[Commlist] CfP for Panel at Nordic STS - Flipping the Tables: Or an STS of humanities and social sciences

We look forward to your submissions in the following panel: "Flipping 
the Tables: Or an STS of humanities and social sciences" at the 7th 
Nordic STS Conference, 11-13 June 2025 in Stockholm. The submission is 
open till 1st March 2025.

https://www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abstracts/ 
<https://www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abstracts/>

*Title of the panel*: Flipping the Tables: Or an STS of humanities and 
social sciences
*Organisers*
Cheshta Arora, Western Norway Research Institute, (_car /at/ vestforsk.no) 
<mailto:(car /at/ vestforsk.no)>_
Debarun Sarkar, University of Bergen, (_debarun.sarkar /at/ uib.no) 
<mailto:(debarun.sarkar /at/ uib.no)>_
*A description of the issues and themes that the panel will address:*
Though the field of science and technology studies (STS) has been able 
to interrogate the messy contours of technoscience, the panel seeks to 
flip the tables, to re-deploy and re-think the methods and sensibilities 
that have been developed in relationship to the natural science and 
technological domains and turn the gaze towards humanities and social 
sciences. Even though humanities and social sciences, in particular the 
allied disciplines of anthropology/sociology, celebrate and defend 
self-referentiality, relationality and perspectivism as key 
sensibilities, there has been a reluctance to turn the gaze towards the 
labour one does (Arora and Sarkar 2022), the flow of capital that 
enables these disciplines in the contemporary, and the nitty-gritty of 
how knowledge is produced in these disciplines. Following Rabinow 
(1986) and echoing Sangren (2007), Hey notes the hesitancy of 
anthropologists/sociologists “in addressing the significance of 
‘corridor talks’” (Hey 2001, 67) and how they appear or disappear in the 
“documents” (Smith 1974), or “inscriptions” (Latour and Woolgar 
1986) emerging from these disciplinary practices. Similar to the ability 
of science and technology studies “to document and ask questions 
surrounding the practice of scientific knowledge-making in the lab and 
outside”, the panel calls for interrogating “knowledge-making practices 
in the fields of social science” and humanities (Sarkar 2022, 115).
The mandate for interdisciplinarity has been a long-standing one 
(Apostel et al. 1972) and has been formalised in the European Union due 
to the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. 
However, this long-standing call and formalisation has not meant smooth 
integration, a strong tradition of cross-disciplinary collaboration or 
non-hierarchical collaborations (Bruce et al. 2004; Clark and Wallace 
2015; Arora and Prabhakar 2023). Differences between 
trans-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity, and multi-disciplinarity are 
often noted to articulate the spectrum of collaboration between disciplines.
The changes in modes of knowledge production (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 
2000) have also echoed in debates in the scientific method as complexity 
has emerged over the decades as the key problematic (Prigogine and 
Stengers 1997; Kitchin 2014). These changes have affected the everyday 
lives of social sciences and humanities as much as the natural sciences 
and engineering disciplines in terms of materials, interfaces, and 
infrastructures. However, an adequate global account of these changes 
within academic labour and knowledge production in the humanities and 
social sciences is lacking. The panel seeks papers and provocations that 
can think through the conditions of knowledge production, the process of 
hiring, grant-making, research-funding, tenure-track hiring, etc” (Arora 
and Sarkar 2022) and how knowledge is “assembled, accumulated, compiled 
and curated” (Jaton 2020) or practised and performed in these disciplines.
The list is non-exhaustive, and we welcome concerns that echo or 
resonate with the following list:

  * How has the funding regime reshaped the contours of humanities and
    social science in recent decades in Europe and beyond?
  * How has labour relations reshaped the contours of humanities and
    social sciences in recent decades in Europe and beyond?
  * How has STS as a field been shaped by funding mandates in Europe and
    outside?
  * How is knowledge generated, codified and evaluated in humanities and
    social sciences in Europe and beyond?
  * How have mandates of interdisciplinarity shaped humanities and
    social sciences in recent years in Europe and beyond?
  * How does knowledge production differ in non-governmental
    organisations, research institutes, universities and for-profit
    organisations in Europe and beyond?
  * How can STS method and sensibilities be redeployed for unpacking
    knowledge production in humanities and social sciences?

