Cornell's Program on Science, Technology and Society (STS) was over 20 years old when I joined it. Two developments in the studies of science, technology and society were, however, quite new: 1) the integration of the fields of history, sociology, politics, and philosophy, insofar as they interpreted the course of scientific and technological development; and 2) the integration of such interpretive work with the long-standing STS emphasis on the social implications of science and social responsibility of scientists. Such interdisciplinary developments needed institutional recognition and facilitation, both at Cornell and in the wider community. Building on my training and research experience in the sciences and my post-Ph.D. work on the interpretive side of STS/S&TS, I have promoted both kinds of interdisciplinary integration and worked on various institutional and programmatic initiatives, not only at Cornell, but in the national and international arenas.
I have seen this "service" as work necessary for building the settings in which the field of science and technology studies, and, in particular, its reflexive, critical science strand, can thrive. The last five years have not been a time when it would have made sense, even if this had been possible, to minimize my involvement in the development of STS/S&TS. The long term success of any new social endeavor relies on extensive ground work to complement the high profile developments; the strength of my contributions to the field lies in the range of initiatives I have taken, both within STS/S&TS and in connecting people outside to the developing S&TS project. To be honest, I have discovered that interdisciplinarity at Cornell is harder to sustain than the University's self-presentation would lead one to expect. However, against obstacles that range from my inter-college courses falling through the cracks of the room allocation system to the ever-present guarding of departmental and college resources and identities, I have shown my willingness to persist, to adapt in response to colleagues, and, where need be, to shelve various efforts to facilitate the development of science and technology studies at Cornell.
At Cornell
In my first year at Cornell, I took several initiatives with long term implications for S&TS. I proposed changes to the Biology & Society major; these strengthened the interpretive (humanities and social science) side of its curriculum and have steered an increasing number of students into S&TS courses. I also proposed changes to streamline the governance of the major, and since that time I have been a key member of the inter-college Educational Policy Committee established to administer the major -- this is no small task. In my first semester I took over teaching the Biology & Society core course that Prof. Greenwood had taught for a decade. The following year I began to offer the research course with which students could fulfill another foundational requirement of the major, and arranged to co-teach it with Prof. Peter Schwartz so that Biology & Society students from the College of Human Ecology could easily enroll.
In addition to participating in two faculty searches that first semester, I drafted the ecology/ environmental and faculty seminar components of a successful NSF Training Grant proposal on the theme, "Implications of Changing Knowledge in the Life Sciences." I was asked to chair the committee to introduce a graduate program in STS and I wrote the lengthy document required by the New York State Department of Education.51
The most significant interdisciplinary development to which I have contributed has been the formation of the Science and Technology Studies department in 1991, which combined the STS Program and the faculty of the graduate field of History and Philosophy of Science & Technology. Happily, this coincided with the award of the NSF Training Grant, enabling the S&TS graduate program to take off. Both the department and the graduate program have required the development of procedures and traditions. One such tradition is the departmental brown bag, which grew from the reading/discussion group I initiated in my first semester and co-organized over the following two years. Another such tradition is S&TS's connection with the Freshman Writing Program, which offers one of the few opportunities graduate students have for independent teaching. Before the NSF Training Grant was received and before the College provided S&TS with a number of TAships, the STS Program and S&TS Department-to-be needed more funding for graduate students. In spring 1991 I initiated efforts to secure graduate student positions with the Freshman Writing Program. In exchange for such positions the Program expects that some faculty members teach "matching" freshman seminars. My efforts led to some graduate student positions on an ad hoc basis and, with the formation of S&TS, the department has secured both regular and ad hoc positions each year. Since then I have been the S&TS adviser to graduate students who teach writing seminars and have taught the matching seminar.
Before the formation of S&TS, the vitality of the small STS Program was dependent on intellectual exchange with faculty and students from other parts of the University. In this spirit, I initiated, with seed money from the Center for Environmental Research, the Program on Social Analysis of Environmental Change (SAEC) and organized the Program's lecture and discussion series in 1991-92. This series included the University lectureship I arranged for Michael Watts from the University of California, Berkeley Geography Department. Taking into account the explosion of environmental initiatives at Cornell, the SAEC program's activities are now focused on a bi-weekly discussion group that I co-ordinate which explores the intersections of environmental studies and social studies of science. In early 1991 I joined the Ethics and Public Life (EPL) program's faculty seminar on Justice and the Global Environment, and built on this via a publication,52 subsequent workshops, and two searches for a new S&TS/ Biology & Society faculty member in the area of ethics related to biomedical and environmental sciences.
