2019 Readings

General Readings

*Jasanoff, Sheila, “Controversy Studies.” In Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Oxford University Press, Forthcoming.

*Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?.” In The Whale and the Reactor, pp. 19-39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

*Jasanoff, Sheila. “Back from the Brink: Truth and Trust in the Public Sphere.” Issues in Science and Technology XXXIII, no. 4 (2017).

Strongly Recommended

Jasanoff, Sheila. “Technologies of Humility: Citizen Participation in Governing Science.” Minerva 41, no. 3 (2003): 223–244.

Jasanoff, Sheila and Hilton Simmet. “No Funeral Bells: Public Reason in a ‘Post-Truth’ Age.” Social Studies of Science 47, no. 5 (2017): 751-770.

Monday, August 12th 

Session 1: Classic Controversies

Matthew Bunn and Stephen Hilgartner

*Pfotenhauer, Sebastian M., Christopher F. Jones, Krishanu Saha, and Sheila Jasanoff. “Learning from Fukushima.” Issues in Science and Technology 28, no. 3 (2012): 79-84.

Recommended

Lyman, Edwin, Michael Schoeppner, and Frank von Hippel. “Nuclear safety regulation in the post-Fukushima era.” Science 356, no. 6340 (2017): 808-809.

Tuesday, August 13th

Session 2: Environmental Governance

Pierre-Benoit Joly and Sheila Jasanoff

*Bonneuil, Christophe, Pierre-Benoit Joly, and Claire Marris. “Disentrenching Experiment: The Construction of GM—Crop Field Trials as a Social Problem.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 33, no. 2 (2008): 201-229.

Session 3: Expertise in Law and Science

Sheila Jasanoff

*Jasanoff, Sheila. “Science, Common Sense & Judicial Power in US Courts.” Daedalus 147, no. 4 (2018): 15-27.

Aziza Ahmed

*Greenhouse, Linda. “The Supreme Court & Science: A Case in Point.” Daedalus 147, no. 4 (2018): 28-40.

Recommended

Texas Medical Providers Performing Abortion Services v. Lakey 667 F3d. 570(2012).

David Kennedy

*Kennedy, David. “Afterword.” In A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy, pp 281-314. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Recommended

Kennedy, David. “Law and the Global Dynamics of Distribution.” In A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy, pp 171-217. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Wednesday, August 14th

Session 4: Rule of Experts: Standards and their Failures

Lawrence Busch

*Busch, Lawrence. “The New Autocracy in Food and Agriculture.” In  Ecology, Capitalism and the New Agricultural Economy: The Second Great Transformation, edited by G. Allaire and B. Daviron, pp. 95-109. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018.

Recommended

Busch, Lawrence. “The Private Governance of Food: Equitable Exchange or Bizarre Bazaar?” Agriculture and Human Values 28, no. 3 (2011): 345-352.

Dan Danielsen

*Danielsen, Dan. “Beyond Corporate Governance: Why a New Approach to the Study of Corporate Law is Needed to Address Global Inequality and Economic Development.” In Research Handbook on Political Economy and Law, edited by U. Mattei and J. Haskell. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2015. 

Recommended

Danielsen, Dan. “Situating Human Rights Approaches to Corporate Accountability in the Political Economy of Supply Chain Capitalism.” Forthcoming. 

Thursday, August 15th

Session 5: Public Understanding and Democracy

Alondra Nelson and Ben Hurlbut

*Social Science Research Center. “To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.” https://www.ssrc.org/to-secure-knowledge/.

Brice Laurent and Jack Stilgoe

*Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. “Nanotechnology: A New Regime for the Public in Science?.” Scientiae Studia 10, no. SPE (2012): 85-94.

Recommended

Hariharan, Seeta. “A Warning for Cities: Become Citizen-Centric or Fail.” Smart Cities Dive. February 13, 2019. 

Friday, August 16th

Session 7: Innovation, Risk and Responsibility

Clark Miller

*Barry-Jester, Anna Maria. “What Went Wrong in Flint.” FiveThirtyEight. January 26, 2016. 

Recommended

Brand-Miller, Jennie, Janette Brand Miller, Kaye Foster-Powell, and Johanna Burani. “All About the Glycemic Index.” In The New Glucose Revolution Pocket Guide to Diabetes, pp. 29-48. New York: Marlowe, 2003. 

Miller, Clark. “Knowledge and Democracy: The Epistemics of Self-Governance.” In Science and Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond, pp. 198-219. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Stephen Hilgartner

*Phelan et al., “Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51 (2010): S28-S40. 

