Reply to Radder

In his response to the Special Issue of this journal on "The Politics of SSK," Hans Radder makes two main points about the relations of politics and sociology of scientific knowledge. First, he argues that science and technology studies (STS) can and should go beyond descriptive analyses of the politics of science and technology, to engage in normative criticisms, assessments or recommendations. Significantly, however, he restricts his vision of this engagement to a certain type of STS normativity. Thus, the role for STS of offering reflexive critique of existing public issue-definitions goes hand-in-hand with the normative role of helping change existing definitions of agency, and of encouraging problematization of entrenched ideas of the human subject, and of human relations.