[Sci-tech-public] STS Colloquium on Monday, April 23; Schedule of Events: April 21-29, 2007

[Debbie Meinbresse]

The Schedule of Events for the period April 21 through April 29 can 
be viewed here: http://web.mit.edu/sts/calendar/index-css.html

Please join us on Monday, April 23rd, for an STS Colloquium:

Examining Notions of "Culture" and "Nature" in Social Studies of Science

Joan Fujimura

Science, Technology, and Society, MIT (Visiting)

Abstract
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.

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.

Bio
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.

Please join us at 4:00 pm in E51-095 for Professor Fujimura's talk.
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