<p>This dissertation deals with curriculum debates concerning science, mathematics and technology within the Swedish secondary schools between 1900 and 1965. The aim of the study is to analyze different conceptions of these school subjects. How were they looked upon and presented during the debates? What kind of values and functions were they said to promote? I also discuss more principal questions regarding why the school subjects became objects for debate. Why did different actors engage in these discussions? A leading perspective of the study is that schools and their curricula often are used as arenas for larger debates concerning the role of science and technology in society. One of the reasons for this, I argue, is that a curriculum often is seen as representing a standpoint in these broader societal discussions. In the study, this is shown through a number of different debates concerning, for example, the amount of hours devoted to science, student conducted experiments, eugenics and environmental aspects. All of these issues demonstrate how the shape of curriculum was seen as having wider significance for society. An important reason for this is the connection between curriculum and future perspectives. Situations where a curriculum was to be rewritten were apprehended as opportunities to influence and secure the future. </p><p>Much previous work on curriculum matters has been occupied with the question of what curriculum “does” in schools; it includes and excludes certain ideas, it regulates and governs students to understand and reason about themselves in specific ways. In relation to this, my own research deals with what curriculum – or rather <i>the image</i> of curriculum – does to other groups in society. Through analyzing the engagement of teachers, politicians, authors and editors, I conclude that a curriculum can threaten or promise future perspectives and values that are important to these groups. </p>

This dissertation deals with curriculum debates concerning science, mathematics and technology within the Swedish secondary schools between 1900 and 1965. The aim of the study is to analyze different conceptions of these school subjects. How were they looked upon and presented during the debates? What kind of values and functions were they said to promote? I also discuss more principal questions regarding why the school subjects became objects for debate. Why did different actors engage in these discussions? A leading perspective of the study is that schools and their curricula often are used as arenas for larger debates concerning the role of science and technology in society. One of the reasons for this, I argue, is that a curriculum often is seen as representing a standpoint in these broader societal discussions. In the study, this is shown through a number of different debates concerning, for example, the amount of hours devoted to science, student conducted experiments, eugenics and environmental aspects. All of these issues demonstrate how the shape of curriculum was seen as having wider significance for society. An important reason for this is the connection between curriculum and future perspectives. Situations where a curriculum was to be rewritten were apprehended as opportunities to influence and secure the future. Much previous work on curriculum matters has been occupied with the question of what curriculum “does” in schools; it includes and excludes certain ideas, it regulates and governs students to understand and reason about themselves in specific ways. In relation to this, my own research deals with what curriculum – or rather the image of curriculum – does to other groups in society. Through analyzing the engagement of teachers, politicians, authors and editors, I conclude that a curriculum can threaten or promise future perspectives and values that are important to these groups.

[pt] O objetivo deste trabalho consiste em tentar compreender a cultura jovem das camadas médias urbanas brasileiras a partir da análise antropológica de uma representação de ciência. Em um primeiro momento, tentamos delinear um perfil do jovem destas camadas médias através da discussão teórica das idéias de crise de autoridade e falta de limites, muitas vezes empregadas pelo senso comum na classificação social das relações no seio da família e do próprio jovem. Em seguida, debruçamo-nos sobre um item de consumo deste jovem, uma revista de divulgação científica: Superinteressante, da Editora Abril. Através da interpretação etnográfica das reportagens de capa publicadas durante o primeiro semestre de 2007 em Superinteressante, buscamos compreender qual seria a noção de ciência ali divulgada e, portanto, consumida por seus jovens leitores. / [en] The aim of this work consists in trying to understand Brazilian urban middle-class youth culture from an anthropological analysis of a representation of science. First, we try to delineate a profile of middle-class youngsters through a theoretical discussion of the ideas of authority crisis and lack of limits, often used by common sense in the social classification of relations within the family and of youngsters themselves. In another moment, we lean over a consummation item of youngsters, a scientific divulgation magazine: Superinteressante, from Editora Abril. Through the ethnographical interpretation of the cover stories published in Superinteressante during the first semester of 2007, we seek to understand the notion of science divulged within the magazine and, therefore, consumed by its young readers.

This thesis examines how the first 10 seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–) engage with discourses on science. Investigating CSI’s representation of scientific practices and knowledge, it explicitly attempts to look beyond the generic assumption that forensic crime dramas simply ‘celebrate’ science. The material is analysed at three different levels, studying CSI’s wider cultural discursive context, genre linkages, and audio-visual form. In order to fully account for the series’ specificity, the thesis undertakes comparative analyses of earlier forensic crime dramas and other relevant audio-visual material. Close textual readings of certain thematic tropes, narrative devices and visual imagery in CSI are thus supplemented by historical studies of their extended generic backgrounds. This textual-historical approach generates a general argument that CSI dramatizes and evokes a number of different, and often contradictory, scientific ideas, perspectives and discursive shifts. The thesis concludes that CSI stages a transnational cultural forum, simultaneously engaging with residual, dominant and emergent discourses on science.  Throughout, close attention is paid to the multiple perspectives and viewpoints that allow the series to appeal to a wide and heterogeneous global audience. Furthermore, the thesis asserts that CSI specifically articulates a post-genomic structure of feeling, which begins to express the wider cultural implications of an emergent discursive shift whereby the instrumentalisation of molecular science seemingly offers more possibilities for human intervention into biological processes. Thus, the study demonstrates how CSI’s discourse on science treats recent scientific developments as engendering a cultural process of redefinition, questioning foundational concepts such as truth, identity, body, kinship and emotions.

My disertation theses explores the intricate relationship between art, science and photography in the framework of the contemporary culture. Clearly outlined research areas open up the subject to a broader theoretical examination to underpin the artistic strategies that can be employed in the practial research. The resulting artwork interprets the domain of particle physics in a series of artworks. First area of the research delves into the domain of images and seeks to understand the relationship between the images of art and science in a broader sense. Second area investigates ambiguous medium of photography as both tool of science and art. Third area is an overview of the history of representation of the subatomic world and issues related to representing what is in fact unrepresentable. Fourth seeks to find epistemic and conceptual connection between art and science and their interdisciplinary dialogue as Sci-Art. The fifth part introduces artworks that reflect the critical egangement with the theoretical research and the scientific method by building the instrument for the observation of the cosmic rays. Sources for the theoretical framework are largely drawn from the academic literature written in the UK and USA where the topics explored in the theses have been studied in depth. The time scope considered in the theses encompasses 1990's of the 20. century up utill the present day.