Karen Kastenhofer
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 181287 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Karen Kastenhofer |
| NOMBRES | Karen |
| APELLIDO | Kastenhofer |
| FIRMA | KASTENHOFER K |
| AFILIACIONES | Austrian Academy of Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5843-6489 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 19 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 36 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Towards a sociology of scientific protest? Response to M. Kaiser in Gaia 34/1 (2025)
Matthias Kaiser, in his well elaborated and substantiated response to my 2024 discussion paper on a potentially emerging survival science ethos, highlights the central question of this debate: Should scientists directly engage in both, knowledge generation and political action? I argue that we need more debate to qualify our standpoints and that a sociology of scientific protest might inform this debate
From a normal and a post-normal science ethos towards a survival science ethos
What ethos and what role repertoire can scientists bring to bear in the face of the current climate emergency without risking the very legitimacy and authority of science? In this article, I draw on Max Weber’s and Robert K. Merton’s conceptions of normal science , as well as on reconstructions of science’s ethos and role repertoires in post-normal science regimes. I put up for discussion whether current survival science constellations require ye…
“Should We Stay or Should We Go now?”
In this paper we focus on a special feature of science and technology studies: the trajectories of our engagement with ‘emerging technosciences’. Many of us entertain close links to a particular group of scientists; our scholarly careers and identities build around thematic specialisations, trans-field collaborations and convivialities. But more often than not, such engagement does not last a whole career. With every new technoscientific hype, sc…
Beyond Scientificity
Sixty years have passed since Merton’s famous publication of “a note on science and democracy,” outlining the scientific ethos via four sets of norms, namely communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (CUDOS). Merton’s rationale was that the implementation of this ethos was instrumental in realizing science’s institutional goal: “the extension of certified knowledge.” Throughout the ensuing decades, Merton’s conception …
Natural Sciences in Academic Vienna in the 1990s
In 1999, four editorials in the journal Biological Chemistry commemorate how, since the 1980s, Vienna has transformed from a “[peripheral] outpost near the Iron Curtain” to a “central hub” for life science research. A closer look at these texts reveals the explicit and implicit role of drawing maps for and within science, depicting centers, peripheries and ‒ in this case ‒ geopolitically real and allegorical “iron curtains”. Based on this observa…
Are You a TA Practitioner, Then?” – Identity Constructions in Post-Normal Science
Technology assessment (TA) is a paradigmatic case for the manifold and, at times, ambiguous processes of identity formation of researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary settings. TA combines the natural, technical, and social sciences and follows the multiple missions of scientific analysis, public outreach, and policy advice. However, despite this diversity, it also constitutes a genuine community with its own discourses, conferences, and publ…
Biología de sistemas y biología sintética como tecnociencias emergentes
La biología de sistemas y la biología sintética pueden ser consideradas como ejemplos de tecnociencias emergentes. Están esencialmente marcadas por promesas de futuro y por visiones, por una cierta lógica y uso de términos, por determinadas formas de organización social, por la integración en un régimen específico de fomento e innovación, así como por una matriz característica de orientaciones para la praxis de investigación. Esta constitución es…
Two sides of the same coin? The (techno)epistemic cultures of systems and synthetic biology
Synthetic biology as understanding, control, construction, and creation? Techno-epistemic and socio-political implications of different stances in talking and doing technoscience
Sustaining sustainability science
Risk Assessment of Emerging Technologies and Post-Normal Science
Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It not only focuses on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. The following article addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ''wicked-problem situation'', i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such ch…
Inter- und Transdisziplinarität im Wandel
The Contribution of University Curricula to Engineering Education for Sustainable Development
Global failures to reach a sustainable development within present-day societies as well as recent breakthroughs within technoscience pose new challenges to engineering education. The list of competencies which engineers should have to rise to these challenges is long and divers, and often encompasses radically new attributes. The task of engineering education for sustainable development is to address these competencies and to prepare engineers fo…
Scientific Nonknowledge and Its Political Dynamics
While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ''risk'', over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cu…