The formation of S&TS and the activities under the NSF Training Grant have required my energies since 1991 to be focused mainly on activities within S&TS. At the same time, especially given the environmental studies dimension of my work, it has remained important for me to promote intellectual exchange that connects faculty and students from other parts of the university to the S&TS project, broadly construed. In 1992 I helped prepare a successful proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation for S&TS and EPL to host post-doctoral visitors for three years working in the area of "Humanistic approaches to science, technology and the global environment." I serve on the management committee for that grant and have worked with the post-docs on a number of workshops, such as that in spring 1994 re-assessing sustainable development in Kerala. In 1993 I initiated and drafted the University Lectureship proposal for Evelleen Richards from our "sister" S&TS department in Wollongong, Australia. Given my interests in socio-environmental studies and in leading students to combine environmental studies and S&TS, I have joined the graduate fields of Conservation and Sustainable Development and Natural Resources and have also advised graduate students from Development Sociology and in City and Regional Planning. In the spring of 1993 I convened an informal discussion group on interdisciplinarity and its problems, which drew in faculty, post-docs and graduate students from a variety of departments and academic units. This academic year I was recruited to be a faculty adviser for the Ford Foundation graduate workshop on Environmental Protection and Economic Development.
Within S&TS proper, I have made many contributions over and above my formal committee duties. For example:
-- In 1992 I organized three of the five events for the visit sponsored by the Training Grant of Anne Fausto-Sterling from Brown University.
-- In 1993, building on the interdisciplinarity discussion group, I drafted a discussion paper on S&TS Graduate Training, articulating the challenge of training graduate students whose work spans the conventional disciplines and at the same time recognizing that some respect for the disciplines is needed if they are to secure academic employment.53
-- In the fall of 1993, while serving as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the S&TS major, I ironed out several gaps and ambiguities in the requirements for the major and its honors program. I floated a proposal for adjusting the major's requirements so it could accommodate students wanting, say, an Engineering and Society type major. Although not taken up by the Department at that time, the idea seems to be gaining favor and, in the future, I would like to contribute to S&TS taking such an initiative in interdisciplinary education.
-- In 1993-94, although no longer serving on the management committee of the Training Grant, I worked closely with graduate students and a postdoc throughout the year-long process of organizing the spring workshop, "The Nature of Science Studies."
These and earlier examples exemplify my commitment to the groundwork of establishing S&TS. The success of S&TS at Cornell, I believe, depends on the core faculty going well beyond our formal assignments, at least at this stage in the new Department's development.
Outside Cornell
The most significant venue in which I have promoted the two interdisciplinary developments in the field of STS/S&TS has been the International Society for History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology. In its biennial summer meetings the ISHPSSB (like its informal precursor) brings together scholars from diverse disciplines, including the life sciences and history, philosophy and social studies of science. I am now President-elect, which is an honor, but I consider my earlier efforts, first on the program committee (1987-89) and then as program organizer (1989-91), to be more significant. It was during this period that the society was being formalized, and I worked hard to ensure that institutionalization did not undermine the tradition of innovative, inter- and trans- disciplinary sessions and discussions. In 1991 I also co-organized sessions on "Ecology in Changing Environments" (an edited volume from these sessions is now under consideration by the University of Chicago Press54) and "Teaching Interdisciplinary Studies of Biology." In 1993 I co-organized sessions titled "Changing Life in the New World Dis/order," from which a book for the University of Minnesota Press Cultural Politics series is rapidly coming together.55 This year I am assisting Gregg Mitman in organizing a series of sessions, "The Politics of Conservation," which will contribute to the active dialogue now emerging at the intersections of ecology and environmental history.56
I have also been elected to the council of the Section on Science, Knowledge and Technology of the American Sociological Association (1993-96) and was nominated last year as a candidate for the council of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). My major contribution to both these groups has been organizing conference sessions that explore new or underdeveloped connections, e.g., between social studies of science and social theory, the theme of two sessions at the 1993 4S meetings, four sessions at the 1994 meetings, and a 4S interest group, each of which I have organized or co-organized. In recognition, I think, of my ability to make transdisciplinary connections, I have this last year been invited to give commentaries in the areas of economics and S&TS; economics, justice and environment; gender studies and science studies; psychology and philosophy of science; and historiography of ecology.
Notes:
51 With the formation of the S&TS the goal of an STS graduate program was eventually achieved by expanding and renaming the existing graduate field in History & Philosophy of Science & Technology.
52 "Reconstructing Rawls (and exposing the implicit social embeddedness of moral philosophy)" to appear in Social Epistemology.
53 This is included in the binder available to reviewers within Cornell.
54 Natural Contradictions. The introduction, "Situated ecologies," is included in my works in progress.
55 Changing Life. The prospectus is included in my works in progress.
56 "The historiography of ecology," paper given at the University of California, Berkeley, November 1994.