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In the past forty years, Bruno Latour's claim that Science Is Politics By Other Means (SIPBOM) has been the underlying creed of Science and Technology Studies (STS), most of us simply taking it for granted. In contrast, this special issue is predicated on the observation of an enduring lack of exegesis of this catchphrase so remarkable that is has caused an outcry among natural scientists, echoed in some social science quarters. If SIPBOM has been a resource for decades, by turning it into a topic this special issue revisits one of the most exciting and challenging insights of contemporary thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we build upon Bruno Latour's political writings to address the current impasse regarding algorithms in public life. We assert that the increasing difficulties at governing algorithms—be they qualified as "machine learning," "big data," or "artificial intelligence"—can be related to their current ontological thinness: deriving from constricted views on theoretical practices, algorithms' standard definition as problem-solving computerized methods provides poor grips for affective dissensions. We then emphasize on the role historical and ethnographic studies of algorithms can potentially play in the politicization of algorithms. By both digging into the genealogy of algorithms' constricted definition and by making their contemporary constitutive relationships more visible, both historical and ethnographic studies can contribute to vascularizing algorithms and making them objects of enlarged disputes. We conclude by giving a flavor of the political potential of the vascularization efforts we call for, using materials from an ethnographic study conducted in a computer science laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over five decades, the relationships between philosophy of science, philosophy of technology and the field of STS have been broad and diverse, although stand-offs, controversies and disputes have prevailed. However, the analysis from philosophy to STS studies shows that, after the influence of the science wars, a new scenario of novel and constructive encounters has emerged between these fields, especially in some specific philosophical perspectives on science and technology, which, unfortunately, are still little known. Some of these include studies of experimentation, the practical turn in the philosophy of science, the development of historical epistemology, the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology, and the approach to the moral relevance of artefacts. The analysis of the encounters between these philosophical perspectives and the STS field can serve to stimulate and invite the development of other possible encounters, such as those showed in this thematic dossier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic investigation into the sound system of a large-scale performance, the article seeks to understand what happens to digitally processed sound in a situation where the professionals involved are trying to produce a "natural sound". The investigation pays attention to the ontology of what makes up sound in order to answer the question of its naturalness and how its different materialities contribute to it. The field of investigation is a celebration that has taken place only once a generation, for three centuries, and mobilises several thousand people, including about twenty sound engineers. This article gives an account of sound as a practical achievement, the fruit of multiple conversions, and cleaning operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay review evaluates recent contributions in the field of maintenance and repair studies with a focus on a special issue of Tecnoscienza on this research field and a volume edited by Ignaz Strebel, Alain Bovet, and Philippe Sormani entitled Repair Work Ethnographies: Revisiting Breakdown, Relocating Materiality. These two publications provide important insights into empirical investigations of maintenance and repair work which raise stimulating questions for engineering studies, where these activities are often overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a general discussion on the topic of Digital Humanities (DH) understood as a scientific and technological field that is being built worldwide and in which we should think, from the beginning, on the issue of relations between some research centers in the North that propel this field and others that follow the movement. To found this reflection, it retakes the analysis of the role of Science and Technology (S & T) in development and in a more precise way it observes what happens or what could happen in the field of DH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a journey through the ways of thinking about technology and its relationships to societies. It reminds us contributions of some authors useful in finding the words to address this issue: technology and its impacts on society; technical and human reality as a social construction. Also it emphasizes some of challenges around the issue of thinking the very articulations between technology and society. It wonders about how to think of technology and society not as separate objects but as a single reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that the equipping of intermediary objects is a central concern of engineers and technicians. Through the process of equipping, new properties are conferred on the intermediary object and this contributes to the shaping of the design space and collective work. I follow in particular how equipping is used in practices of mediation, temporal set-up and framework outlining and how it creates spaces of exchange. The argument developed is based on ethnographic studies of engineering design activities in the manufacturing industry and in a design office in charge of developing a large instrument for the CERN