The following open panel at the 2019 STS Conference in Graz (6-7 May
2019) may be of interest to list members.
Deadline for abstract submission: January 21^st (16:00).
*S27: Valuing and knowing: studying the entanglement of valuation and
knowledge practices***
Organizers: ASDAL, Kristin (University of Oslo), Norway,
FOCHLER, Maximilian (University of Vienna), Austria
Practices of ascribing and measuring value are crucial to virtually
every domain of contemporary societies. Be it the forecast of the
expected generation of economic value related to a specific policy
action, the quantification of the number of quality-adjusted months of
life gained through a specific medical treatment, the assessment of
whether the quality of an academic’s work merits tenure or the screening
of basic competencies of children in education; in each of these
instances (and many more) how value is being ascribed will have
important practical and normative consequences.
This panel focuses on the complex relations of valuation and knowledge
practices. On the one hand, virtually all valuation practices build on
practices and infrastructures of knowing. Whether it is school
performance or the level of Co2 emissions, valuation practices build on
knowledge practices defining the objects to be valued and measured, and
the means through which this can be done. Often, these knowledge
practices are made durable in knowledge infrastructures, such as
databases or standardized indicator systems. On the other hand,
knowledge practices themselves are strongly influenced by practices and
regimes of valuation that define what counts as good knowledge in a
specific context. For example, citation metrics affect the perceived
authority of both scientists and the knowledge they produce, and
standards for considering evidence, for example in regulatory decisions,
may exclude specific knowledge practices.
This panel calls for papers from Science and Technology Studies and
Valuation Studies that address the co-production of knowledge and
valuation practices. It deliberately does not focus on a specific
topical domain, but invites contributions focusing on very different
fields of practice to invite comparison.
We also welcome methodological reflections on how to study valuation
practices as knowledge practices (and vice versa). What is the relation
of recent work on this to older traditions of studying knowledge
production practices and their contexts (such as the laboratory
studies)? Which methodological approaches are apt to study the complex
entanglements of knowledge and valuation practices.
KEYWORDS: valuation, knowledge production, infrastructure,
quantification, methods
More information: https://sts-conference.isds.tugraz.at/event/5/
--
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Maximilian Fochler
Deputy Head of Department / Deputy Director of the Sociology Studies Programme
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University of Vienna
Universitaetsstrasse 7 /Stg. II/ 6. Stock (NIG)
1010 Wien / Austria
Tel.: 0043-1-4277-49613; Fax: 0043-1-4277-9496
http://sts.univie.ac.at/
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