Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences

Front matter

Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 31

Karen Kastenhofer Susan Molyneux-Hodgson Editors

Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences

Preface

This volume resulted from two conference panels and one dedicated workshop. In September 2014, Susan Molyneux-Hodgson (then University of Sheffield) and Morgan Meyer (then Agro ParisTech) organised a panel on ‘Synthesising futures: Analysing the socio-technical production of knowledge and communities’ at the biennial conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in Torun, Poland. Two years later, in September 2016, Karen Kastenhofer (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Sarah Sch6nbauer (then University of Vienna), and Niki Vermeulen (University of Edinburgh) organised a track on arelated theme, ‘(Techno)science by other means of communality and identity’, at the EASST conference in Barcelona, Spain. Then, in February 2017, Karen Kastenhofer (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Martina Merz (Alpen Adria University Klagenfurt), Ulrike Felt, Max Fochler, Anna Pichelstorfer (University of Vienna), and Niki Vermeulen (University of Edinburgh) organised a three day workshop on ‘Community and identity in contemporary technosciences’ in Vienna, Austria,! co-funded by EASST, STS Austria, and the Austrian Science Fund (via project V 383-G15). This final event sought to bring the various strands of the almost 3-year discussion into dialogue with each other and establish a statement on the state of the art on community and identity in technoscience.

The 2017 Vienna workshop saw 16 papers presented and discussed. Nine of those papers have now been revised and written up for this volume, and four further contributions have been solicited from the two previous events. We want to thank all the participants involved in the conferences and workshop — whether speaking or in the audiences — for their contributions to this collective endeavour!

The contributions in this volume benefited from an extensive review process that included not only the editorial board of the Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook series and the guest editors of this volume but also a large number of external

‘http://www.sts-austria.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Programm_CIT_HP.pdf. Accessed 24 April 2019.

vi Preface reviewers that provided helpful feedback and thereby supported this project fundamentally. Among the latter feature Sandra Beaufays (University of Duisburg-Essen), Bernadette-Bensaude-Vincent (professor emeritus, Université Paris I Panthéon- Sorbonne), Alexander Bogner (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Jane Calvert (University of Edinburgh), Ana Delgado (University of Oslo), Max Fochler (University of Vienna), Scott Frickel (Brown University), Stephen Hilgartner (Cornell University), Sabina Leonelli (University of Exeter), Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer (Charles University, Prague), Sabine Maasen (Technical University of Munich/Munich Center for Technology in Society), Robert Meckin (University of Manchester), Morgan Meyer (Mines ParisTech, PSL University), Monika Nerland (University of Oslo), Bart Penders (Maastricht University), Simone Rödder (University of Hamburg), Philip Shapira (University of Manchester and Georgia Institute of Technology), Lisa Sigl (University of Vienna), Esther Turnhout (Wageningen University), Niki Vermeulen (University of Edinburgh), Caroline Wagner (Ohio State University), Bridgette Wessels (University of Glasgow), Matthias Wienroth (Newcastle University), and Sally Wyatt (Maastricht University) as reviewers of individual chapters and four anonymous reviewers of the entire volume.

We hope you find the volume as interesting and useful as we have found the process of discussing and collating contributors’ ideas!

Institute of Technology Assessment Karen Kastenhofer Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna, Austria

Department of Sociology, Philosophy Susan Molyneux-Hodgson and Anthropology

Exeter, UK

Contents

1 Making Sense of Community and Identity in Twenty-First Century Technoscience. : icer 6 cheb daa ed we ddd eae de eeabia 1 Karen Kastenhofer and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson

Part I Synthetic Communities

2 Remaining Central and Interdisciplinary: Conditions for Success of a Research Speciality at the University of Strasbourg (1961-2011)... 0.0.0.0... 0... eee eee 41 Marianne Noël

3 What Synthetic Biology Aims At: Review Articles Clemens Bliimel

4 The Emergence of Technoscientific Fields and the Benjamin Raimbault and Pierre-Benoit Joly

5 Self-Organisation and Steering in International Research Collaborauone:.:. 2246 £225 0de Se KR EKO R Ae idet SRE REED EROS 107 Inga Ulnicane

Béatrice Cointe

7 The Epistemic Importance of Novices: How Undergraduate Students Contribute to Engineering Laboratory Communities... . 145 Caitlin Donahue Wylie

8 Tracing Technoscientific Collectives in Synthetic Biology: Alexander Degelsegger-Marquez

Vili Contents

9 Community by Template? Considering the Role of Templates Juliane Jarke