Launch of new STS Helsinki Seminar Series

Welcome to the new STS Helsinki Seminar Series!

The STS Helsinki Seminar Series is a newly founded seminar series by the STS Helsinki research collective. Our aim is to create a space for in-depth conversations about current research in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The topics cover a wide range of contemporary issues, such as climate change, the role of experts, medicine, genetics, gender, robotics or organic food. The seminars function as a platform for strengthening the STS community in Finland and bringing STS to new audiences. All scholars, students and audiences interested in the interaction between science, society and technology are welcome!

Seminar programme/Spring 2019

Venue: 4th floor seminar room, Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies (HCAS), Fabianinkatu 24 (except for April 26th)

 

27 February, 12.15-13.45

Helena Valve, senior researcher, Finnish Environment Institute

Analysing policy processes and power with STS

 

18 March, 12.15-13.45             

Andrea Butcher, postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki

The challenge of tackling antimicrobial resistance in biosocially demanding settings: the case of protein production in South Asia

 

26 April, 12.15-13.45

Nik Brown, Professor of Sociology, York University

TBA

 

20 May, 12.15-13.45

Liina-Maija Quist, postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki

Epistemic practices of marine scientists examining climate change

 

Abstract for 27 February

Analysing policy processes and power with STS

Scientific experiments and the role of experimentation in the generation of scientific evidence are classic themes within science and technology studies (STS). Research in the field has created understandings of the performative, yet contested role of test designs.  Drawing from studies focusing on Baltic Sea protection, I propose that STS insights have much to offer for the analysis of governance. Power ceases to be just a property that can be used to explain policy outcomes. Moreover, the contested capacities evolve not only within, but also along the material (re)arrangements that indicate what is at issue and for whom.

Dr. Helena Valve works as a Senior Researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute. Her research focuses on the politics and performance of environmental policy and natural resource management. The studies make use of the insights provided by science and technology studies (STS), and aim to contribute to the development of methodologies that acknowledge the role of materialities and material arrangements for the practicing of governance and regulation.

 

For more information, please contact Kamilla Karhunmaa (kamilla.karhunmaa at helsinki.fi) or Karoliina Snell (karoliina.snell at helsinki.fi)

Call for papers: “Science, technology and society” – working group at the Annual conference of the Westermarck Society, 2019

Our yearly working group at the Annual conference of the Westermarck Society (AKA Sosiologipäivät) is back. In 2019, the conference will be held under the theme “Various Faces of Inequalities” at the University of Turku, on 15-16.3.2018. The keynote speakers are: Göran Therborn (University of Cambridge), Melinda Mills (University of Oxford & Nuffield College), Giselinde Kuipers (University of Amsterdam), and Minna van Gerven (University of Twente). Find the abstract and the contact of the coordinators below. Abstract proposals should be sent to the coordinators by the 31st of January, 2019.

9. Science, technology and society

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that examines the interaction between society, science, and technology. STS pays attention to how different fields, such as law, politics, and everyday life, become intertwined with science and technology. This is relevant when thinking about heatedly debated topics as diverse as climate change, the role of experts, medicine, genetics, gender, robotics or organic food. The field calls for a deeper understanding of the development, processes, practices and outcomes of such social phenomena. STS explores the mechanisms behind knowledge claims and ontological assumptions that guide our everyday. Or, how a prominent STS scholar, Steve Woolgar, has said: look at how the world defined by science and technology “could be otherwise”.

STS-Helsinki calls for theoretical, methodological and empirical papers on current research in social studies of science. Papers both in Finnish and English are welcome. The aim of this working group is to offer a forum to discuss the practices that contribute to the shaping of technoscientific objects and subjects. How is scientific knowledge established and negotiated, and how historical processes contribute to the development of certain technologies? We also welcome papers discussing the specific topic of circulations. This working group is defined as a meeting point for both Finnish and international scholars to share and discuss their work with others studying science, technology and society.

Coordinators:

Aaro Tupasela, University of Helsinki. Email: aaro.tupasela (at) helsinki.fi

Mikko Jauho, University of Helsinki. Email: mikko.jauho (at) helsinki.fi

Tracing affect in vaccine debates

by Venla Oikkonen, Academy Research Fellow (University of Tampere)

In the decades following World War II, vaccines were widely considered a routine method of preventing illness. Childhood vaccinations appeared to have eradicated infectious diseases that had killed and harmed children during the previous decades. However, since the late 1990s, arguments challenging vaccines have gained considerable media presence in many wealthy and technologically advanced societies. While vaccine skeptics and critics have always existed, British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s claims about a connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism placed the safety and rationale of childhood immunization programs in the public spotlight with a new intensity. Although Wakefield’s claims have been discredited, the idea of the MMR vaccine – and by association other childhood vaccines – as potentially harmful lives on in cultural debates. Recent epidemics of presumably defeated diseases such as measles, mumps and pertussis (whooping cough) in Europe and North America attest to the critically low vaccination rates in many places in the global north.