Inter- und Transdisziplinarität – Eine anhaltend aktuelle Debatte
Debating the risks and ethics of emerging technosciences
Controversies on emerging technosciences, such as agri-biotechnology and medical biotechnology, have been a formative aspect of the public response to technoscientific innovations for the last decades. Within these controversies, the problematization of technoscience has not always been framed in the same way. Debates on agri-biotechnological applications focus mostly on issues of risk and safety and on questions about evidence and uncertainty. I…
Entscheidungen unter Bedingungen pluraler Nichtwissenskulturen
Converging Epistemic Cultures
Convergence of research fields under a new techno-scientific paradigm is currently being discussed among scholars of social studies of science and technology, and in the context of research funding programmes and frameworks of science and technology policy. Mostly, these discussions refer to the macro-scale and adopt a broad understanding of convergence. The present paper introduces a focus on epistemic cultures and raises the question of what co…
Scientific Cultures of Non-Knowledge in the Controversy over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
The limits of scientific knowledge are an emerging problem in the debates about technological risk. In an exemplary analysis of the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMO), we show that the epistemic settings of two involved scientific disciplines – molecular biology and ecology – entail different types of non-knowledge and deal with non-knowledge differently. Both of these "scientific cultures of non-knowledge" are analysed …
Scientific Nonknowledge and Its Political Dynamics
While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ''risk'', over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cu…
Synthetic biology as understanding, control, construction, and creation? Techno-epistemic and socio-political implications of different stances in talking and doing technoscience
Converging Epistemic Cultures
Convergence of research fields under a new techno-scientific paradigm is currently being discussed among scholars of social studies of science and technology, and in the context of research funding programmes and frameworks of science and technology policy. Mostly, these discussions refer to the macro-scale and adopt a broad understanding of convergence. The present paper introduces a focus on epistemic cultures and raises the question of what co…
Two sides of the same coin? The (techno)epistemic cultures of systems and synthetic biology
Debating the risks and ethics of emerging technosciences
Controversies on emerging technosciences, such as agri-biotechnology and medical biotechnology, have been a formative aspect of the public response to technoscientific innovations for the last decades. Within these controversies, the problematization of technoscience has not always been framed in the same way. Debates on agri-biotechnological applications focus mostly on issues of risk and safety and on questions about evidence and uncertainty. I…
Risk Assessment of Emerging Technologies and Post-Normal Science
Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It not only focuses on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. The following article addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ''wicked-problem situation'', i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such ch…
Scientific Cultures of Non-Knowledge in the Controversy over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
The limits of scientific knowledge are an emerging problem in the debates about technological risk. In an exemplary analysis of the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMO), we show that the epistemic settings of two involved scientific disciplines – molecular biology and ecology – entail different types of non-knowledge and deal with non-knowledge differently. Both of these "scientific cultures of non-knowledge" are analysed …
Converging Epistemic Cultures
Convergence of research fields under a new techno-scientific paradigm is currently being discussed among scholars of social studies of science and technology, and in the context of research funding programmes and frameworks of science and technology policy. Mostly, these discussions refer to the macro-scale and adopt a broad understanding of convergence. The present paper introduces a focus on epistemic cultures and raises the question of what co…
Entscheidungen unter Bedingungen pluraler Nichtwissenskulturen
Inter- und Transdisziplinarität – Eine anhaltend aktuelle Debatte
Debating the risks and ethics of emerging technosciences
Controversies on emerging technosciences, such as agri-biotechnology and medical biotechnology, have been a formative aspect of the public response to technoscientific innovations for the last decades. Within these controversies, the problematization of technoscience has not always been framed in the same way. Debates on agri-biotechnological applications focus mostly on issues of risk and safety and on questions about evidence and uncertainty. I…
Inter- und Transdisziplinarität im Wandel
The Contribution of University Curricula to Engineering Education for Sustainable Development
