STS Majors and minors, please note that the candidate presentations CAN serve as cocurricular events – All presentations will end at 12:55 with a Q&A to follow. Students and faculty with 1:00 classes can leave when necessary.
Jessica Koski, Ph.D Candidate in Sociology, Northwestern University, degree expected June 2014
Tuesday, February 11th, 12:15-1:15, PB205
Presentation title: “Social Constructionism and Global Warming: Friends or Foes?”
Summary: Science and technology studies (STS) scholars have devoted significant attention to how climate change is “constructed” as a scientific and political problem. But such work is not without controversy. Many researchers charge that social constructionist accounts of global warming fuel climate skepticism and, as a result, impede policymaking. Are constructionist analyses worth the risk? Drawing on research on the mutual production of climate science and climate politics, this talk discusses the promises and perils of social constructionist investigations of environmental concerns. Classic constructionist accounts underscore how powerful actors distort science to serve particular ends. Such interest-based accounts deliver a powerful blow to science’s public credibility for many view “good” science as that which is untouched by politics. At the same time, the lens of social construction also brings to light the ways in which social variables shape scientific practice itself. Better understanding the co-production of political and scientific agendas, as well as how politics is built into scholars’ research design, may spur more nuanced and reflexive debate. It also has the potential to unveil sources of political gridlock. However, it too requires acknowledging science’s inherent social component. This review encourages a reevaluation of how we differentiate between “good” and “bad” science and further pushes us to consider more explicitly the role of STS scholarship (and scholars) in policy debates.
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