genetic technologies will likely disregard the unjust ways in which the health care system treats women, as well as the ways in which genetic technologies impose extra burdens on them.
The Postmodern Greenhouse: Creating Virtual Carbon Reductions From Business-as-Usual Energy Politics
Authors: Byrne John , Glover Leigh , Alleng Gerard , Inniss Vernese , Mun Yu-Mi , Wang Young-Doo
Published: February 2009

Climate change presents a fundamental challenge to the current global energy regime. Under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international community is developing the architecture of a policy response. Three serious flaws are examined: (a) the potential sacrifice of small island states, (b) the use of market-based policy measures to commodify the atmospheric commons, and (c) the substitution of carbon sequestration for meaningful reductions in energy use. The authors’ analysis of the politics of climate change, based on these issues, suggests a new understanding of ecology is emerging—what they term postmodern ecology—in which a global environmental crisis is risked to secure the future of the world energy regime. An alternative, based on principles of sustainability and equity, is proposed that would require abandoning the global energy status quo.
Techno-Growth Mania: The Means Justify the Means
Authors: Griffen William
Published: February 2009

Education policy, in general, reflects the past and present embrace of science and technology as progressive forces to be further cultivated. Technology has a profound effect on education policy. It serves to divert rather than enhance critical thinking about the future of our race and planet. In addition, the emphasis on technology has dramatically increased vocational emphases that elevate instrumental pedagogical concerns over philosophic reflection on ends. The technology-driven, vocationally rooted school agendas ignore alternative cultural reflections as powerful forces and directions remain exempt from scholarly examination. “How to” triumphs over “why?” The corporate-financed business-education partnership movement gathering momentum in schools across the nation raises a question: If pervasive environmental and human problems are endemic to the emerging technology-supported and technology-driven global order, how will schools end their denial of needed cultural change?
Noncomputational Versus Computational Conceptions of Reason: Contrasting Educational Implications
Authors: Martin James E.
Published: February 2009

Current conceptions of the integration of computers into society often depend on the view that the human mind, as well as the computer, is a computational system. This view is widely taken to have broad implications for educational policy. We present a critique of the premise and some of the conclusions of the above argument. It is here shown that the thesis that the human mind is a computational system is, in principle, not scientifically supportable. It is also shown that, even if the computational theory of mind were held for non-scientific reasons, the educational implications often derived from it do not follow.
The Computer and Education: Choosing the Least Powerful Means of Instruction
Authors: Stivers Richard
Published: February 2009

The computer is a threat to the intellectual and moral education of students. It reduces words to their most abstract meaning, thereby objectifying meaning. Moreover, the computer promotes logical thought at the expense of dialectical thinking. The computer is behind the proliferation of random information, all of which is at the disposal of the individual user. This fosters a cynical worldview that information is random and exists to be exploited. Finally, the computer turns us into consumers of information that fragments the personality and makes moral responsibility increasingly difficult. It allows for anonymous discourse and substitutes information for judgment. Teachers should resist the use of the mass media—especially the computer and television—as much as possible.
Biological Warfare and Scientific Responsibility
Authors: Resnik David B.
Published: February 2009

As we approach the 21st century, the threat of nuclear Armageddon has lessened somewhat, but a new threat has emerged: biological warfare. The splitting of the atom eventually led to the detonation of atomic bombs, and the discovery of DNA may soon lead to the use of genetic weapons. This article argues that the scientific community has a responsibility to help protect the world against the threat of biological weapons.
Five Arguments for Increasing Public Participation in Making Science Policy
Authors: Foltz Franz
Published: February 2009

In this article, the author, after describing the technocratic nature of the current science policy process, presents five arguments for changing it into a more participatory one. All five arguments draw on different sectors of the STS endeavor—both high and low church—to show why increased public involvement would benefit science. The first argues that the degree of potential harm from science-based technology demands greater accountability. The second draws on the adage that the buyer should have some say on the product. The third uses the social constructed nature of science. The fourth builds on feminist and marxist arguments. Finally, the last uses Kant to claim that all people matter. The author ends by providing a quick view describing the appearance of a more participa-tory process. The key is not the final process but the process of working together to reach it.
Why Science, Technology, and Society Studies?
Authors: Mitcham Carl
Published: February 2009

