| Society for Social Studies of Science
Backchannels provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest…
Backchannels provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community.
Table of Contents
Informal Financial Markets: History, Ethnography, Technology
Report-backs / Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Elise Dermineur Reuterswärd
A report on a recent interdisciplinary symposium on informal financial markets that brought together historical and comparative perspectives.
Bridging Science, Religion and STS in India: An interview with Renny Thomas
Reflections / Joseph Satish Vedanayagam
In this post, Joseph Satish interviews Renny Thomas on the challenges of bridging science, religion and STS in India. Thomas’ ethnographic work is unique to the exploration of caste, religion and atheism in the Indian laboratory.
Coronavirus – Call for Contributions from STS, Technoscience and Beyond
Reflections / Amanda Windle
Call for contributions from the 4S community in response to COVID-19. We are looking to put together a rough and iterative toolkit and a range of sources for 4S readers to think together around issues raised by the current coronavirus pandemic. Expected publication date for April 2020.
Denying Science inside of the heart of public administration: Why rhetoric and baseless decisions might damage Brazil’s agri-environmental policies
Reflections / Diogo Lopes de Oliveira and Ronaldo P. Santos
This article explores how Brazil is currently dealing with environmental issues, the green agenda, and scientific rhetorics.
NOLA 2019: “What am I doing here?” Exploring discomfort in/as social research
Reflections / Marco Paladines
How does discomfort shape our research practice? In reviewing his 4SNOLA participation, Marco Paladines describes how a latent sense of discomfort affected his experience on these sites of science-communication and his ethnographic sensibility.
Technoscience: a science and technology studies podcast that’s not just for science and technology studies
Projects / Timothy Neale and Laura Foster
A new podcast shares exciting work in STS with wider audiences through a series of ten interviews recorded at the 2019 4S meeting in New Orleans.
Gender Disparity in Internet Access in India & Facebook’s 3i Report: Evaluation or misrepresentation?
Reflections / Sharique Hassan Manazir
The Facebook 3i report suppresses facts about internet access in India. Such faulty analysis may cause serious policy implications which need to be taken care of more responsibly.
Exploring Technology-Led Experiments in Sustainability Governance
Report-backs / Nick Bernards, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn, Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Jerome Duberry, Quinn DuPont, Andreas Dimmelmeier, Moritz Huetten, Laura Mahrenbach, Tony Porter, Bernhard Reinsberg
A report on the interdisciplinary workshop “Exploring Technology-Led Experiments in ESG and Sustainable Governance” held at the University of Warwick in December 2019.
We need to take up the burden of remaking the world
Reflections Projects / Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton
Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton consider how the 2019/2020 summer of drought and bushfire–and the rain that finally followed–is strangely foreshadowed in a 1943 short story by feminist Australian writer Marjorie Barnard.
Energy Consumption of Households: some insights from India
Reflections / Prayas Energy Group, India
This post is a reblog of the first of a series of blog posts presented by Prayas (Energy Group), an NGO furthering public-interest in the energy sector through analysis-based advocacy in India. This post introduces the series by contextualizing a household survey conducted by PEG in 2019 and briefly describing its objectives.
