PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY. APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS.

Dear all,

The Centre for Science Studies  and the Centre for the Study of
Environment, Technology and Culture (CSEC)  at Lancaster  are
organising a conference:

'Getting Underneath the Fact: natural categories & biological facts as
historical and emergent objects'

Date: 28 August - 29 August 2006

To be held at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Lancaster University.

Confirmed speakers: Geoff Bowker (University of Santa Clara); Simon Cohn
(Goldsmiths); Maureen McNeil (Lancaster University); Rosemary Robbins
(University of Melbourne); Leigh Starr (University of Santa Clara); Lucy
Suchman (Lancaster University); David Turnbull (Deakin University).

We hope you'll be able to come. See the abstract and the URL below for
the

- draft programme

- full abstract of the conference

- registration form

IMPORTANT: PLEASE RETURN YOUR REGISTRATION FORM BY 7TH JULY 2006 to:

Ruth Love, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Tel - 44 (0)
1524 593148. E-mail: [log in to unmask]





ABSTRACT

The initial project of science studies, it seems, is becoming ever more
compromised by demands for science studies scholars to learn the
language and the nominations of science before they can critique. This
is highlighted by the recent Report on Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics
Summer School at St Annes College, Oxford on the 26-29 Sep 2005. The
report suggests that while the debate between scientists and social
scientists and other humanities scholars may be fruitful the latter are:


'intimidated by the complexity of the science,......This suggests a
training need: To find ways to familiarise social scientists and
humanities researchers with neuroscience, and to equip them to liase
with neuroscientists in a competent manner.'

This conference will be an opportunity to explore how STS research and
the debates in which we engage are compliant with this vision, relying
upon assumed foundations of knowledge. In the passage above the
ontological assumptions of the neuroscientist may be read as fact, hence
not open for debate or contestation. The task for the social
science/humanities researcher becomes, it seems, someone who adds a bit
of construction after the fact. This conference will provide a forum to
think about assumed foundations in knowledge, their performative nature,
and the way in which debates are framed around biological and natural
facts. These issues will be explored in different research domains
including genetics, brain sciences, classifications and number systems.

Draft programme, full conference abstract and registration form can be
found at:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/events/index.php?unit_id=16
<http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/events/index.php?unit_id=16>