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The Schedule of Events for the period April 21 through April 29 can be
viewed here:
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/sts/calendar/index-css.html" eudora="autourl">
http://web.mit.edu/sts/calendar/index-css.html</a><br><br>
Please join us on Monday, April 23rd, for an STS Colloquium:<br><br>
<div align="center"><font size=5 color="#0000FF">Examining Notions of
"Culture" and "Nature" in Social Studies of
Science<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Joan Fujimura <br><br>
Science, Technology, and Society, MIT (Visiting) <br><br>
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Abstract <br>
</b>STS as a field was built in part on the premise that science and
society, nature and culture, were not separate entities. Some posed them
as inter-related spheres, others came to use terms like
"natureculture" to designate that they were one, inseparable,
an "it" rather than a "they." Despite the oneness,
however, we have analytically separated the one into two in order to
study it. This methodological move has presented theoretical problems. I
will use my research on genetics, bioinformatics, and especially on
systems biology to discuss these theoretical and methodological issues.
Indeed, systems biology and biological complexity face problems similar
to the ones we face with respect to how to study complexity.<br><br>
Systems biology can be described as a proliferation of efforts to model
and examine biological complexity, especially as they relate to health
and medicine. Biology and a myriad of other disciplines have joined
together to produce multidisciplinary modeling of complexity to explore
'the systems of life.' Some of these "postgenomic" modeling
efforts aim to be more ecological and "wholistic" than the
reductionist genetics of the last forty years. However, some system
biological metaphors and languages have been in part taken from
engineering models of automobiles, airplanes and robots and then applied
to complex living systems. A careful STS analysis of the production of
systems biology and other postgenomic technologies of life can ask
questions about what is lost or gained in translation at these border
crossings and their potential consequences. <br><br>
<b>Bio<br>
</b>Joan H. Fujimura is Professor of Sociology and founding and former
Director of the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and
Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a
member in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, and has taught at Stanford University as the Henry R. Luce
Professor for Biotechnology and Society and Associate Professor in
Anthropology and as Assistant Professor in Sociology at Harvard
University. Fujimura has written on developments in genetics, molecular
biology, biotechnology, biomedicine, and HIV-AIDS research. Her recent
publications include "Postgenomic Futures: Translations Across The
Machine-Nature Border in Systems Biology," New Genetics and Society,
vol. 24, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 195-225, and "Sex Genes: A
Critical Socio-Material Approach to the Politics and Molecular Genetics
of Sex Determination," Signs, vol. 32, 1 (Autumn 2006): 49-82. She
is author of Crafting Science: A Socio-History of the Quest for the
Genetics of Cancer (Harvard University Press, 1996) and co-editor of The
Rights Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences
(Princeton University Press, 1992). Fujimura is currently finishing a
book on bioinformatics, genomics, and transnational bioscience in Japan
and the United States and an edited special issue on race, genetics, and
medicine for Social Studies of Science. Her new/current projects include:
research on the newly developing systems biology programs of research,
and research on the definitions of populations in population genetics
research especially as they impact human categories of race. <br><br>
Please join us at 4:00 pm in E51-095 for Professor Fujimura's talk.<br>
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