cyclotron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first stages of the modeling process remain thus far poorly studied, in particular the modeler's decision-making in regard to the inclusion and representation of environmental phenomena within the model. Anchoring itself in the theoretical and methodological framework of Science and Technology Studies, the present study aims at identifying and retracing the origin of the modeler's choices. Extensive, semi-constructed interviews were conducted with European and North American modelers in a variety of disciplines within Earth and Universe sciences. The outcome of the interviews sheds light on the role of different actors in transferring choices progressively incorporated in the modelers' practice, up to becoming self-evident. We introduce and engage the sociological concept of habits as an additional layer of analysis. Modeling habits can contribute to efficiency and expertise – provided their origin, epistemic load and implications in regard to collectives are assessed. • Modelers' narratives engage various actors in the justification of modeling choices. • Modeling choices are often transferred by these actors in an early career stage. • Choices of representations of natural phenomena anchor the modeler in collectives. • Modelling choices can be incorporated in a modeler's practice up to becoming habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of Earth surface numerical modelling provides an enlightening process in which to observe the journey of geoscientific concepts. Many concepts are not developed from scratch, but transferred by the modeller from his or her past experience and theoretical knowledge. Often loaded with epistemic stances, these concepts consciously or unconsciously anchor the Earth scientist in particular schools and scientific networks. When modelling is taught to university students, the selection of Earth science concepts is often made by the teaching staff. How do university lecturers select which concepts to transfer to their students, and with which objectives and implications? Answering these questions might help us to understand how Earth science concepts evolve over time and are passed on to future researchers. Adopting a methodology from social sciences to this aim, we conducted extensive interviews with university lecturers in a variety of Earth science disciplines in order to account for their approaches of the transfer process. Course material was additionally collected and analysed.Our first results reveal two antagonist, yet co-existing approaches. In most interviews, modelling education was perceived by lecturers as an opportunity for black-box "unpacking". The lecturers pursued the objective of making visible the concepts and formalizations their students might use in their future academic career. Before becoming "appliers" of concepts, the students were hence encouraged to look beyond the concepts and scrutinize their implications. At the same time, the interviewees considered themselves forced to render a variable amount of conceptualizations invisible, pre-made and black-boxed to the students. Concepts became mere buttons to click on and thus remained largely unexplained. Which concepts the university lecturers shed light on – and which ones they let in the shadow – did not only amount to personal decisions. The two processes ("unpacking" and "black-boxing") seemed tightly co-constructed by infrastructure, students' curricula and skills, material and human networks, perceived role of lecturers within the institution and disciplinary conceptions, among others – and were constantly re-negotiated. Exploring this co-construction, as we propose to do, is not merely of interest from an educational perspective. Rather, the negotiations and compromises upon what to pass on to upcoming researchers has much to teach us about our current perception of the activity of modelling – and about how we conceive and build its future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of markets for the poorest populations ( Base of the Pyramid [ BOP]) has become important for multinational companies ( MNCs), nongovernmental organizations, and public policies. Assuming that there is demand for very low price consumer products and that the main problem is one of access to those products, the challenge for MNCs is to reconfigure the whole of the corporate process accordingly. The article follows BOP theory and companies' actual innovation. It looks at the definitions of the BOP market, the representation of BOP consumers, and local heterogeneous configurations of actors. Based on fieldwork with an MNC (specializing in electrical equipment) investigating a BOP business, it investigates the work undertaken by managers to build this market innovation. It explores the paradoxical frontiers of consumption and aid to the poorest populations and feeds the reflexion of BOP policies by opening it up toward a diversity of alternatives and possible configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a large French hospital, a group of professional experts (including physicians and software engineers) are working on the computerization of a blood-transfusion traceability device. By focusing on a particular moment in this slow process of design, we analyze their collaborative practices during a work session. The analysis takes a praxeological and interactionist approach and is inspired by discussions on the role of artifacts in social practices currently developed within various research frameworks in this field: activity theory, distributed cognition, conversation analysis, and actor network theory. After a brief presentation of the place of objects and artifacts in these ways of approaching action and human cognition, we show how the collective activity analyzed here is generated by the interweaving of discursive, gestural, and artifactual resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]