A number of social scientists have addressed vaccine hesitancy and refusal. For example, Samantha D. Gottlieb (2016) and Jennifer A. Reich (2016) have recently published nuanced ethnographic analyses of the complexities and ambiguities involved in how parents make decisions about vaccines. In Finland, Johanna Nurmi and Pia Vuolanto are currently leading a project titled Health, Knowledge and Expertise which examines the rationales of vaccine skepticism and complementary and alternative medicine. These projects shed important new light on how individuals make decisions about vaccinations within the social, cultural and historical contexts in which they live.

I have just begun a five-year Academy Research Fellow’s project that approaches recent and ongoing vaccine debates from the viewpoint of cultural studies of science. The project is funded by the Academy of Finland and located in Gender Studies at the University of Tampere. Titled Affect and Biotechnological Change: Three Vaccine Debates in Europe, the project positions vaccine skepticism and acceptance within the larger patterns of biotechnological change. It asks how cultural emotions (“affect” in the project title) structure how biotechnologies such as vaccines become contested, rejected or accepted. Instead of focusing on individuals’ experiences or decisions, the project traces how public debates about vaccines invoke and move emotions in culture and society.

The project approaches vaccines as an intersectional phenomenon, that is, as a phenomenon that takes shape through mutually entangled categories of difference such as gender, sexuality, class, age, and ethnicity. For example, immunization programs often assume that some demographic groups (based, for example, on gender, sexuality, age, or immigration history) are in a particularly high risk of contracting or spreading an infectious disease. The project traces the affective underpinnings of this logic across cultural texts. It approaches vaccines as technologies through which boundaries between nations, continents and communities, or between “risky” and “healthy” groups, are drawn and negotiated. Inspired by feminist science and technology studies, the project conceptualizes vaccines as bodily technologies that involve material processes such as the manipulation of inactivated or attenuated viruses, immunological responses triggered by the vaccine, as well as points of contact and possible contagion between bodies perceived as gendered or racialized.

The project centers on three case studies, which each sheds light on different aspects of affect, intersecting differences and biotechnological change. The case studies approach vaccines through analysis of public and popular texts, ranging from bioscientific articles, institutional reports and vaccination policies to media coverage of vaccines, popular blogs and online discussion forums.

I am currently working on the first case study, which focuses on the link between the 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) vaccine Pandemrix and the appearance of narcolepsy among vaccinated children and adolescents in several European countries. I place the case within the larger phenomenon of pandemic preparedness, as well as view it as an event that has shaped public attitudes towards national childhood immunization programs. I explore how cultural emotions surrounding a specific vaccine may change quite dramatically within a few months, and, at the same time, how the 2009 H1N1 virus strain became nevertheless routinized as part of the seasonal influenza vaccine during the following influenza seasons. I ask how culturally circulating emotions around the 2009 H1N1 vaccine emerged through discourses of childhood, disability, and ethnic difference – especially the assumed Mexican origins of the pandemic, and the initial framing of vaccine-associated narcolepsy as a “Nordic” condition.

The second case study focuses on the debates about the potential inclusion of boys into national HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination programs in Europe – currently most European HPV immunization programs cover only girls. The study asks why HPV has been slow to emerge as a vaccine for boys in Europe despite the current licensing of HPV vaccines for use in all genders to protect against a range of conditions including cervical cancer, anal cancer and genital warts. I trace how the debated inclusion of boys in vaccination programs emerges in relation to assumptions of masculinities, queer sexualities, and gendered sexual practices. This focus sheds new light on the role of gendered and heteronormative assumptions about agency and “risky” behavior in cultural responses to a vaccine against a sexually transmitted infection.

My third case study approaches debates about mandatory MMR vaccinations following a number of local measles epidemics across Europe. The study focuses on how ongoing debates about MMR mobilize discourses of immigration and travel within and into Europe. I am particularly interested in how the MMR vaccine has re-emerged as an object of political debate in relation to the movement of people within the EU, on the one hand, and the rise of right-wing anti-immigration populism, on the other. Focusing on debates about measles, travel and migration, I ask how an already affectively charged technology becomes entangled with new cultural emotions that may contradict the earlier ones, and how responsibility and risk become reconfigured as racialized and nationalist issues.

