Sociological publications

[In Czech only]

Regulation of construction in protected areas with the aim of preserving the landscape character is an important agenda of nature protection authorities. The agenda causes a number of tensions between the citizen-builder and the authority. In the article, we present the results of the TAČR project, introduced two years ago. One of the outputs of the project is a web application, which is to reflect, in a context-sensitive manner and in an accessible form, the local qualities of the landscape character and issuing principles of protection. Its data are based on Preventive Landscape Evaluation Studies, which are elaborated and regularly updated for individual PLAs. The web interface allows to generate a printable document tailored to users needs. The application should contribute to a better articulated approach to the regulation - an approach that is differentiated and understandable for all participants.

This text focuses on a classic figure in the history of science, the genius. Sociology very early on offered its own interpretation of who the scientific genius actually was, which it tended to honour on the one hand (it did not want to deny the great figures of the history of science their greatness) and to "bring down to earth" on the other (the "genius", in its interpretation, would not be removed from the standard functioning of science). From the later sociology of scientific knowledge, the genius scientist will almost disappear, in favour of the scientific collective, scientific community, or even scientific "superorganism". More broadly the paper deals with the question of scientific achievement, but also with scientific rationality, which sociology attributes not to an exceptional way of scientific "thinking", but to scientific practice.

One of the proposals for solving the climate crisis is a global carbon tax. At first glance, it looks like a miraculously simple and self-sufficient tool. Yet it attracts surprisingly little attention. This is so (among other things) because it is being not only promoted but also constructed as a purely non-political solution. Since people are often tempted to prefer what is declared as non-political solutions, characteristically under the pressure of existential threat and with support in scientific argumentation, it is worthwhile to examine the case of the GUD global carbon tax in more detail.

Having dealt with scientific controversies in our last text, we will now turn to some other “sites” from which sociologists have attempted to grasp science as a subject of inquiry . First, we show what the so-called "laboratory ethnographies", focused on everyday scientific practices, have brought about. Second, we discuss why it is important to pay attention to scientific language and scientific discourse. And finally, we present some rare examples of sociological scrutinizing theoretical work, i.e., of an activity when little seems to happen outside the unaccessible scientific mind. In this context, we point out that, just like other disciplines, sociology shapes its research object in various ways according to its needs, while transforming itself in interaction with it.

This is the second of six texts on sociology of science and scientific knowledge (and, more broadly, so called Science Studies) – the discipline that has often taken physics as an object of study. Why, in the field of Science Studies, have the scientific controversies been objects of so passionate interest? We explain the importance and methodological consequences of this empirical programme. Then, the specificity of this approach is discussed with the reference to the Trevor Pinch's study of R. Davis's solar-neutrino experiment. We argue that, in more general terms, scientific controversies have been providing social scientists with an efficient point of access to scientific practice the multiformity of which is systematically obliterated once new scientific facts are consolidated.

Physics is perhaps the most studied scientific discipline in the so-called social studies of science. The aim of this short text is to outline the space in which the sociology of physics - and more broadly Science Studies - operates, and which we will try to map out in the forthcoming six-part series of overview texts.

According to Latour, religion and science have nothing in common. The two are successful (or failing) in quite different ways. Religiousness is not aimed at fact-making, but at presence-making, he says. To critically reconsider these ideas, I discuss the case study of Marian apparitions in Litmanová. The study suggests a more complicated picture by not focusing on pure and ready-made religion, but rather on religion in the making, a kind of “almost-religion.” It shows how the reality of apparitions, initially of quite unclear status, was becoming more and more religious. Fact-making and fact-checking clearly belonged to this trajectory and have never stopped being relevant. Nonethless, together with how the apparition was progressively becoming truly religious (or religiously true), Latourian presence-making was gaining in importance.