We encourage writings from diverse geographical sites and particularly 
encourage comparative perspectives across different regimes of 
scientific knowledge production. We welcome texts that wish to 
experiment with varied forms of writing and sense-making.

*Bibliography*
Apostel, Léo, Guy Berger, Asa Briggs, and Guy Michaud. 1972. 
‘Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in 
Universities’. Paris: OECD Publications Center, Suite 1207, 1750 
Pennsylvania Avenue, N. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED061895.
Arora, Cheshta, and Tarunima Prabhakar. 2023. ‘To Think of 
Interdisciplinarity as Intercurrence: Or, Working as an 
Interdisciplinary Team to Develop an ML Tool to Tackle Online 
Gender-Based Violence and Hate Speech’. /Journal of Interdisciplinary 
Methodologies and Issues in Sciences/ Vol 11-Thinking 
interdisciplinarity in practice (Subject Area 1: Interdisciplinarity as 
a field of research). https://doi.org/10.46298/jimis.8915.
Arora, Cheshta, and Debarun Sarkar. 2022. ‘No Publication, No Degree: Of 
Knowledge Production in Anthropology/Sociology in India’. /Swiss Journal 
of Sociocultural Anthropology/ 28:84–104. 
https://doi.org/10.36950/sjsca.2022.28.8003.
Bruce, Ann, Catherine Lyall, Joyce Tait, and Robin Williams. 2004. 
‘Interdisciplinary Integration in Europe: The Case of the Fifth 
Framework Programme’. /Futures/, Transdisciplinarity, 36 (4): 457–70. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2003.10.003.
Clark, Susan G., and Richard L. Wallace. 2015. ‘Integration and 
Interdisciplinarity: Concepts, Frameworks, and Education’. /Policy 
Sciences/ 48 (2): 233–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-015-9210-4.
Etzkowitz, Henry, and Loet Leydesdorff. 2000. ‘The Dynamics of 
Innovation: From National Systems and “Mode 2” to a Triple Helix of 
University–Industry–Government Relations’. /Research Policy/ 29 (2): 
109–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(99)00055-4.
Hey, Valerie. 2001. ‘The Construction of Academic Time: Sub/Contracting 
Academic Labour in Research’. /Journal of Education Policy/ 16 (1): 
67–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930010009831.
Jaton, Florian. 2020. /The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, 
Programming, Formulating/. Inside Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 
The MIT Press.
Kitchin, Rob. 2014. /The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data 
Infrastructures & Their Consequences/. SAGE Publications Ltd. 
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473909472.
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. /Laboratory Life: The 
Construction of Scientific Facts/. Princeton University Press.
Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. 1997. /The End of Certainty/. 
Simon and Schuster.
Rabinow, Paul. 1986. ‘Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and 
Post-Modernity in Anthropology’. In /Writing Culture: The Poetics and 
Politics of Ethnography/, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 
234–61. University of California Press. 
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520946286-012/html.
Sangren, P. Steven. 2007. ‘Anthropology of Anthropology?’ /Anthropology 
Today/ 23 (4): 13–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2007.00523.x.
Sarkar, Debarun. 2022. ‘Toward a Feminism Without Scaffoldings: Mapping 
a Research Project, a Narrative from the Field, and a Draft Bill’. 
/Journal of International Women’s Studies/ 23 (2): 103-118–103. 
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol23/iss2/8.
Smith, Dorothy. 1974. ‘The Social Construction of Documentary Reality’. 
/Sociological Inquiry/ 44 (4): 257–67. 
https://www.academia.edu/49243314/The_Social_Construction_of_Documentary_Reality_1.

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