I hope the project may help us understand why vaccines raise particular emotional responses on a collective cultural level. By focusing on issues such as embodiment, agency and diversity, the project provides a useful addition to the public health and economic framework within which vaccination programs are usually envisioned and designed. By theorizing ideas of “risk” and “responsibility” as intersectional issues, the project also highlights the importance of developing nuanced and ethically accountable vaccination campaigns and communication.

You can read more about Venla’s research here: https://research.uta.fi/oikkonen/

 

References:

Samantha D. Gottlieb (2016) Vaccine resistances reconsidered: Vaccine skeptics and the Jenny McCarthy effect. Biosocieties 11(2): 152–174.

Jennifer A. Reich (2016) Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. NYU Press.

4 year doctoral student position in thematic area “food health and well-being” at CCSR, University of Helsinki

Position for a doctoral student at the CCSR, University of Helsinki

The Centre for Consumer Society Research (CCSR) is a research institute located in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. It studies consumption and the consumer society from consumer perspective.

CCSR is offering a four year position for a doctoral student. The position is located in the thematic area ‘Food, health and wellbeing’. Your dissertation focuses on the interface of consumption and health. In contemporary industrialized societies health has become an object of consumption and source of profit, and citizens are expected to take responsibility of their health as consumers. This is evident on the one hand in the organization of health services, where marketization, public/private partnerships, and freedom of choice are current buzzwords. Moreover, consumerist strategies, e.g., techniques from marketing and advertising, are prevalent in illness prevention and health promotion. On the other hand, everyday personal health management has become intensely commercialized. Lifestyle choices such as eating and exercising are today considered key to individual health and well-being. These choices are made on the market by health consumers. Moreover, the health effects of new practices and domains of life are being calculated and inserted into economic circuits. Together these developments create consumption needs and market demand and make health a sales argument and marketing vehicle for both private and public actors. Your research will address how the quest for health and well-being intersects with market creation and profit seeking on an empirically circumscribed arena.

Possible topics and research questions include but are not limited to:

 

*Through what kind of metrics and processes are new domains of life made health-relevant and/or ‘economized’?

*How do practices of health consumption unfold in different domains of life?

*How are health and well-being incorporated into development, marketing and selling of various products and services?

*How has health policy adopted market-based strategies to guide health consumption and behavior?

 

The final research topic will be defined in discussion with your supervisor at CCSR (see below).

Your background is preferably in social sciences. You have good communication skills in Finnish and English, both oral and written. At CCSR you are expected to develop your own and our common research agenda, and contribute to collective academic tasks such as teaching and seminars.

The deadline for the application is 27.9.2018. Attached to the application should be (1) a CV, including research competences and experience; (2) a tentative research plan, or alternatively, a short outline of possible research themes, including how the proposed topic fits to the profile of CCSR, the thematic area, and the call (max 3 pages); and (3) contact information of one referee. You are expected to apply for the right to conduct doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki in the relevant discipline (see https://www.helsinki.fi/en/research/doctoral-education/the-application-process-in-a-nutshell).

More info on CCSR: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/consumer-society-research-centre. For questions contact Adjunct Professor Mikko Jauho, tel. +358 50 5744869, email. mikko.jauho@helsinki.fi.

Adventures into interdisciplinary research: the strategy of a respectful tourist

Interdisciplinary research saves the world

by Vera Raivola

“Scientists must work together to save the world” a Nature news feature sums up high expectations towards interdisciplinary research. The argument goes, that questions about e.g. health, food, water, climate, are so complex that we need researchers across the spectrum of scientific disciplines to join their forces. Only then can we tackle these so called grand challenges.

Such high expectations seem to be a defining feature of interdisciplinary research (IDR). According to a report from The National Academies, IDR: “…can be one of the most productive and inspiring human pursuits – one that provides a format and connections that lead to new knowledge”.

Also research funding bodies, like the EU commission, take the message about the benefits of IDR seriously. Programmes such as the Horizon2020  fund research that crosses the disciplinary boundaries.  For Academy of Finland,  advancing interdisciplinary research is a science policy objective. Academy’s Strategic funding can only be applied by projects that have three different scientific disciplines represented.

However, despite all this top-down push to deliver successful IDR, crossing disciplinary boundaries does not seem easy for researches. For example, social scientists have often been disenchanted by working in interdisciplinary projects. They felt being partners, but found to be offered a service role.

As a sociologist working in an interdisciplinary PhD project, how to deal with the challenges and promises of IDR is a very pragmatic question. I am interested to know what makes interdisciplinary collaboration something that has added value for researchers participating in it. This made me wonder, are there rules and roles for successful IDR?

Disciplines organise scientific knowledge production and create cultures

First, to find rules for collaboration that happens inter – in between- we need to ask where this place is.

