Introduction
Topic list
Core literature
Learning outcomes
Techniques of reading and writing practices
Guidelines

Topic List
The ESST Association has designed a list of topics and texts that are considered as being the core of the first semester programme. No matter if students are enrolled in the ESST programme in Madrid, Oslo, Maastricht or elsewhere, all ESST students in Europe will discuss the topics, concepts, themes, skills and texts that are listed below in the first semester.

General issues

 

• The development of the fields of STS and Innovations studies
• The knowledge society and its consequences
• The interaction between different actors in different parts of society and how it fosters development of science and technology
• Scientific controversies in the meeting of nature and culture – and how this influences policy
• Innovation theory and innovation systems
• Management of innovation and its consequences for policy

Specific concepts (and their related concepts)

AGENCY
Mediation
Invisible work
Articulation work
Affordance

ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY
Latour, Callon, Law, Akrich
Critiques
Post-ant
Script
Black box
Script: inscription; description; enscription

COMMODIFICATION
Intellectual property rights (IPR)
Commercialization of science

CONTEXT AND CONTINGENCY
Construction of facts and artefacts
Boundary work
Determinism
Linearity
Interpretative flexibility
Co-production

CONTROVERSIES AND EXPERTISE
Role of (social) media
Advise (science; policy)
Authority of science
Public understanding of science
Scientific expertise and public participation
Citizen science

EPISTEMIC CULTURES
Spaces of knowledge
Controversy studies
Science war
Realism – relativism
Internalism – externalism
Feminist epistemology
Scientific vs. manifest image
Scientific representation

GOVERNANCE AND RRI
Responsible research and innovation (RR&I)
Technologies of governing;
Politics of knowledge
Regulation and standardization
Valuation and/or evaluation, audit society
Policy-driven science vs. science-driven policy

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY
Creative destruction;
Interactive learning
Entrepreneurship
Systems of innovation: diffusion of innovations
Evolutionary approach
Geography of innovation
Globalization and localization innovation networks
Innovation and social challenges
Innovation policy
Innovation typologies
Institutions; knowledge typologies
Multi-level perspective
Path-dependence
Sustainable transitions
Technological transitions
Technology regimes (e.g., innovation regimes, IP regimes, regulatory regimes)

KNOWLEDGES
Mode 1, 2, 3
Tacit knowledge
Affective turn
Ways of knowing
Embodied knowledge
Situated knowledge
Ecologies of knowledge

MATERIALITY
Agency
Politics of artefacts
Material semiotics
Material culture
Affordances

METHOD
Symmetry
Web approach
Interactive approach
Interventionist turn
Interdisciplinarity
ANT: actors networks
SCOT: social relevant groups
System approach: components
Reverse salient
Entrepreneurs

MODERNITY
A-modern
Post-modern
Science and modernity
Reflexive
High modernity

MORALITY
Matters of concern
Ethicization
Inequality

PRACTICE
Ecologies of practice
Communities of practice
Practice turn

RISK AND VULNERABILITY
Assessment of technology (TA, CTA)
Risk and uncertainty in sociotechnical transitions
Resilience and robustness

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF TECHNOLOGY (SCOT);
Interpretative flexibility
Closure
Obduracy
Critique

SCIENCE
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)
Cultural studies of Science
History of science
Normative structure of science
Philosophy of science
Strong Program
Laboratory Studies
Experimenter’s regress
Science and modernity
Science and religion
Science and politics
Black boxing
Purification and inversion process
Instrument
Normative structure (Merton)
Gender and science
Science as an ideology
Numbers and Evidence

TECHNOLOGY
Technological determinism
Momentum
Social shaping of technology
Black box
Gender and technology
Philosophy of
History of technology
Industrial revolution
System approach: Large Technological Systems
Technological citizenship

USER
User participation
Configuring users
Non-users

CORE LIST OF EMPIRICAL THEMES
Body (medicine, gender, identity, trans-humanism; Biotechnology and the status of new life forms; human enhancement; neuroscience and responsibility)
Civic (civic science, public understanding of S&T communication, public participation in S&T)
Democracy (digital, technological; decision-processes)
Economic Growth and Inequality (crisis: environment, economic, innovation, financial)
Ethicization (of science and technology)
Infrastructures (vulnerable, critical, complex, natural, politics of, symbolic nature of…)
IPR and standardization
Life Sciences (healthcare, animals in science, bioeconomy, etc)
Nature and Environment (climate, geo-engineering, waste, food; energy transition; pandemic management and disasters)
New Emerging Science and Technologies (NEST): robotics, genomics, nanotech
New Information systems (Big data; social media; privacy; Web 2.0 / E-Governance)
Public Engagement