*Insurance Circular Letter No. 1 (2019), Department of Financial Services, “Use of External Consumer Data and Information Sources in Underwriting for Life Insurance.”

Jack Stilgoe

*Stilgoe, Jack. “Machine Learning, Social Learning and the Governance of Self-Driving Cars.” Social Studies of Science 48, no. 1 (2018): 25-56.

Recommended

Stilgoe, Jack. “Self-Driving Cars Will Take a While to Get Right.” Nature Machine Intelligence 1, no. 5 (2019): 202.

Additional Articles

A. Applebaum,”Italians Decided to Fight a Conspiracy Theory. Here’s What Happened Next,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2019. 

A.M. Barry-Jester, “What Went Wrong in Flint,” FiveThirtyEight, January 26, 2016.

A. Becket, “The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism,” The Guardian, June 25, 2019.

N. Boudette, “Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars are ‘Way in the Future,’” The New York Times, July 17, 2019.

J.E. Bromwich, “Death of a Biohacker,” New York Times, May 19, 2018.

D. Cox, “The Roundup row: is the world’s most popular weedkiller carcinogenic?” The Guardian, March 9, 2019.

J. Donovan and B. Paris, “Beware the Cheapfakes,” Slate Magazine, June 12, 2019. 

D. V. Drehle, “There’s no scientific consensus that humanity is doomed,” Washington Post, June 25, 2019.

L. Friedman, “E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math,” New York Times, May 20, 2019.

N. Gilbert, “GM crop escapes into the American wild,” Nature News, August 6, 2010.

R. Godwin, “One giant … lie? Why so many people still think the moon landings were faked,” The Guardian, July 10, 2019, 

J. Healy, “When Can Fetuses Feel Pain? Utah Abortion Law and Doctors Are at Odds,” New York Times, May 4, 2016.

A. Hollis-Brusky and R. VanSickle-Ward, “Here are Two Ways that Breyer’s Wonky Opinion in Whole Women’s Health Could Transform Abortion Politics,” Washington Post, July 3, 2016.

I.L.O. “The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath,” International Labor Organization. (See also Safi 2018).

C. F. Jones, “Fraud, Failure, and Frustration: This Is the Story of America’s First Energy Transition,” The Atlantic, April 15, 2014.

Kingsbury, “In Trump I Trust,” New York Times, July 16, 2019.

N. Klein, “How science is telling us all to revolt,” New Statesmen, October 29, 2013.

J. Lettieri and S. Glickman, “Economic Inequality and Health Inequality Are Inextricably Linked,” CITYLAB, December 5, 2017.

J. Loeffler, “Boeing 737 MAX 8 Likely Grounded for Rest of 2019 After New Concerns Raised,” Interesting Engineering, July 29, 2019.

Matei, “1.5 million people have signed up to storm Area 51. What could go wrong?” The Guardian, July 17, 2019.

J. Meek, “Somerdale to Skarbimierz,” London Review of Books, April 20, 2017.

M. Molina and D. Z. Zaelke, “A Climate Success Story to Build On,” New York Times, September 25, 2012.

K. Munger, “The Rise and Fall of the Palo Alto Consensus,” New York Times, July 10, 2019.

E. Peltier et al., “Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved,” New York Times, July 17, 2019.

M. Read, “How Much of the Internet is Fake? Turns out, a lot of it, actually,” New York Magazine, December 16, 2018.

A. C. Revkin, “From Lynas to Pollan, Agreement that Golden Rice Trials Should Proceed,” New York Times, August 27, 2013.

M. Rich, “Struggling With Japan’s Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Disaster,” New York Times, March 11, 2017.

M. Safi, “Bangladesh to eject safety inspectors brought in after Rana Plaza disaster,” The Guardian, November 18, 2018.

M. Sanger-Katz, “Income Inequality: It’s Also Bad for Your Health,” New York Times, March 30, 2015.

S. Saxe, “I’m an Engineer, and I’m Not Buying Into ‘Smart’ Cities,” New York Times, July 16, 2019.

Various authors, “The Rev-up: Imagining a 20% Self-Driving World,” New York Times Magazine, November 8, 2017.

J.C. Wong, “’We all suffer’: why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed,” The Guardian, July 1, 2019.

A. Zurcher, “Scott Pruitt resigns: The EPA’s chief’s long list of controversies,” BBC News, July 5, 2018.