Scientific research is organised by disciplines that form “bodies of specialized knowledge” as The National Academies report describes them. Disciplines are formed by researchers who work together to produce knowledge on their specific scientific object of interest e.g. psychological or biological phenomena. Each of these scientific communities also holds the traditions on how this work should be done, a stock of research methods.

Disciplines have the responsibility to educate and certificate new researchers. Students learn not only the specialized knowledge and methods of their own discipline, but also how to qualify as members of this group.

During research careers, the discipline holds the power to review the value of research, which means it controls the social and personal rewards attached to it. The ownership to the means and ends of legitimate scientific knowledge is what makes disciplines so powerful.

Exploring the interdisciplinary as a respectful tourist

So disciplines are research communities with their own historical belief systems and practises or “epistemic cultures” as Knorr Cetina described them in 1998. Thinking disciplines as cultures, we can see how they provide to people belonging to them with resources, norms, concepts, values and self-identities.

Interdisciplinary collaboration then takes place in somewhere between these familiar spaces provided by disciplinary cultures. I suggest that by entering this space of IDR where we are faced with new cultures as researchers we can apply the role of a respectful scientific tourists.

With the analogy I hope to emphasise the positive risk of adventuring into the unfamiliar and learning about new cultures. It is not that some researchers can remain fixed in their well-trodden territory, but IDR collaboration takes in turns all participants into strange fields.

Like all touristic explorations, interdisciplinary research is expected to take us out of the comfort zone without going too far away. Like tourists, researchers come with different personal limits after which interesting adventurers becomes a panic zone. What fuels the travel is curiosity, not forcing or being converted.

The place for a scientific tourists to aim is the learning zone as Rebecca Freeth argued on her fascinating Tampere STS Symposium presentation “At the edge: Practices to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration” on 15 June, 2018. This is a place to observe the new culture, adjust, compare and pass ideas without fear of losing one’s disciplinary identity.

 The benefits of anthropological mindset

Adopting the viewpoint of a respectful tourist also reminds that IDR is about interaction between different cultures aiming into an innovative dialogue. Because of differences in languages, beliefs and habits, misunderstandings are part of this interactive process.

Negotiating with differences will take energy. As a tourist one lacks relevant competencies to that cultural context. This can make one feel stupid, perhaps lonely, as anyone who has tried to manage life away from home knows. The outsider position challenges the sense of “knowing” and mastery, both likely to feel important to researchers in their normal disciplinary practises.

Intellectually, perceiving myself as a scientific tourist has made it easier to accept my own ignorance on other research disciplines. I have also found my own background in interpretative sociological tradition and in the STS to be useful.

I can assume a role of an anthropologist and focus on the social processes that construct different kinds of epistemic cultures. Being in this role provides me with an analytical distance where it is easier to compare different ways of thinking about science.

Having been educated to think about scientific knowledge as a social construct gives certain flexibility to cross the cultural boundaries. I have learned to take a deep breath before diving into the Natural Science’s jungle of terminology. Instead of trying to understand everything, I focus on following the narrative about a discovery.

Following the storyline and lead characters leads to the treasure; a new technology, a theory or a finding that makes my colleagues from biomedicine excited. This enthusiasm about creating a great story about a discovery is something all researchers share.

Tackling cultural biases

The example of a touristic viewpoint also reveals the potential power conflict in cultural encounters. Tourism has its uncivilized side. Sometimes tourists go purposefully to “arse around” because they see “away” as an opportunity to evade normal moral and social repercussion.

But often we tourists just are lazy and lack reflexivity. Learning gets replaced with colonializing interests; by being/knowing better than “locals” or decidedly exploiting the context to meet our own (superficial) needs. While usually unintended, this is something that I think happens quite often with us scientific tourists, too. For example, I feel to have undermined the craftsmanship and creativity required for designing laboratory experiments.

In scientific life, like in any other section of social reality, combining cultural differences with power differences can feed into negative stereotyping on “us” and “them”. For example, the existing hierarchy between the so-called hard and soft disciplines can invite such thinking.

I often have used these stereotypes, which can seem only neutral and pragmatic. Now I have started to think it unnecessarily contradicts compatible styles of scientific knowledge production. It explicates a hierarchy that undermines the value of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

I have experienced how such labelling can make us who represent SSH communities defensive and shun from otherwise beneficial dialogue with the Natural Sciences. The cost of using these musty terms seem higher than its benefits, so perhaps it would be time to move on.

Rules of respectful interdisciplinary collaboration

These examples show what I think is the most important rule for IDR: respect. As with people from different cultures we scientific tourists should respect that other researchers know their disciplines. They have lived experience and expertise in form of knowledge and skills that we tourists only wish to learn about.

