SOCI 325: Sociology of Science

Agenda

Midterm review

  1. Administrative
  2. Midterm structure
  3. Midterm content
  4. Study tips

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Administrative

Feedback on worksheets

  • Tomorrow!

Midterm structure

Short essays


  • Three prompts, pick two to respond to
  • Limited to 500 words, but aim for around 300 words
  • Each response must meaningfully reference at least two course readings
a woodcut of two hands working on a typesetting press

Midterm structure

Cheatsheet

  • Templates in your group folder
  • Will be printed black and white
  • Minimum 9pt font
  • Stay within margins (1cm)
  • Include group name and student names

Exam day

  • I will print the sheets and distribute them with exam
  • Turn them in with the exam

Midterm content

All required readings
(Sept 1 – Oct 20)

  • Hird (2011), Science, Technology, and the Sociological Imagination (due Sep 4)
  • Benjamin (2019), Engineered Inequity: Are Robots Racist?
  • Goodyear (2016), The Stem-Cell Scandal
  • Gould (1981), Measuring Heads
  • Wolfe (2018), Freedom’s Laboratory (Introduction)
  • Merton (1973), The normative structure of science
  • Kuhn (1970), Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries and Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories
  • van den Brink and Benschop (2012), Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs
  • Sismondo (2009), Chapter 6: The social construction of scientific and technical realities
  • Bloor (1991), The strong programme in the sociology of knowledge
  • Haraway (1988), Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
  • Martin (1991), The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles
  • Hacking (1983), What is scientific realism? and Building and Causing
  • All readings and lecture material are fair game
  • Essay prompts will focus on big ideas, not details of names and dates
  • Essay prompts will engage with the relationships between texts and between ideas
  • Assessment will follow the same rubric as worksheets:
    Clear understanding of the reading(s) (40%)
    In-depth engagement with prompts (40%)
    Insight/creativity (20%)

Study tips

Focus on big ideas

  • What were the 2–3 main points from each day?
  • What were the authors trying to say? How did they justify it?

Consider the course structure

  • Look at the syllabus!
  • How does each reading and topic fit into the course? How does it follow the preceding day’s content? How does it fit into its section?

For each reading/lecture

  • What was the main idea/argument?
  • What is different about this approach?
  • What is the same about this approach?
  • How does it relate to the four course themes?