Scholarly Works, Science, Technology, and Society

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404 Not Found: Quantitative Methods in Disability Studies
Blanchard, Aurelian; Blanchard, Enka; Shew, Ashley (SAGE, 2024-11-04)
Disability is sometimes theorised as existing between the world (including social norms and infrastructure) and the person (who gets labelled disabled in a ‘misfit’ between the world and them). Disability is often enacted through data systems and infrastructures and the history of disability studies reflects a fight against such systems. In this paper, we examine the fraught relationships between disability studies and data science — from institutions and historical marginalisation to current practices of policing and surveillance. We critique the resulting preeminence of qualitative methods in disability studies as one impediment to translating disability studies to data scientists and to effective policy-making. We then address hopeful movements to crip data studies, looking at work on AI and disability bias, crip technoscience, counterventional research, and cripped data.
Aesthetics of Otherness: Representation of #migrantcaravan and #caravanamigrante on Instagram
Rosa, Fernanda R.; Soto-Vasquez, Arthur D. (Sage, 2022-01)
This article examines the representation of the migrant caravan on Instagram showing how an aesthetics of otherness has prevailed in this representation. Aesthetics of otherness is the result of the interaction between platform users' selections and platform affordances that creates a gap between the marginalized other and the user. Based on a qualitative content analysis of posts with the hashtags #caravanamigrante and #migrantcaravan, this research reveals that the two hashtags form parallel, although not alike, communicative spaces where migrant caravan representation is mostly mediated by professionals and organizations interested in promoting their own work and not by the migrants themselves. Despite this trend, users posting with #caravanamigrante were less likely to hijack the intent of the public, more likely to reference reasons for migration, and overall less likely to employ the aesthetics of otherness, which point to the possibility of circumventing the role of the platform in shaping the representation of marginalized people and social justice movements.
Autoconstruction of the Media City: Tracing the Routes of Electronic Devices in the Global South
Prieto-Nanez, Fabian (2023-02)
Citation Politics: The Gender Gap in Internet Governance
Rosa, Fernanda R.; Anastácio, Kimberly; de Jesus, Maria Vitória; Veras, Hemanuel Jhosé A. (Elsevier, 2024-06-01)
This article proposes an informed debate on the politics of citation in internet governance (IG), focusing on gender. To this end, we use the Bibliographic Reference Index (BRI) to examine the prominence of female and male names in the IG references. The BRI is based on an action research process (“pesquisa-ação”), in which authors fill out information about their citation practices. The aim is to promote self-reflection on authors’ selection of references whilst collecting bibliographic data. We applied the BRI to 1113 citations from 35 papers published in the Proceedings of the Brazilian Internet Governance Research Network (REDE) throughout 2017–2021. Results show that male-gendered names were cited more than double the number of times of female-gendered names (47% vs. 20%). To situate these results vis-à-vis global IG, we analyze the gender gap in the curriculum of IG schools and courses, by applying the index to an Internet Governance Forum compilation of 22 IG syllabi and course programs, comprising 96 references and the names of 217 IG experts worldwide. Results show that female names authored only 19% of the syllabi readings and materials featured vs. 29% by men. Also, the gender rate among experts is 63% vs. 37% in favor of men. Based on the structural gender inequalities that we have found in global and local IG contexts, we recommend interventions to increase the conscious engagement with bibliography and syllabus preparation on two fronts: 1) we recommend the application of the BRI to IG syllabi and course programs to monitor and reduce the gender gap; and 2) we provide a citation diversity statement that IG scholars can add to their publications in order to promote self-reflection about their knowledge production and add transparency to the politics of citation in IG.
Code Ethnography and the Materiality of Power in Internet Governance
Rosa, Fernanda R. (Springer, 2022-09)
The purpose of this article is to discuss an ethnography of code, specifically code ethnography, a method for examining code as a socio-technical actor, considering its social, political, and economic dynamics in the context of digital infrastructures. While it can be applied to any code, the article presents the results of code ethnography application in the study of internet interconnection dynamics, having the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) as code and two of the largest internet exchange points (IXPs) in the world as points of data collection, DE-CIX Frankfurt, and IX.br Sao Paulo. The results show inequalities in the flows of information between the global North and the global South and concentration of power at the level of interconnection infrastructure hitherto unknown in the context of the political economy of the internet. Code ethnography is explained in terms of code assemblage, code literacy, and code materiality. It demonstrates the grammar of BGP in context, making its logical and physical dimensions visible in the analysis of the formation of giant internet nodes and infrastructural interdependencies in the circulation information infrastructure of the internet.