Making respect as the rule of conduct for IDR does not mean taking other disciplines’ knowledge for granted or as sacred. This is against the principle of science that reminds everyone to stay humble towards the fallibility of knowing. Critical thinking and good questions are important tools for all in the learning zone.

So how to put the rule in to practise? Listening and trying to understand each other’s points might be a good start. If every IDR participant has on their turn first an opportunity to tell what they expect from the collaboration and think to bring to the common table, then others can learn to make better questions and suggestions. For me it has been very useful indeed, if sometimes difficult, to hear how these “others” view my research topics and findings.

Sometimes it has been difficult to discuss about research methods with researchers who represent quite different disciplinary traditions.  Constructive and respective criticism is still welcomed, but I feel that criticising might not always be the best starting point for a discussion about such specialized practises. It would be almost like a Swede saying to a Finn that s/he do not know how to use the sauna.

Heading towards great IDR adventures

I have suggested that those who take part in interdisciplinary research collaboration can assume the strategic role of a respectful scientific tourist. This might help to conceive what is special in adventuring into different research fields and epistemic cultures, while holding one’s disciplinary identity.

I find it useful to remember that despite the context, the experience of being a tourist is that of curiosity and clumsiness. Like a tourist in a foreign country, scientific tourists are likely to share an enduring interest in what for “the locals” seem strange relics and may be missing out important cultural nuances. Yet, the treasure hunt of new discoveries, nerdy humour and the pains of academic life can unite interdisciplinary adventurers.

Respecting and trying to understand each other because of cultural differences is the key in successful interdisciplinary collaboration. To make IDR a lucrative option to researchers requires good resources and institutional solutions. For those in their journey to the in-between, I wish compassion, patience and clear signposts.

 

Vera Raivola is a doctoral student and works as a junior researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her PhD project at the Finnish Red Cross Blood Service studies blood donors’ views on donating blood for patients and for biobank research use. You can find her on Twitter, ResearchGate and Linkedin.

New book: ‘Craft in Biomedical Research: The iPS Cell Technology and the Future of Stem Cell Science’ by Mianna Meskus

The STS Helsinki blog is happy to present and promote the recent publication of the book of one of our members, Associate Professor Mianna Meskus.

The book, titled ‘Craft in Biomedical Research: The iPS Cell Technology and the Future of Stem Cell Science’, tells us about the political and economic expectations placed upon stem cell research by exploring how iPS cell technology has made it possible to turn human skin and blood cells into pluripotent stem cells. These biotechnological advancements provide with unprecedented opportunities to study the pathophysiology of diseases, understand human developmental biology and generate new forms of therapy. Mianna Meskus approaches the topic by discussing non-human agency, the embodied and affective basis of knowledge production, and the material politics of science, developing the idea of an instrumentality-care continuum as a fundamental dynamic of biomedical craft. These three approaches serve as the main tools to discuss the form in which biology becomes technology by providing new perspectives to the commercialization and industrial-scale appropriation of human biology and, as a result, to the future of ethical biomedical research.

The book comes endorsed by Professor Charis Thompson, from the University of California at Berkeley, and Associate Professor Melinda Cooper, from the University of Sidney. About the book, Professor Thompson has highlighted the “extensive fieldwork” behind the book and that it “shows that as stem cells are becoming a highly versatile biological research tool, working with them continues to require demanding embodied skills and judgment, and dense political and affective engagement”. Associate Professor Melinda Cooper emphasises the central position of the notion of “‘craftwork’ at the heart of the laboratory” and the unpredictability of “the pathway from the lab to the clinic to the market” that only “high artisanal craftwork” can bridge.

The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan and can be bought and accessed by clicking here.

Open Position: Postdoctoral Researcher on Social Study of Microbes

University of Helsinki is looking to hire a POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER ON SOCIAL STUDY OF MICROBES for a three-year fixed term period from 3 September 2018 onwards (or as agreed).

Project

The postdoctoral researcher will be positioned in Sociology at University of Helsinki in a Finnish Academy funded research group studying Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in West Africa. The group is part of an interdisciplinary consortium of clinical researchers, microbiologists and sociologists studying the spread of AMR genes in the region that has extensive gaps in data regarding AMR. AMR has increased rapidly, especially in low income countries which lack controlled antibiotic policy, and have poor infrastructures enabling the flow of AMR genes between the environment, animals and humans. The study joins environmental, microbiological, sociological, and medical expertise to explore the evolving and transfer of AMR genes between water, soil, animals, food, and humans (“One Health approach”).

