Course Objectives

Science and the state are two of the most powerful, and deeply enmeshed, institutions in modern society. Despite their interconnections, however, scholars have conventionally relegated the study of each to distinct fields of historical and social science inquiry. In this course we will break down these disciplinary boundaries to seek a fuller understanding of the production of knowledge and social order in modern societies.

This course has several important objectives:

Provide an overview of recent literature in history, sociology, and political science examining the relationships between science and the state.
Deepen students’ understanding of important themes including state sponsorship of science and technology, the use of science as a tool for social planning and social control, and the evolving place of science in democratic societies.
Compare science-state relationships across historical and cultural contexts including 17^th century Europe, 19^th century colonial empires, 20^th century nation states and development projects.

Course Requirements

Students are expected to attend all class sessions, to come to class having mastered the readings, and to participate fully in class discussions. The course grade will be determined as follows:

Classroom participation, reading, and reaction pieces (20%). Students are expected to turn in a short (2-3 page) reaction piece each week. These will be graded, as will students’ classroom participation, on a check, plus, minus system.
Leading classroom discussion (20%). Depending on student enrollment, each student will be expected to lead class discussion once or twice during the semester. Discussion leaders will prepare a one-page list of annotated major questions to consider for email to the rest of the class by Sunday evening.
Research paper (60%). Students will prepare a 20-25 page historiography or literature review of a topic of their choosing. The paper is due November 21. No late papers will be accepted.

Readings

I consider four books to be central thematic works for the course, and these four will be available for purchase at the University Book Store. I will place the other books in the College Library Reserve, or you may purchase them from on an online bookstore if you wish. Weeks 10 and 12 list two books. I will ask roughly half the class to read each, and we will compare them in class. In addition, materials marked with an (*) asterisk in the readings will be available in a course packet available from the History of Science office (7143 Social Science).

Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

Sheila Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

Course Outline

1. Introduction – Science and the State (September 10)

2. Science and Democracy (September 17)

a. Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1990). Introduction and Chapters 1-4.

b. James Pocock, “The Problem and its Modes, A, Experience, Usage, and Prudence,” in The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1975).

3. Experimental Philosophy (September 24)

a. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1985).

4. Visual Cultures of Knowledge and Governance (October 1)

a. Richard Tuck, “Thomas Hobbes,” in Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1993).

b. Svetlana Alpers, “Mapping,” in The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1984).

c. Michael Dennis, “Graphic Understanding: Instruments and Interpretation in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia,” Science in Context, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 309-364 (1989).

5. Nation and Statistics (October 8)

a. Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990).

6. Science and Colonial Development (October 15)

a. William Storey, Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius (University of Rochester Press: Rochester, 1997). Introduction and Chaps. 3-5.

b. Benedict Anderson, “Census, Map, Museum,” in Imagined Communities, 2^nd edition, (Verso: New York, 1991).

c. Bernard Cohn, “Introduction,” in Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1996).

7. Expertise and Social Policy (October 22)

a. Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh, 1999 (1959)). Preface. Chaps. 1-5.

b. Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1995). Chapters 1 and 3.

c. Helga Novotny, “Knowledge for Certainty: Poverty, Welfare Institutions and the Institutionalization of Social Science,” in Peter Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock, and Richard Whitley, eds., Discourses on Society XV (Kluwer: Dordrecht, 1991).

8. Quantification, Trust, and the Depersonalization of Politics (October 29)

a. Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Modern Life (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1995).

b. Ezrahi, Chaps. 5-9.

c. John Carson, “Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence,” Isis, Vol. 84, No. 2, pp. 278-309 (1993).

9. Totalitarian Science (November 5 – We will need to reschedule this date as I will be out of town.)

a. Loren Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1993).

b. Or Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1989).

10. Cold War (November 12)

a. Stuart Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial Complex at MIT and Stanford (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994).

b. Michael Dennis, “‘Our first line of defense’: Two University Laboratories in the Postwar American State,” Isis, Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 427-455 (Sept. 1994).

11. Science and Development (November 19)

a. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1998).

12. The Green Revolution (November 26)

a. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1991).

b. Or John Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1997). Chaps. 1, 5, 6, 7, 10.

13. Regulatory Science (December 3)

a. Sheila Jasanoff, The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1990).

14. Science and Order (December 10)

a. Sheila Jasanoff, “Civilization and Madness: The Great UK BSE Scare”

b. Sheila Jasanoff, “Image and Imagination: The Emergence of Global Environmental Conciousness,” in Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards, eds., Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press: Cambridge, 2001).

c. Ezrahi, Chaps. 10-12.