This article presents a brief argument for STS studies as grounded in fundamental historical transformations of the human condition, outlines seven distinct approaches to STS, and concludes with a brief for STS as the new form of a liberal education.
STS Graduate Education and Research
Authors: Durbin Paul T.
Published: February 2009

This short article summarizes the difficulties likely to be experienced in STS graduate education and research; the reasons, nevertheless, for optimism; and ends with an optimistic note about the future.
Religion and the Quest for Equity in Consumption, Population, and Sustainability
Authors: Petersen Rodney L.
Published: February 2009

The metaphors by which we live, derivative of religious perspectives, shape the ways in which we are engaged with the world around us. This is particularly evident in matters pertaining to consumption and population, factors in the calculus of global sustainability. Increasing concern over the past quarter century with environmental degradation has been paralleled by interest in the relation of religion to a developing environmental ethic. Such interest has called for sensitivity to the religious perspectives of all people, an interest that is promoting involvement in inter-religious dialogue. The significance of this for public policy comes in three areas: growing interest in patterns of social relationships, ecojustice or the way in which we live out social relationships, and growing reflection on the essential nature of religion for value formation in public life.
The Rise of Medical Systems and the Fall of Medical Tradition
Authors: Schwartz David B.
Published: February 2009

The current time is witnessing a vast expansion in the range and influence of medical systems over the provision of care. Real care, however, is not an outcome of systems, but of ancient traditions governing medical practice.
Reestablishing a Conversation in STS: Who’s Talking? Who’s Listening? Who Cares?
Authors: Leslie Stuart W.
Published: February 2009

Finding an appropriate place for STS within the American science and engineering curriculum has never been easy. Convincing science, engineering, and medical students, and their professors, to pay serious attention to the broader context of their respective professions seems to require a sustained dialogue across conventional disciplinary boundaries. Otherwise, STS ends up talking mostly to itself and its critics rather than to its most important audience, students (at all levels) and the general public (especially museum visitors). This essay considers a number of historical and present-day examples to argue that the founding vision of STS as a collaborative enterprise still offers some valuable lessons about how best to reach that audience.
Full Screens and Empty Students: Questioning Technology as an Educational Medium
Authors: Johnson, Henry C.
Published: February 2009

Beginning from the standpoint that technologically mediated education is widely prescribed for developing countries, the author first probes the nature, meaning, and impact of this agenda through its economic and political context. He argues that this context produces and shapes the rush to technology. He then examines the notion of education and the nature of the claimed technological mediation of this process, concluding that the constraints of technological mediation, and its destructive impact on teaching, show its inability to provide for adequate educational development (which is necessarily grounded in a concrete human relationship in a real—not virtual—dynamic social and cultural context). He closes with recommendations for a critical rather than a wholesale adoption of technology and encourages resistance to the present press for mindless adoption.
Sustainable Bioethics: Extending Care to an Aging Planet
Authors: Jameton Andrew
Published: February 2009

About 1970, Van Rensselaer Potter coined the term bioethics to bring under one heading broad questions of human survival, environment, and biology. In 1971, Potter outlined a statement of principles that linked the ethics of the biological sciences with the ethics of environmental concern. Regrettably, the field that adopted his rubric bioethics immediately diverged from Potter’s interests. Bioethics has become for the most part identified with medical ethics or health care ethics and in so doing has developed few ethical principles and analyses in relationship to environmental ethics. Similarly, environmental ethics seldom touches on clinical or health care issues, even though the field of environmental health has grown greatly in recent decades. It is the purpose of this article to indicate briefly some of the topics that could be treated effectively as part of a project to reconnect medical ethics and environmental ethics into what may be called sustainable bioethics.
Gender, Technology, and Environmental Policy
Authors: Washington Sylvia E.
Published: February 2009