Available position

The sociological group wishes to recruit an enthusiastic postdoctoral researcher who is interested in developing social scientific research on microbes. The position will be in an exciting new group that is exploring the emerging field where microbes are given increasing attention through the study of microbiota, gut wellbeing, microbes’ role for mental health, etc. The postdoctoral position gives the right candidate an opportunity to explore microbes in the context of development: how are infrastructures, understandings of bacteria, social practices, antimicrobial resistance, and ecologies connected?

The ideal candidate will have a good understanding of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and global health, and ideally have past experience of ethnographic work in relevant sub-fields such as, but not limited to, social study of international collaboration, emerging technologies in low income countries, pharmaceuticals, non-human subjects, or indeed, microbes.

The position entails ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa (in Burkina Faso, Mali and/or Benin) that is expected to last between six months to a year and to study people’s understandings of microbes, how antibiotics are used, and how people ‘live with microbes’ in these contexts. During the third year, the project will develop participatory videos (PV) through a participatory research process with the help of a PV team that the candidate can be part of making.

Candidate

The appointee must hold a doctoral degree in a relevant field of social sciences (sociology, science and technology studies, anthropology, development studies, gender studies, geography etc). Period following the completion of doctoral degree must not exceed five years, excluding family leave and equivalent periods of absence.

Moreover, the candidate is expected to have the ability to conduct independent ethnographic research. The candidate is expected to develop her/his own research on the topic and contribute to the joint research agenda.

Please see the full job description here https://www.helsinki.fi/en/open-positions/postdoctoral-reseacher-on-social-study-of-microbes

If you have any questions, please contact: salla.sariola@utu.fi

Sosiologipäivät 2018 työryhmän raportti

STS Helsinki piti viime vuoden tapaan työryhmän Sosiologipäivillä, jotka tänä vuonna järjestettiin Itä-Suomen yliopiston Joensuun kampuksella. Oheinen yhteenveto raportoi työryhmien ohjelman ja kertaa lyhyesti esitysten sisällön.

Työryhmä: Science, technology and society

Järjestäjät: Heta Tarkkala (ISY), Vera Raivola (ISY) & Karoliina Snell (HY)

Tieteen- ja teknologiantutkimuksen työryhmässä pidettiin yhteensä kymmenen esitystä torstain ja perjantain aikana. Työryhmän esitykset jakaantuivat sosiologiaa tieteenalana käsitteleviin aiheisiin ja toisaalta tiedettä, pääosin lääketiedettä, sen edellytysten järjestämistä, siihen kytkeytyviä käsitteitä ja käytäntöjä eri suunnista lähestyviin esityksiin. Jose Canada (HY) piti esityksen pian valmistuvaan väitöstutkimukseensa liittyen. Tutkimus tarkastelee, miten globaaleista terveysuhista ensinnäkin tulee uhkia ja toiseksi hallinnan ja strategioiden kohteita identifikaatio- ja kategorisointiprosesseissa, joihin kiinnittyy sekä inhimillisiä että ei-inhimillisiä toimijoita. Josen jälkeen Salla Sariola (TY) ja Elina Oinas (HY) jatkoivat esityksessään keskustelua inhimillisten ja ei-inhimillisten toimijoiden yhteiselosta meneillään olevassa rokotetutkimuksessa Beninissä. Ripulia ja tätä kautta antibioottiresistenssiä ehkäisevään rokotetutkimukseen osallistuvat suomalaisturistit konkreettisesti elävät erilaisin tavoin suhteessa ympäristöönsä, sen mikrobeihin ja bakteereihin. Seuraavana oli Venla Oikkosen (HY) esitys rokotteisiin liittyvästä narkolepsiasta. Se, mikä ja millainen asia rokotteisiin liittyvä narkolepsia on, määrittyy eri tavoin esimerkiksi tilastoissa, tieteen kentällä ja mediassa. Torstain session jälkipuolisko oli varattu sosiologiaa tieteenalana tutkiville aiheille. Mikko Hyyryläinen (HY) kysyi esityksessään, millaista sosiologiaa kognitiivinen sosiologia on ja mitä se voisi olla? Johanna Hokka (TaY) jatkoi keskustelua sosiologian tieteenharjoittamisesta esittelemällä tutkimustaan alan professoreiden diskursseista näiden neuvotellessa suhdettaan huippututkimukseen ja sen mittareiden legitimiteettiin.

