We are told we are living in the “Age of AI.” As social scientists, we are often expected to explore and explain the implications of this new technology. In this article, based on a pair of recent lectures, I argue that, rather than focussing on what the technology implies, we should instead study what it infers. We need to take our sociological tools upstream, to understand how generative AI technologies are being constituted. Those of us working with terms such as “responsible AI” and “responsible innovation” should first consider how irresponsibility is organised as part of the emerging politics of AI.
International research collaborations (IRCs) are widely considered central to addressing environmental sustainability challenges. Historic, economic, social, and cultural inequalities, however, create global geopolitical hegemonies in which institutional, funding, and governance power is concentrated in more economically advantaged regions including Europe. These inequalities create asymmetrical epistemic authority in IRCs, mirroring centres and peripheries of science-making, as described by Science and Technology Studies (STS). Forest research is shaped by these inequalities yet requires sustainable socioenvironmental solutions. Although STS offers tools to examine how asymmetries shape knowledge-making in science, it has rarely explored how this emerges in everyday practices of sub-Saharan African (SSA)–West European forest IRCs, despite the significance of forests in SSA and documented pervasive inequalities between the two regions. I trace knowledge-making processes of five forest sustainability IRCs through a positioning analysis of meetings and fieldwork, complemented by interviews, showing how, and from where, collaborators shape ways of doing and knowing. European collaborators disproportionately shaped approaches while SSA collaborators adapted to European practices. Supporting conditions including fieldwork expertise and disproportionate persistence helped SSA approaches to be taken up, whereas European approaches operated as the default mode. SSA collaborators shaped practices outside meeting spaces less visibly and faced barriers to equal participation due to sociocultural and material factors, with SSA women encountering layered gender and geography inequalities. Insights show how daily knowledge-making processes recreate and counter power asymmetries, encouraging reflection and practical action on how IRCs can address inequalities.
This article examines the transnationalization of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), analyzing its evolution from a predominantly North American and Eurocentric organization to a more globally inclusive scholarly community. Drawing on data from governance structures, conference participation, scholarly recognition, and editorial work, the study highlights key trends and challenges in 4S’s efforts to diversify its membership and perspectives. Findings reveal gradual progress, such as increased representation from Latin America, East Asia, and Oceania in conferences and governance, alongside persistent disparities in prestigious awards like the Bernal Prize, which remains dominated by Euro-American scholars. The article underscores the tension between 4S’s foundational Euro-American identity and its aspirations for epistemic diversity, particularly in light of critiques from postcolonial and feminist STS scholars. By exploring how 4S scaffolds transnationalization – through multilingual conferences, regional collaborations, and editorial policies – the study argues that these efforts are crucial for fostering a more diverse and globally engaged STS field. The analysis concludes that while 4S has made strides in broadening participation, there is still a long road ahead to enrich STS scholarship and to fully accomplish the global scope of the Society’s mission.
Retooling is a ubiquitous practice that mobilizes innovation, maintenance, and repair to address sociotechnical change in times when transformations seem difficult to accomplish. Retooling entails an intentional reorientation of purpose, foregrounds the nonlinear trajectories of technological and scientific shifts, and focuses our attention on the meso level of organizational and collective life. This paper offers a theorization of retooling grounded in two case studies: one about water reuse technologies in the United States and the other about efforts to refashion the sugarcane industry in Brazil. We suggest that retooling is a useful analytic tool at a time when both innovation and maintenance seem not only difficult to differentiate but also insufficient for explaining sociotechnical change on their own. Furthermore, during turbulent times when change seems difficult to accomplish, retooling offers a capacious conceptualization that highlights the political orientations that inspire all sociotechnical transformations and the possibilities that emerge from mobilizing what-is to bring about what-should-be.
In this final editorial for the 2020–2025 Editorial Collective, we reflect on how we have worked to action on our key editorial commitments, which included: cultivating greater transnationalization in the field, deepening open access infrastructures, foregrounding pedagogies as a vital domain of STS scholarship and practice, and engaging audiences beyond STS. We share how editing Engaging Science, Technology, and Society has foregrounded different dimensions, namely of community, infrastructure, and labor, in the context of running a scholar-led and -run journal like ESTS. Understanding the journal in this way, we suggest, surfaces both the difference-and promise-of a diamond open access journal like ESTS.