This article is tied to the main objective of my research, which is to determine how environmental concepts about an urban industrial community were communicated to working-class immigrant and migrant children and their responses to these efforts. I would like this research to contribute to the understanding of why these groups have traditionally been subjected to a disproportionate amount of toxic and hazardous waste in their communities. As a result of this phenomena, the health of children and nonworking women in these communities was severely impacted because of the amount of time they spent in the community. This article is a reflection of the history of the working class in Chicago and will attempt to elucidate the role of women in shaping the community’s concepts of their new environment as well as their concepts of health. The article will examine the educational efforts of public and nonprofit institutions, which focused on environmental and health issues for Eastern European immigrant and minority migrant children who worked and or lived around the notorious packing houses in Chicago. Preliminary research has shown that the educational and political efforts of settlement houses and public health agencies that implemented environmental or health programs for these communities’children were run primarily by women living inside or outside of these communities.
Atmosphere for Sale: Inventing Commercial Climate Change
Authors: Glover Leigh
Published: February 2009

In forming the international regime on climate change, commodification of the atmosphere has become the primary mechanism around which policy formulation is being organized. This has been an outcome of the dominance of anthropocentric and ethnocentric values in the discourse represented by the negotiations around the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Environmentalism offers an alternative value system from which a critique of the emerging global climate change management regime can be undertaken. This critique makes clear both the inadequacy of economic approaches based on commodification of the atmosphere to protect the global environment and the need to include a variety of actors, values, and approaches in the climate change policy debate.
Global Corporations in the Greenhouse: Developing Equitable Accounting Measures
Authors: Schreuder Yda
Published: February 2009

The declining role of the state in world economic affairs and the increasing reach of transnational corporations to various parts of the world pose a serious challenge to the effectiveness and success of international environmental treaties. With the further integration of the global economy and the rise of economic actors that operate and conduct their business without regard to national boundaries, cost-benefit analyses of economic development and environmental impact become problematic. For instance, are national states responsible for the pool of carbon emissions within their borders or do the foreign owners of carbon-emitting infrastructure and production or the consumers of goods manufactured by transnational corporations in Third World countries hold a share of the responsibility for the emissions created? These and other related issues, such as the promotion of equity and justice, are the main themes of this article.
The Ethnicity of Anthropology in China
Authors: Bilik Naran
Published: February 2009

■ Chinese anthropologists have been attempting to locate anthropology in China, debating the legitimacy of its bentu hua, or `nativization'. However, a second careful look will take us to a more complicated landscape. While China, as one of the `mis-imagined' homogeneous world-level communities has to face the West, its minority groups, whether `imagined or not', have to confront both the Han world and the West. In connection to the hegemony of a market economy, which sidelined the minorities, the `ethnicity' of anthropologists reflects their respective upbringing or `habitus'. A sub-version of Sapir-Whorfian linguistic relativity bites here: anthropologists who master different languages tend to merge into linguistically demarcated separate interest groups. Looking at the underlying implications will lead our analysis metaphorically to a broader view of the extant dilemma global social sciences and humanities have been trapped in.
Development and Anthropology: A View from Inside the Agency
Authors: Eyben Rosalind
Published: February 2009

Insights from postmodernist anthropology can inform development practice by encouraging eclecticism and challenging orthodoxy, although they can work against a practical agenda. The most useful insights for development organizations in recent years have come from the study of transnational coporations, rather than from anthropology. Organizations able to effect change in the global environment need to be flexible, adaptable and responsive. In the current context of globalization, interdisciplinarity and pragmatism are more useful to practitioners seeking implementable policy solutions than a single discipline.
Participatory Development and the Appropriation of Agency in Southern Tanzania
Authors: Green Maia
Published: February 2009

