Power and politics: courses taught

Research workshop for PhD students

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies at the Masaryk University in Brno; code SOC400, 10 credits (autumne semesters)

The main objectives are: 1) to provide an introduction to contemporary science and technology studies; 2) to map more general sociological consequences and key topics of this research field; and 3) to explain basic principles of actor-network theory. After having discussed constructivism and deconstruction, the problem of reflexivity, and the linguistic turn in the social sciences, a contextualised history of sociology of science (and technology) will be debated (Merton, the strong programme of David Bloor, ethnographies of laboratory life and studies of scientific controversies etc.). Special attention will be paid to actor-network theory, an approach gaining importance within contemporary social sciences in general (Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others). The final set of lectures will discuss a number of empirical examples focusing on the relationship between democratic decision making and scientific expertise.