Perjantain avasi Vera Raviola (ISY), joka pohti, miten biopankkiosallistuminen uuteen Veripalvelun biopankkiin jäsentyy sen tapahtuessa osana aiemmin tuttua verenluovutusta ja roolia verenluovuttajana. Tästä jatkoi Annerose Böhrer (FAU) esittelemällä, kuinka hän hyödynsi metafora-analyysia tutkimuksessaan elinluovutuskeskustelusta Saksassa.  Tärkeään rooliin nousi elinsiirtokortti niin konkreettisena esineenä kuin ajattelun välineenä. Mikko Jauho (HY) pohti esityksessään, miten rasva ja kolesteroli figuroivat riskiobjekteina sydän-ja verisuonitautien syy- ja seuraussuhteissa. Kyse ei ole vain pahoista rasvoista. Riikka Homasen (HY) esitys käsitteli heteronormatiivisen perhekäsityksen sekä valkoisuuden suojaamiseen liittyvien oletusten vaikutusta lesboparien sekä sinkkunaisten hedelmöityshoidoissa, vaikka lisääntymisteknologiat samalla jatkuvasti kyseenalaistavat perhemuotoihin liittyvät normit. Työryhmän viimeisessä esityksessä Karoliina Snell (HY) ja Heta Tarkkala (ISY) käsittelivät Pohjoismaisia, sekä kansallisia että yhteisiä strategioita terveysdatan hyödyntämisen edistämiseksi. Pohjoismainen väestötieto on identifioitu ainutlaatuiseksi ”kultakaivokseksi” ja esityksessä kysyttiinkin, mitä kaikkea tämä kulta oikeastaan on ja mitä sitä kaivamalla saadaan aikaan.

Sociology Days 2018 Working Group Report

As we have previously mentioned in this blog, the STS Helsinki group organized for the second consecutive year a working group in the annual conference Sociology Days, which this year took place in the University of Eastern Finland, in the Joensuu campus. We are happy to bring you the report of our two sessions with a small summary of all of our very interesting presentations. Looking forward to organizing it again next year!

Working group: Science, technology and society

Organizers: Heta Tarkkala (University of Eastern Finland), Vera Raivola (University of Eastern Finland) and Karoliina Snell (University of Helsinki)

The working group ’Science, technology and society’ had in total ten presentations during two sessions organized on Thursday, 15th and Friday, 16th of March. The presentations discussed a variety of topics related to sociology related topics and other disciplines, mostly to medical science. First, Jose Cañada (University of Helsinki) had a presentation about his doctoral dissertation. The study focuses on how global health threats are conceptualized and how, for the sake of governance strategies, there are identification and categorization processes, which are connected to human and nonhuman actors. Salla Sariola (University of Turku) and Elina Oinas (University of Helsinki) continued the conversation about human and nonhuman actors from cooperative initiatives connected to vaccination research in Benin. Vaccines help to prevent diarrhea and antibiotic resistance. Finnish tourists experience their relation with the environment, microbes and bacteria in very concrete and different ways. Next presentation, by Venla Oikkonen (University of Helsinki), discussed the connection between Influenza vaccines and narcolepsy. What and how that connection is articulated differs in, for example, statistics, science or the media. The second half of the Thursday session was reserved to discussions related to the study of sociology as a discipline. Mikko Hyyryläinen (University of Helsinki) discussed the building of cognitive sociology as a sub-field of study inside sociology. More concretely, he discussed what the field is at the moment and what it could yet become. In the last presentation of the first day, Johanna Hokka (University of Tampere) continued the conversation about the scientific practice of sociology by discussing professor discourses on high quality research and measurements of legitimacy.

Friday opened with Vera Raivola (University of Eastern Finland), who pondered how participation in the new biobank of the Finnish blood services (Veripalvelu) is understood as part of the wider practice of blood donation and the role of blood donors. Annerose Böhrer (Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen Nürnberg) continued by presenting how she utilized metaphor analysis in her research on organ donation in Germany. One of the most important points was the role of the organ donor card, which worked as a material and discursive object. Mikko Jauho (University of Helsinki) discussed in his presentation how fat and cholesterol figured as a double risk object in the cardiovascular arena. The presentation of Riikka Homanen (University of Helsinki) discussed heteronormativity in relation to understandings of family. The presentation discussed this in the context of reproductive care sought by lesbian couples and single women. Karoliina Snell (University of Helsinki) and Heta Tarkkala (University of Eastern Finland) gave the last presentation of the working group. It discussed Nordic and national collaboration strategies for the exploitation and development of health data. Nordic populations are identified as a ‘gold mine’ and the presentation wondered what this gold actually is and what we can get from digging it.

A locksmith and a supernova: unlocking the secrets of the ‘universe’

The discovery of a supernova

“What’s that?” the locksmith wondered, peeping through the telescope. He was in his observatory checking his new camera that was attached to the telescope. Somewhere far away some strange activities were occurring in the night skies. He carefully started observing again through his high-powered telescope. The distant star was acting very strange as if in some sort of celestial dance. Then a weird sort of energy emitted from it like a hiccup, and the star exploded like a firecracker. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The locksmith muttered under his breath. It was just unbelievable; he had a feeling of euphoria. It slowly sunk in him he was the witness of a cosmic dance, the one that the global scientific community craved to witness. Victor Buso from Argentina had just watched an astonishing phenomenon: the birth of a supernova.

