List members may be interested in the following event:

The second London Public Understanding of Science Seminar in this session
be on Wednesday 27th November, at the London School of Economics and
Political Science, at 4.15pm.

We are pleased to welcome Angela Cassidy (Science Studies Unit, University
of Edinburgh) who will be discussing her research into popular evolutionary
psychology in the UK.

Here's her abstract:

 * * ** *
Of Academics, Publishers and Journalists: Social Worlds of Evolutionary
Psychology

I will draw upon my research on popular evolutionary psychology in the UK
to provide a strong counterexample to  canonical  accounts of relations
between science, media and public.  Evolutionary psychology has been
strongly debated in the public domain in the past five to ten years,
without being fully established under this name in academia.  In recent
years, the canonical account has undergone a process of reassessment and
critique.  Many authors have argued that our understanding of this area can
only be improved by adopting a more descriptive and nuanced approach, and
there have been several attempts at formulating new models of the relations
between science, media and public.  Building upon this work, I will
introduce an approach based on Social Worlds Theory that I believe may be
helpful to this process of reconstruction.

The social worlds approach to science is interested in the mutual enrolment
of members of many social worlds, attempting to present the multiple
perspectives involved.  I
believe that this idea could productively be extended to study the
processes of interaction between social worlds of multiple sciences,
different forms of media and diverse publics.  A social worlds approach to
research in this area  has a number of advantages which I will outline and
illustrate with
the example of recent popular debates over evolutionary psychology.

 * * * *
The seminar will again be held in room D206 which is on the second floor of
Clement House, LSE.  This building is on Aldwych, next to the Post Office.

Here's a link to a map of LSE http://www.lse.ac.uk/School/maps/map3.htm

You are all invited to meet for tea beforehand at 4pm in Cafe Pepe, which
is on the third floor of the same building.  We will move from there down
to the seminar room at about 4.15pm

It would be useful to hear from you if you intend to come - please email me.
All are welcome and please feel free to forward to any interested groups.

Simon Lock
---------------------------------------------------
Simon Lock
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
Tel:020 7679 2299
Fax:020 7916 2425
[log in to unmask]

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