Global failures to reach a sustainable development within present-day societies as well as recent breakthroughs within technoscience pose new challenges to engineering education. The list of competencies which engineers should have to rise to these challenges is long and divers, and often encompasses radically new attributes. The task of engineering education for sustainable development is to address these competencies and to prepare engineers fo…
Scientific Nonknowledge and Its Political Dynamics
While in the beginning of the environmental debate, conflicts over environmental and technological issues had primarily been understood in terms of ''risk'', over the past two decades the relevance of ignorance, or nonknowledge, was emphasized. Referring to this shift of attention to nonknowledge the article presents two main findings: first, that in debates on what is not known and how to appraise it different and partly conflicting epistemic cu…
Sustaining sustainability science
Risk Assessment of Emerging Technologies and Post-Normal Science
Post-Normal Science (PNS) as a theory links epistemology and governance. It not only focuses on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. The following article addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ''wicked-problem situation'', i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such ch…
Two sides of the same coin? The (techno)epistemic cultures of systems and synthetic biology
Synthetic biology as understanding, control, construction, and creation? Techno-epistemic and socio-political implications of different stances in talking and doing technoscience
Biología de sistemas y biología sintética como tecnociencias emergentes
La biología de sistemas y la biología sintética pueden ser consideradas como ejemplos de tecnociencias emergentes. Están esencialmente marcadas por promesas de futuro y por visiones, por una cierta lógica y uso de términos, por determinadas formas de organización social, por la integración en un régimen específico de fomento e innovación, así como por una matriz característica de orientaciones para la praxis de investigación. Esta constitución es…
Beyond Scientificity
Sixty years have passed since Merton’s famous publication of “a note on science and democracy,” outlining the scientific ethos via four sets of norms, namely communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (CUDOS). Merton’s rationale was that the implementation of this ethos was instrumental in realizing science’s institutional goal: “the extension of certified knowledge.” Throughout the ensuing decades, Merton’s conception …
Natural Sciences in Academic Vienna in the 1990s
In 1999, four editorials in the journal Biological Chemistry commemorate how, since the 1980s, Vienna has transformed from a “[peripheral] outpost near the Iron Curtain” to a “central hub” for life science research. A closer look at these texts reveals the explicit and implicit role of drawing maps for and within science, depicting centers, peripheries and ‒ in this case ‒ geopolitically real and allegorical “iron curtains”. Based on this observa…
Are You a TA Practitioner, Then?” – Identity Constructions in Post-Normal Science
Technology assessment (TA) is a paradigmatic case for the manifold and, at times, ambiguous processes of identity formation of researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary settings. TA combines the natural, technical, and social sciences and follows the multiple missions of scientific analysis, public outreach, and policy advice. However, despite this diversity, it also constitutes a genuine community with its own discourses, conferences, and publ…
“Should We Stay or Should We Go now?”
In this paper we focus on a special feature of science and technology studies: the trajectories of our engagement with ‘emerging technosciences’. Many of us entertain close links to a particular group of scientists; our scholarly careers and identities build around thematic specialisations, trans-field collaborations and convivialities. But more often than not, such engagement does not last a whole career. With every new technoscientific hype, sc…
From a normal and a post-normal science ethos towards a survival science ethos
What ethos and what role repertoire can scientists bring to bear in the face of the current climate emergency without risking the very legitimacy and authority of science? In this article, I draw on Max Weber’s and Robert K. Merton’s conceptions of normal science , as well as on reconstructions of science’s ethos and role repertoires in post-normal science regimes. I put up for discussion whether current survival science constellations require ye…
Towards a sociology of scientific protest? Response to M. Kaiser in Gaia 34/1 (2025)
Matthias Kaiser, in his well elaborated and substantiated response to my 2024 discussion paper on a potentially emerging survival science ethos, highlights the central question of this debate: Should scientists directly engage in both, knowledge generation and political action? I argue that we need more debate to qualify our standpoints and that a sociology of scientific protest might inform this debate
Sociology (15 obras) · Political science (13 obras) · Epistemology (11 obras) · Social science (11 obras) · Philosophy (9 obras) · Computer Science (6 obras) · Economics (6 obras) · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration (6 obras) · Law (6 obras) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (5 obras)