The birth of a supernova is, in fact, the violent death of a supergiant star. Supergiants are massive stars, thousands of times bigger than the Sun. A supergiant dies when it runs out of fuel, and the star starts collapsing in its inward centre. Positive protons and negative electrons start compressing each other due to high gravity, forcing electrons to penetrate the nucleus and converting the protons and electrons to neutrons. Within a day’s period, the created shockwave spreads outwards in a violent explosion, spreading stardust and matter in its wake. The intensity of a supernova’s explosion is equivalent to 1028-megaton bomb. The explosion jettisons matter and dust at 15,000 to 40,000 km per sec.

Buso’s discovery stepped beyond the explosion of a supernova. In the past, famous astronomers like John Flamsteed, Tycho Brahe or Johannes Kepler have discovered and catalogued supernova in different locations of our galaxy, but Buso is the first person who actually saw live the spectacle of the birthing of the supernova and captured it on his camera. After careful scrutiny, the scientific community reported this event in Nature. It occurred 65 million light-years away in a galaxy called NGC-613. Catalogued on 20th September 2016, Buso, the amateur astronomer, had slipped in the pages of history by presenting the scientific community with some missing pieces to supernovae and the puzzle of the Universe.

The science of a supernova

Humanity has always watched the skies with awe. The night skies are a canvas for myths, divination, fantasies, narratives, arts – and also a canvas for science. This is the final frontier where the mysteries of the origin of life, earth, humans, galaxies and practically everything in the Universe lie. Gaining access to these mysteries and deciphering them is perhaps humanity’s biggest quest for knowledge.

Supernovae explosions are rare. Only three have occurred in our galaxy, the Milky Way. In the 17th century, Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed catalogued a supernova explosion in Cassiopeia A or Cas A in the constellation Cassiopeia. The death of this star occurred 340 years ago, ten thousand light years from Earth. The intensity of the explosion leads to stardust and gas spreading in a circular ring at the speed of 50 million km per hour. Tycho Brahe discovered B Cas supernova in 1572. While Johannes Kepler discovered a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus in 1604.
In addition to history, Buso’s discovery garnered him a place in Nature in collaboration with professional scientists. This collaboration and the associated data-sharing are examples of “citizen science” encouraged by NASA, as proclaimed in the organization’s webpage:

“You do not have to be a scientist, or even have a telescope, to hunt for supernovas. For example, in 2008 a teenager discovered a supernova. Then in January 2011, a 10-year-old girl from Canada discovered a supernova while looking at night sky images on her computer. The images, taken by an amateur astronomer, just happened to include a supernova. With some practice and the right equipment, you could find the next supernova!”

What better example could be that represents the relation between science, technology and society than this? Every data, every calculation, every observation matters. For the Universe is profound. In the ‘known Universe /Observable Universe’ itself there are at least two trillion galaxies. This is a great incentive for future Busos out there! May their tribe increase!

Anuradha Nayak

Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Lapland. Teaches Space Law. Interested in narratives of posthuman philosophy and law, technology, outer space and the  human genome.

References

AC Fabian, ‘A blast from the past’ (2008) 320 Science 1167.

D Castelvecchi, ‘Amateur astronomer catches first glimpses of the birth of a supernova: Images taken in Argentina track earliest stages in stellar explosion.’ Nature (21 February 2018).
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‘Explore the remains of a massive supernova’ National Geographic (11 January 2018) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQUMm_wWaCo> accessed 7 April 2018.

G Brumfiel, ‘Supernova mystery solved? : Sooty neutron star could lie at the heart of Cassiopeia A’ Nature (4 November 2009) <http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091104/full/news.2009.1063.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

H Fountain, ‘Two Trillion Galaxies, at the very least’ The New York Times (17 October 2016)
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/two-trillion-galaxies-at-the-very-least.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

‘Supernovae: Learn more about what happens when stars explode.’ National Geographic (21 February 2018).
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/supernovae/ > accessed 7 April 2018.

‘Supernovae’, NASA (6 March 2018) <https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/supernovae2.html> accessed 7 April 2018.

V Parry, ‘Eileen Collins: Space, the final frontier’ The Guardian (1 July 2005)
<https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jul/01/spaceexploration.research> accessed 7 April 2018.

‘What is a supernova?’ NASA (4 September 2013) <https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/featurs/nasa-knows/what-is-a-supernova.html> accessed 7 April 2018.