STEP SESSION ON EXPERTS IN THE PERIPHERY
8th STEP MEETING, CORFU, GREECE, 21-24 JUNE 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS
This is a call for the organization of a session on "Experts
in the periphery" at the 8th
STEP meeting in
Corfu, Greece, 21-24 June
2011.
Please contact José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez <[log in to unmask]>
for further details.
In recent years an increasing number of studies in history of science
have focused on the definition and the role of experts in modern western
societies, where expert advice is broadly employed in the fight against
the disease, the prosecution of criminal activities, the development of
military industry, the control of food quality and the regulation of
industry, among many others. The interest in the subject is easily
perceived by the growing number of publications that have appeared in
history of science journals (Social Studies of Science, for
instance) and the Isis "focus on "Science and Law"
(2007). Also general books with reviews and theoretical proposals have
been recently published (Golan, 2004; Collins-Evans, 2007), several
workshops have been organized in Oxford, (October, 2005), Philadelphia
(April 2006), Hull (September 2009), etc. A previous session on “Experts
in the Periphery” was organized in Galway 2010
(
7th
STEP meeting), which will be followed by another meeting in Valencia
in December 2011. See the group website for more details:
http://147.156.155.104/?q=node/10
The study of experts and expertise has an interdisciplinary nature,
involving historians of science but also sociologists of knowledge and
professions, law scholars and historians of law as well as by science
popularisers and those who study the public image of science (as
reflected in journals like Public Understanding of Science). All
these ingredients make the study of experts a rapidly expanding area,
placed at the crossroads of many disciplinary histories, and benefiting
from the fruitful interaction of a heterogeneous group of scholars
pursuing a broad spectrum of aims ranging from history, sociology or
philosophy of science studies to current public policy problems. Taking
into account these studies, the main goal of the session is to explore
from a comparative perspective the shaping of the expert and expertise in
the European periphery, mostly focusing on 19th-20th centuries.
The session aims to further enrich the historiographical debate which
took place in the previous two meetings
(
Galway, 2010;
Valencia, 2011) and
incorporate new cases involving new disciplines, geographical contexts
and periods. Topics which have been discussed in previous meetings
included the transit and appropriation of expert knowledge, credentials
and other sources of expert authority, the different spaces of expertise
(from academies to council laboratories and courtrooms), the role of
advise committees (from agriculture to food control and public health),
science and law (from patent litigation, to legal medicine), comparative
analysis and cross-national studies, etc. The session will include a
review of the two previous meetings and a group of new papers (selected
from those submitted to the organizing committee), which will be
commented by one of the members of the group.
People who have worked in (or are just interested in) the topic are very
welcome to join the group “Experts in the Periphery”, even if they don't
plan to submit a paper to the session. All members of the group are
encouraged to send suggestions for the session and future activities of
the group.
Deadline:
31 October 2011: Deadline for submission of paper proposals. Please,
include name and affiliation, title and a one-page/ 500-words abstract,
making clear the relevance to the session. Please, send it as a Word or
RTF document to José R. Bertomeu Sánchez ([log in to unmask]).
Further information
On the 8th STEP meeting, June 2012, see
http://147.156.155.104/?q=node/505
On the “Experts in the Periphery” meeting, Valencia, 1-2 December 2011,
see
http://147.156.155.104/?q=node/632
http://www.uoa.gr/step - STEP - Science and Technology in the
European Periphery.