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Science and Technology in Society: From Biotechnology to the Internet

ISBN: 978-1-405-14819-1

February 2009

Wiley-Blackwell

160 pages

Description
This thoughtful and engaging text challenges the widely held notion of science as somehow outside of society, and the idea that technology proceeds automatically down a singular and inevitable path. Through specific case studies involving contemporary debates, this book shows that science and technology are fundamentally part of society and are shaped by it.

  • Draws on concepts from political sociology, organizational analysis, and contemporary social theory.
  • Avoids dense theoretical debate.
  • Includes case studies and concluding chapter summaries for students and scholars.
About the Author
Daniel Lee Kleinman is Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. He is the author most recently of Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce (2003).
Features

  • Examines the ways that science and technology are integral parts of, and are influenced by, the society in which they exist.

  • Shows how groups and organizations in power shape developments in technoscience, and how new developments affect people differently depending on class, race, gender and location.

  • Draws on concepts from political sociology, organizational analysis, and contemporary social theory.

  • Avoids dense theoretical debate.

  • Includes case studies and concluding chapter summaries for students and scholars.