Code Switch: Rethinking Computer Expertise as Empowerment
Abbate, Janet E. (Virginia Tech, 2016-05-06)
Claims that technical mastery of computing and new media will provide a route to economic success for oppressed groups have become ubiquitous in American public discourse. From commercial enterprises like Codecademy, to grassroots nonprofits like Black Girls Code, to state mandates for computer science in public schools, learning to code has been positioned as a quick fix for structural disadvantage. But such claims fail to locate coding within larger discourses about race, gender, and capitalism that constrain its liberatory potential. This paper unpacks “code” as a keyword: a socially powerful term with multiple, contested, historically contingent uses. I will ask: How does the discourse around coding construct competence and authority—and does it tend to preserve or challenge technical expertise as a white male preserve? How is the current meaning of “code” derived in part from related keywords such as “STEM,” “diversity,” “innovation,” or “computational thinking”? What are the historical roots of the coding movement, and how do computer education projects of the 1960s reveal alternate possibilities for programming as an empowering practice? To what extent have women and minorities involved in coding efforts been able to define their own goals, priorities, and definitions of expertise and success?
Collaborative Workshops for Community Meaning-Making and Data Analyses: How Focus Groups Strengthen Data by Enhancing Understanding and Promoting Use
Allen, Barbara L.; Lees, Johanna; Cohen, Alison K.; Jeanjean, Maxime (MDPI, 2019-09-11)
Community-based participatory research is a growing approach, but often includes higher levels of community engagement in the research design and data collection stages than in the data interpretation stage. Involving study participants in this stage could further knowledge justice, science that aligns with and supports social justice agendas. This article reports on two community-based participatory environmental health surveys conducted between 2015 and 2019 in an industrial region near Marseille, France, and focuses specifically on our approach of organizing focus groups to directly involve residents and community stakeholders in the analysis and interpretation process. We found that, in these focus groups, residents triangulated across many different sources of information—study findings, local knowledge, and different types of expert knowledge—to reach conclusions about the health of their community and make recommendations for what should be done to improve community health outcomes. We conclude that involving residents in the data analysis and interpretation stage can promote epistemic justice and lead to final reports that are more useful to community stakeholders and decision-makers.
Combating Racialized and Gendered Ignorance: Theorizing a Transactional Pedagogy of Friendship
Olson, Philip; Gillman, Laura J. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
The article explores the problem of epistemological ignorance. Drawing on the literature of feminist epistemology, in particular the epistemologies of ignorance, it theorizes white ignorance and male ignorance and how it is possible to gain consciousness about one's ignorance, as well as how to be responsible for what one does not know. The article explores ignorance as unconscious habits that inform our mental schemas, our social interactions, and our physicality. It identifies and analyzes these habits of ignorance, drawing on our experiences as team teachers (one a philosophy professor, and the other a professor of women's studies and literary studies) who co-taught an interdisciplinary doctoral seminar in feminist epistemology. It describes and illustrates the pedagogical and scholarly processes that led us to view epistemology as a practice of inquiry that combats ignorance by demanding an inclusive partnership across traditional and counterhegemonic approaches to knowledge. The article claims that a transactional pedagogy of friendship makes possible the disruption and rehabituation of epistemic habits of ignorance, moving inquirers in the direction of more inclusive, reliable, and responsible knowledge.
Computational thinking and gender imbalance in computer science
Abbate, Janet E. (2025-01-06)
The percentage of female computer science majors is lower today at U.S. schools than in the 1980s, despite decades of effort by concerned computer scientists and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Researchers have addressed a variety of possible reasons, ranging from the lack of female role models, to sexism on campus and in the workplace, to conflicts between work and motherhood. More recently, efforts to attract women have focused on the content of computer science as a factor deterring women. In particular, recent studies have proposed that the subject will be more appealing to underrepresented groups — especially girls — if teachers emphasize “computational thinking.” The idea that computer science has its own special way of thinking, which can both appeal to women and be transferred to non-computing fields, has been a subject of enthusiasm but also debate among computer education experts. This paper explores the implications of the claim that teaching computational thinking can help undo the gender imbalance in computing, and what this says about computer science itself.
Cost-Effectiveness of Risk-Stratified Colorectal Cancer Screening Based on Polygenic Risk: Current Status and Future Potential
Naber, Steffie K.; Kundu, Suman; Kuntz, Karen M.; Dotson, W. David; Williams, Marc S.; Zauber, Ann G.; Calonge, Ned; Zallen, Doris T.; Ganiats, Theodore G.; Webber, Elizabeth M.; Goddard, Katrina A. B.; Henrikson, Nora B.; van Ballegooijen, Marjolein; Janssens, A. Cecile J. W.; Lansdorp-Vogelaar, Iris (2020-02)
Background: Although uniform colonoscopy screening reduces colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality, risk-based screening may be more efficient. We investigated whether CRC screening based on polygenic risk is a cost-effective alternative to current uniform screening, and if not, under what conditions it would be. Methods: The MISCAN-Colon model was used to simulate a hypothetical cohort of US 40-year-olds. Uniform screening was modeled as colonoscopy screening at ages 50, 60, and 70 years. For risk-stratified screening, individuals underwent polygenic testing with current and potential future discriminatory performance (area under the receiver-operating curve [AUC] of 0.60 and 0.65-0.80, respectively). Polygenic testing results were used to create risk groups, for which colonoscopy screening was optimized by varying the start age (40-60 years), end age (70-85 years), and interval (1-20 years). Results: With current discriminatory performance, optimal screening ranged from once-only colonoscopy at age 60 years for the lowest-risk group to six colonoscopies at ages 40-80 years for the highest-risk group. While maintaining the same health benefits, risk-stratified screening increased costs by $59 per person. Risk-stratified screening could become cost-effective if the AUC value would increase beyond 0.65, the price per polygenic test would drop to less than $141, or risk-stratified screening would lead to a 5% increase in screening participation. Conclusions: Currently, CRC screening based on polygenic risk is unlikely to be cost-effective compared with uniform screening. This is expected to change with a greater than 0.05 increase in AUC value, a greater than 30% reduction in polygenic testing costs, or a greater than 5% increase in adherence with screening.
