Science and Technology in Society: From Biotechnology to the Internet

Abbreviations.

1. Science is Political/ Technology is Social: Concerns, Concepts, and Questions.

Why is Thinking about Science and Technology so Hard?.

Technoscience is Social.

Technoscience is Political.

2. Ceding Debate: Biotechnology and Agriculture.

Biotechnology and the Social Organization of Agriculture and Agri-business.

The Discursive Landscape in the Debate over Biotechnology.

Conclusions.

3. Rethinking Information Technology: Caught in the World Wide Web.

Understanding the Digital Divide.

High Technology Education.

Politics, Civil Action, and the Internet.

Conclusions.

4. Owning Technoscience: Understanding the New Intellectual Property Battles.

Intellectual Property, Social Common Sense, and the Knowledge Commons.

Intellectual Property and the Information Technology Revolution.

Owning Life: Intellectual Property in Biological Materials.

Intellectual Property and Innovation.

Conclusion.

5. Technoscience in the Third World: The Politics of Indigenous Resources.

Introduction.

Science, Technology, and Colonialism.

From Colonialism to Bio-Colonialism.

Towards Equity in the Exchange of Biological Resources.

Conclusions.

6. Gender and the Ideology of Merit: Women, Men, Science, and Engineering.

“Merit” and Stratification in Science.

Women, Men, and Academic Science.

Women and Men in Science-Based Industry.

Beyond Stratification in Science and Engineering: Artifacts and Research as Gendered.

Conclusions.

7. Democracy and Expertise: Citizenship in a High Tech Age.

The Limits to Expert Knowledge.

The Virtues of Lay Knowledge.

Barriers to Democratizing Technoscience and Expertise.

Strategies for Overcoming the Obstacles.

Conclusions.

8. Confronting the Problem: A Summary and Coda.

References.

Index.