HMI654. Communication and the Dynamics of Knowledge in Professional Contexts, 5p
Instructor Per-Anders Forstorp (forstorp@nada.kth.se) with the help of visiting lecturers.
Semester Spring 2001

Prerequisites Participants should be registered as graduate students at the HMI School or at any other unit of KTH. Given the option of tailoring the reading list according to previous background, the course could also be open for graduate students in medicine, economy (or any other university such as KI and HHS).
Goals
Content
  1. Recent trends in STS and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK).
  2. Professional discourse and communication in professional contexts.
  3. Ideologies of representation: Realism, relativism, rationality and constructivism.
  4. Critical studies of science.
  5. Epistemological competition:The Science Wars.
  6. Ethnomethodology and Actor Network Theory (ANT).
  7. Pseudo and quasi: Faking claims of fame.
  8. Studies of laboratory work. Science, narrative and representation beyond words.
  9. Science as fiction.

(the list of is preliminary)
Literature
  • Berger, Peter & Thomas Luckmann (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Penguin.
  • Paul Drew, Paul & John Heritage (Eds.) (1993) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (in selection)
  • Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise, Per Linell & Bengt Nordberg, (1997) The Construction of Professional Discourse (Language in Social Life Series). Addison-Wesley Pub Co (in selection)
  • Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar (1986) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press
  • Pickering, Andrew (1992) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  • Sarangi, Srikant & Celia Roberts (eds.) (1999) Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. (in selection)

In addition we will read a selection of articles from the journals Text, Social Studies of Science and Configurations. We will also make individual selections of monographs in science and technology studies from various perspectives such as robotics, nuclear physics, multimedia, medicine, economy & computer science. These selections can be made according to the research context of the graduate student.

Examination Methodological assignments Presentation in the group of selected readings Course diaries
Other