Cradle of a revolution? The industrial transformation of Louisiana's lower Mississippi river
Allen, Barbara L. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006-01)
This article provides an overview of the petrochemical industry's transformation of Louisiana's Lower Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans from the early 1900s to the present. First there is a broad discussion of why the industry choose this location for development. The focus is then on a historical understanding of how the conditions for the environmental justice movement came to exist. These include: patterns of early land ownership with both race and class implications; early, systematic denial of employment to African Americans, willful lack of industry oversight on the part of regulators; and tax and development schemes that depleted local community coffers and services.
Cultivating intellectual community in academia: reflections from the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN)
Burch, Karly; Gugganig, Mascha; Guthman, Julie; Reisman, Emily; Comi, Matt; Brock, Samara; Kagliwal, Barkha; Freidberg, Susanne; Baur, Patrick; Heimstaedt, Cornelius; Sippel, Sarah Ruth; Speakman, Kelsey; Marquis, Sarah; Arguelles, Lucia; Biltekoff, Charlotte; Broad, Garrett; Bronson, Kelly; Faxon, Hilary; Frohlich, Xaq; Ghosh, Ritwick; Halfon, Saul; Legun, Katharine; Martin, Sarah J. (Springer, 2023-05)
Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships.
Custody of the corpse: controlling alkaline hydrolysis in US death care markets
Olson, P. R. (Routledge, 2016-02-14)
Cyborg-Technology Relations
Shew, Ashley; Earle, Joshua (TU Delft OPEN, 2024-11-08)
We advocate for a philosophizing of cyborg-technology relations that takes account disabled technology users. First, we sketch out how tech-driven ableism (“technoableism”) is present in most discourse about technology, and then address how ableism has shaped accounts of disability in philosophy more broadly too. We examine this in historical and media context, then turn to what an unapologetic disability-forward approach to cyborg-technology relations looks like, and what it means to listen to the cyborgs we know and love. This work draws from the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and STS work on crip technoscience. We situate this work mostly within North American media and history of disability and Silicon Valley boosterism on tech, but accounts of technology and of disability are not unique to these locations.
The Dilemma of Case Studies Resolved: The Virtues of Using Case Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science
Burian, Richard M. (MIT Press, 2001-12)
Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's ?dilemma of case studies?, and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put.
Disabled Dimensionalities: Normative expectations' impacts on disabled perceptions and spatialities
Blanchard, Enka; Shew, Ashley (OpenEdition, 2022)
As humans, we are expected to interact as fully functional 3D manipulators who can observe, handle,and act in three spatial dimensions. This is how users are considered in the design of many products and spaces. Ableism often gives people the perception that disabled people are inferior at manipulating, imagining, and navigating the world. We contest this perception using both our own experiences as disabled manipulators and narratives from other disabled people that speak to this presumption as limited imagination and consideration. In this theoretical contribution, we analyze the consequences of ableism in how spaces — digital, physical, imaginary in science fiction, present in practice and material configuration — operate in the way we think about the material and virtual world.
Does America Need More Innovators?
(MIT Press, 2019-04)
Corporate executives, politicians, and school board leaders agree—Americans must innovate. Innovation experts fuel this demand with books and services that instruct aspiring innovators in best practices, personal habits, and workplace cultures for fostering innovation. But critics have begun to question the unceasing promotion of innovation, pointing out its gadget-centric shallowness, the lack of diversity among innovators, and the unequal distribution of innovation's burdens and rewards. Meanwhile, reformers work to make the training of innovators more inclusive and the outcomes of innovation more responsible. This book offers an overdue critical exploration of today's global imperative to innovate by bringing together innovation's champions, critics, and reformers in conversation. The book presents an overview of innovator training, exploring the history, motivations, and philosophies of programs in private industry, universities, and government; offers a primer on critical innovation studies, with essays that historicize, contextualize, and problematize the drive to create innovators; and considers initiatives that seek to reform and reshape what it means to be an innovator.
The element of the table: Visual discourse and the preperiodic representation of chemical classification
Cohen, B. R. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
Emotions and Narrative Selves
Hardcastle, Valerie Gray (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003-12)
Engineers of Change
Wisnioski, Matthew H. (2014-02-18)

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