Call for Papers:

The Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University is pleased to announce the international conference:

Places of Knowledge: Relocating Science, Technology and Medicine

To take place at Cornell University October 3-5, 2008.

In recent years, a number of scholars working under the broad rubric of Science & Technology Studies have sought to move beyond the field's traditional focus on scientific practice carried out by credentialed experts in labs and clinics in the industrialized world. This conference invites papers including, but not limited to, the anthropology, history, and sociology of science, technology and/or medicine to consolidate and extend this work. We seek to put in dialogue analyses addressing technoscience in colonial and postcolonial contexts with work on artisanal knowledge, citizen science, and other forms of knowledge and sites of practice. We request papers that examine these places, the types of material and knowledge produced within them, and the sorts of communities and institutions that facilitate the means of knowledge production. Themes will include the nature of skills and practices in colonial and postcolonial contexts, methods of professionalization, and the production of traditional and modern places of knowledge as well as the discourse between them. We invite, in addition, papers concerned with questions of method: are there epistemological assumptions constitutive of the disciplines that have traditionally made up STS that have undermined (and/or continue to undermine) a project that aims to relocate the study of science, technology, and medicine?

If you are interesting in taking part, please send your title and abstract to the Organizing Committee, Places of Knowledge, Dept S&TS, Rockefeller Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 by March 30, 2008. We have limited funds for travel so please mention whether you will need travel support. If you need further information please feel free to contact Trevor Pinch (tjp2@cornell.edu) or Suman Seth (ss536@cornell.edu).

This conference is one of a series being co-organized with H. Otto Sibum, Office for History of Science, Uppsala University, Sweden http://www.vethist.idehist.uu.se/English/index_eng.html And Richard Rottenburg, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (MPISA), Halle, Germany http://www.eth.mpg.de/research/mpfg1/index.html.

The next conference will be held in Uppsala in 2009 and one will be held in Halle either in 2011 or 2012.

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