Evoking his early personal experiences, computer art pioneer Paul Brown wrote in the mid-1990s that to work with computers was akin to a ‘kiss of death’. According to him, as a result of sheer prejudice, the majority of people in the art world did not acknowledge such artworks as interesting, valid or important. Although recurrent in the literature concerned with such art, Brown’s claims must be confronted with the relative success of artistic practices interchangeably labelled as computer, new media, cybernetic, electronic or simply digital art. However, as attested by this proliferation of labels as well as by the development of numerous dedicated awards, degrees, galleries, museums, awards and publications, the success of such practices cannot be explained by artistic merit alone. Since many in the art world do not accept these artworks, as Brown and others suggest, how can we explain the works’ success in securing and developing their own space over the course of fifty years? This thesis investigates the emergence, development and institutionalisation of the field termed here as ‘art, science and technology’ (AST) between 1965 and the mid-1970s in Europe and North America. Also recognised by the aforementioned labels (among others), AST is an umbrella term that arguably designates the artistic practices interested in the adoption, theorisation and dissemination of post-war technologies and, particularly, information technology. Yet, despite this shared interest, here I argue that it is the particular institutional arrangement of AST that best distinguishes it from other artistic practices. A direct consequence of its rejection, AST’s emergence as a separate field is here explained via a revision of its initial social and cultural contexts. Arising from the technophile cultural climate of the long 1950s, and alongside the massive investments in technology made by Western governments in the same period, early AST developed not within traditional artistic spaces but within industries and universities. In the late 1960s, however, with the rise of economic, political and social uncertainties alongside escalating international conflicts, it became increasingly difficult to justify an art produced with the tools and support of the military– industrial complex. If on the one hand artists such as Brown understood these new artworks as central to art and its history, a normative development of a new technological era, on the other hand opponents located at the centre of contemporary art lambasted these new artworks for their supposedly scientific, commercial and aesthetic pretensions. Differently from previous attempts aimed at justifying the artistic worthiness of art produced with post-war technology, this thesis presents the history of such practices from the point of view of its own struggle – that is, its fight for survival. Ultimately, here I explain and describe how AST became detached from art while claiming its status. This is an effort not interested in the merits of these practices per se but, instead, concerned with AST’s development as an autonomous and prosperous field.

Thesis advisor: Eve Spangler / This study seeks to better understand the "public face" of human gene therapy through an examination of coverage of the technology in mainstream U.S. newspapers, news magazines, and online news sites from 1989 to 2011. By conducting a qualitative content analysis that employs a constant comparative method and uses the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software HyperRESEARCH, prevailing images and metaphors about human gene therapy are identified. These images and metaphors are analyzed through the lens of the sociology of technology, with particular attention given to technological determinism, geneticization, and the sociology of expectations. Further, their connection to issues of self and identity, embodiment, and illness meanings is explored. Four main types of images and metaphors emerge from this analysis: essentialist, fatalistic, expectant, and conflictive. While these types present an array of diverse (and sometimes conflicting) characterizations of human gene therapy, they all contribute to a positive, hopeful public face of the technology, despite its limited successes and sometimes tragic failures over the past three decades. The study considers the broader implications of these findings and addresses the role sociologists could play in helping the public to navigate the media discourse surrounding human gene therapy and other emerging medical technologies. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The Japanese scientist Kitasato Shibasaburo (1853-1931) was one of the founders of microbiology. A devoted student of Robert Koch, his successful collaborations with European scientists resulted in anti-serums for tetanus and diphtheria, the discovery of the causative agent of the bubonic plague, and a number of other major contributions to both science and public health. He achieved this in spite of condescending attitudes on the part of many of his peers and even resistance from within his own government. Yet there remains a paucity of academic writing on Kitasato in the English language, particularly when compared to his eminent contemporaries. What does exist constructs a narrative of an historically weak Japanese scientific establishment. This work challenges that perspective, and will examine Kitasato’s interactions with his fellow collaborators in the context of the considerable social, political, cultural, and linguistic pressures acting upon them in order to elucidate what made them so extraordinarily successful in surmounting these barriers. In so doing it aims to provide insight for the scientists of today – for whom international collaboration is the ever-increasing norm – as to how they have succeeded historically and can now successfully interact with both each other and the powers that organize them. / Graduate