Ideologies of participatory development promoted by development organizations in Tanzania are at odds with popular aspirations. Popular understandings of development emphasize individual achievement in a context of social differentiation, in what amounts to a recognition of the importance of individual agency in bringing about social transformation. Despite the claims of participatory development ideologies to foster the empowerment of the poor, the interventions it promotes are premised on a denial of poor people’s capacity to bring about change for themselves. Agency can only be effected through the imposed institutional structures for participation.
Mystics against the Market
Authors: Rodseth Lars , Olsen Jennifer
Published: February 2009

This article asks what might be learned about Western cosmology by focusing on religious traditions that originated in the United States and have developed outside the mainstream of Christianity. Mormonism and other American religions, we argue, carry a hidden repertoire of mystical and communal themes that directly conflict with the Western ‘market mentality’ as often described in the anthropological literature. These religions, furthermore, have surprising affinities with mystical and communal traditions outside the West, affinities that are fully revealed, ironically enough, only in the context of American cultural expansion in the non-Western world.
Victims, Underdogs and Rebels
Authors: Jansen Stef
Published: February 2009

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the discursive practices of resistance deployed in two recent waves of dissent in Serbia: the 1996–97 demonstrations against the Milosevic regime, and the 1999 anti-NATO protest. I explore three identity motifs running through both protests (‘victims’, ‘underdogs’, and ‘rebels’), and explain how they were differentially articulated into a discursive practice of defiance. In contemporary Serbia, they resonate with everyday mechanisms of coping and belonging, grounded in nationalist representations of what it means to be a Serb. By analysing the contradictory deployment and performance of these motifs in two very different outbursts of dissent, this article offers an understanding of the tactical polyvalence of discourses of resistance.
Predicaments of Criticism
Authors: Verschueren Jef
Published: February 2009

In this article, some of the pitfalls of critical analyses in socially relevant forms of linguistic research or discourse analysis are spelled out. Though the point of reference is Norman Fairclough’s version of critical discourse analysis, the observations can easily be extended to various related types of work. The argument is made that, in order for critical studies of discourse to be convincing – and hence to have any impact at all – the methodological link between empirical data and conclusions should be kept clear. Some basic guidelines, based on a general theory of linguistic pragmatics, are hinted at in the course of the critical reflections: e.g. whatever can be observed on the basis of formal analysis should never be ignored, and form-function relationships should never be regarded as stable.
Selling the Market
Authors: Collins James
Published: February 2009

The call for national and state-level educational standards has swept across the American educational scene in the last 15 years. Using a language of competition, fair play and equal treatment, standards advocates have captured a broad spectrum of both conservative and liberal support. Drawing upon journalistic reports, advocacy documents and interview data, this article presents an analysis of interconnected aspects of the evolution of educational reform discourse, in particular, advocacy from the leadership of a national teachers’ union and classroom teachers’ situated responses to ongoing changes. Critically appropriating from Fairclough’s analytic schema and commensurable concepts in Silverstein and Urban, I analyze interactional figures and socio-political themes involved in the elite and non-elite discourse of standards, with particular focus on the neo-liberal trope of a ‘new era of work’ and associated fears of increasing inequality. I conclude by assessing the differing strengths of the two frameworks as well as the role of discourse analysis more generally in critical social inquiry.
Self-defeating Environmentalism?
Authors: Berglund Eeva
Published: February 2009

Drawing on an ethnographic account of toxic waste protest in post-reunification Germany, the article compares three models of environmental activism (by Douglas and Wildavsky, Melucci and Latour respectively) which problematize the production of knowledge. Insights from social studies of science are used to examine the entanglement of language and matter in environmentalism. The article suggests, however, that unless scholars pay due attention to the way they frame their questions, they are at risk of finding their work irrelevant or impotent. On the other hand, it suggests that to achieve relevance and power, empirical, particularly ethnographic accounts, which emerge out of a meeting between activism and academia, are also required.