Within the flourishing area of new economic geography, increased attention is currently being paid to a variety of 'alternative' sources of credit and finance. As one of these forms, British credit unions are currently particularly 'sexy'. One reason for this status relates to increasing interest (both within the academy and outside) in the role(s) credit unions can play in relieving the effects of financial exclusion and poverty throughout Britain. In the context of the growing concerns of 'New Labour' about these issues, credit unions are progressively being posited as one route to a more inclusive society, both in social and economic terms. However, through an analysis that positions credit unions as 'civil', embodied, institutions in the specific context of their development in Kingston upon Hull, this thesis proposes that the achievement of such a goal is not a straightforward issue. This work questions the extent to which British credit unions have historically contributed towards financial inclusion, finding that such evidence remains partial and somewhat underlain by a 'faith' in the merits of the credit union model. As a consequence, it emphasises that in taking the route to a more financially included society through increased usage of credit unions, a number of barriers to their development and growth will have to be surmounted. These barriers are highlighted within this work through an exploration of a prevailing credit union discourse, which draws attention to the linkages between the structural features of the British credit union environment, and the manifestations of these features within localities such as Hull. In so doing, it concludes by outlining a number of challenges and changes facing the British movement that are reflective of a growing awareness of these barriers and their effects. It is argued that these features will broadly affect (and effect) the contribution made by credit unions within a more (financially) inclusive society in the years to come.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-161). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This dissertation examines Soviet theoretical and methodological perspectives on ethnicity; the impact of political and economic policies on the study of ethnicity in the Soviet Union; and the impact of these policies on Soviet nationalities. In order to ground the theoretical discussions of ethnicity, I examine nationalities policy among two ethnic groups: the Chukchi and Asiatic Eskimo of the Soviet Far North. The degree to which these people have been able to retain "traditional" forms of their herding and hunting economies is seen, by both the state and the peoples themselves, as having a serious impact on the ability of groups to maintain their ethnic identity and cultural autonomy. In Soviet research and politics there is no doubt that ethnicity is a very real force which can have a dramatic impact on economic, political, and cultural processes, and as such is not a concept to be dealt with only in theoretical discussions, but through practical policies applied to daily life as well. Marxist-Leninist theory has provided a common framework for both the state and ethnography. The role of ethnographers has been to strengthen Marxist-Leninist theory in these areas where it is most deficient and to aid in the implementation of policy by providing information and an understanding of the peoples and cultures to which policy is directed in the Soviet Union. While development policies have varied to take into account the wide range of social and economic conditions of the minorities, all peoples and cultures have eventually been fit into the bureaucratic structure of the Soviet state. The problem of ethnicity will be examined in this dissertation at two levels. The first level is that of theory, and looks at how the Soviets approach ethnicity as a field of study, and how it fits into their world-view. The second level is that of how nationalities policies, which attempt to integrate Marxist-Leninist theory with the realities of social, economic and political life in the multinational Soviet Union, have been implemented in the Soviet Far North.

No description available.

This thesis presents an ethnographic study of the role of users in user-centered design. It is written from the perspective of science and technology studies, in particular developments in actor-network theory, and draws on the notion of the assemblage from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The data for this thesis derives from a six-month field study of the routine discourse and practices of user-centered designers working for a multinational microprocessor manufacturer. The central argument of this thesis is that users are assembled along with the new technologies whose design they resource, as well as with new configurations of socio-cultural life that they bring into view. Informing this argument are two interrelated insights. First, user-centered and participatory design processes involve interminglings of human and non-human actors. Second, users are occasioned in such processes as sociotechnical assemblages. Accordingly, this thesis: (1) reviews how the user is variously applied as a practico-theoretical concern within human-computer interaction (HCI) and as an object of analysis within the sociology and history of technology; (2) outlines a methodology for studying users variously enacted within design practice; (3) examines how a non-user is constructed and re-constructed during the development of a diabetes related technology; (4) examines how designers accomplish user-involvement by way of a gendered persona; (5) examines how the making of a technology for people suffering from obesity included multiple users that served to format the designers’ immediate practical concerns, as well as the management of future expectations; (6) examines how users serve as a means for conducting ethnography-in-design. The thesis concludes with a theoretically informed reflection on user assemblages as devices that: do representation; resource designers’ socio-material management of futures; perform modalities of scale associated with technological and product development; and mediate different forms of accountability.

,Was können Soziolog_innen Nützliches für die Gesellschaft tun?‘ Es gibt verschiedene Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven auf diese Frage zu antworten. Ich wähle eine gesellschafttheoretische und setzte an bei der Systemtheorie von Niklas Luhmann. ,Etwas Nützliches tun?‘, dies können Soziolog_innen nicht nur, und vielleicht auch nicht in erster Linie, indem Sie sich als Expert_innen für bestimmte Themenbereiche zu Wort melden und fest strukturiertes Fachwissen zur konkreten Problemlösung anbieten. Folgt man der systemtheoretischen Perspektive von Niklas Luhmann, so erhält man zunächst eher einen ,Überblick‘ über die ,Gesellschaft‘ als Ganzes und ihrer Ausdifferenzierung in verschiedene funktionale Teilsysteme (Wirtschaft, Politik, Wissenschaft, Kunst, Erziehung, u.a.), sowie deren Autonomie und dann deren dennoch wechselseitiger aufeinander bezogene Angewiesenheit, im Sinne des füreinander Zur – Verfügung- Stellens von Möglichkeitsbedingungen des je eigenen Operierens. Ein derartig abstrakter Blick, lässt die Frage nach der ,Nützlichkeit‘ soziologischer Reflektion schnell in den Hintergrund treten und man richtet es sich bequem ein im Elfenbeinturm faszinierender akademischer Begriffsspiele. Was man dabei schnell übersehen kann, ist, dass gerade der begrifflichen Abstraktion ein Potential inhärent ist, einen Beitrag für die Bearbeitung konkreter komplexer gesellschaftlicher Probleme zu liefern. In der vorliegenden Dissertation versuche ich, für diese Möglichkeit der Systemtheorie durch Arbeit an den Grundbegriffen quasi eine Vorarbeit zu leisten und mit Hilfe einer Integration pragmatistischer Modelle eine Perspektive zu entwickeln, die in der Lage ist, brückenbildende Kommunikationsprozesse zwischen den (relativ) autonomen Funktionssystemen zunächst theoretisch- begrifflich zu beschreiben. Die Arbeit ist so konzipiert, dass in einem weiteren Schritt im Anschluss an die durchgeführte Theoriearbeit ein Konzept ,soziologischer Gesellschaftsberatung‘ entwickelt werden kann, das sich der Aufgabe widmet, komplexe, langfristige Problemkonstellationen soziologisch zu beobachten und zu bearbeiten.

e-Research in the Life Sciences examines the use of online tools in the life sciences and finds that their use has significant impact, namely the formation of a Scientific/Intellectual Movement (SIM) (Frickel & Gross, 2005) complemented by a Computerisation Movement (CM) (Kling & Iacono, 1994) which is mobilising global electronic resources to form visible colleges of life science researchers, who are enrolling others and successfully promoting their open science goals via mainstream scientific literature. Those within this movement are also using these online tools to change their work practices, producing scientific knowledge in a highly networked and distributed group which has less regard for traditional institutional and disciplinary boundaries. This thesis, by combining ideas about SIMs and CMs, fills a gap in research that is typically confined to treating new tools as a part of scientific communication or in specialist areas like distributed collaboration but not in terms of broader changes in science. Case studies have been conducted for three types of online tools: the scientific social networking tool FriendFeed, open laboratory notebooks, and science blogs. Data have been collected from semi-structured interviews, and the online writings of research participants. The case studies of exemplary use by scientists of the web form a baseline for future studies in the area. Boundaries between formal and informal scholarly communication are now blurred. At the formal level, which peer-reviewed print journals continue, many academic publishers now also have online open access, frequently in advance of print publication. At the informal level, what used to be confined to water-cooler chat and the conference circuit is now also discussed on mailing lists, forums and blogs (Borgman, 2007). As these online tools generate new practices they have potential to affect future academic assessment and dissemination practices.