Halfon
Biographic Data
| ID | 53373 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Halfon |
| FAMILY NAME | Halfon |
| SIGNATURE | HALFON |
| AFFILIATIONS | Virginia Tech |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5630-3164 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Cultivating intellectual community in academia: Reflections from the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN)
Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and A…
Pluralistic Collaboration in Science and Technology: Reviewing Knowledge Systems, Culture, Norms, and Work Styles
This paper challenges the language of “interdisciplinarity,” suggesting “pluralistic collaboration” as a better alternative. Interdisciplinarity, team science, and transdisciplinarity frame academic and problem-focused collaborations narrowly, overemphasizing epistemology, downplaying extra-disciplinary divides and nonacademic collaborators, and either ignoring or psychologizing individual-level phenomena. We first paint a picture of the tensions…
Engaging Theatre, Activating Publics: Theory and Practice of a Performance on Darwin
The Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology and Society (TWISTS) is a unique public engagement project. Theoretically, TWISTS seeks to activate publics around contemporary science and technology issues by producing agonistic cultural spaces in which participants are confronted with and engaged by multiple perspectives. It thus seeks to enact a model of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (PEST) that is oriented toward neither individual…
Science and the Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle is a regulatory approach, under conditions of scientific uncertainty , requiring that a new chemical or technology be regulated or banned until it is proven safe. This principle was developed in opposition to the dominant regulatory standard, which requires affirmative evidence of harm before regulatory action can be taken. These two approaches designate a central conflict in environmental and food regulation, particul…
Encountering Birth: Negotiating Expertise, Networks, and My STS Self
The births of my two children—one in the hospital, one at home—provide a context for thinking about being an STS scholar and practitioner in our technological world. Birth has long served as a site for critical encounters with expertise, medical systems, and technology, and has inspired a great deal of the scholarship and activism that characterizes the women's health movement. Although well versed in that literature, I was unprepared, emotionall…
Confronting the WTO: Intervention Strategies in GMO Adjudication
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been the target of social justice activists since its inception in 1994, with many seeking to reshape or rescind the WTO agreements. This article instead explores possible interventions into WTO adjudication by compelling the reinterpretation of existing WTO documents. Such an approach can take several forms: mobilizing professional expertise, engaging technical standards, and constructing companion regimes.…
Depleted Uranium, Public Science, and the Politics of Closure
The public controversy over depleted uranium (DU) seems to follow a standard trajectory—scientific closure, via the reduction of scientific uncertainty, led directly to policy closure, as government bureaucracies increasingly downplayed its dangers and denied redress to exposed individuals. Closer inspection, however, reveals a more complex dynamic. A series of expert, public science reports, while articulating a shared narrative of DU safety, ac…
Reconstructing Iraq: Merging discourses of security and development
This article argues that reconstruction is an emerging discourse of international politics that merges security and development discourses in powerful and troubling ways. We focus on Iraq as a site for articulating and institutionalising a particular version of reconstruction, uncovering five narratives that constitute Iraqi reconstruction discourse. We conclude by suggesting that reconstruction repackages security and development into a singular…
The Disunity of Consensus: International Population Policy Coordination as Socio-Technical Practice
Using the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study, this paper challenges standard approaches to understanding political consensus. Neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for ‘getting along’ within a structured disunity. Structure derives from commitment to a socio-technical network, while disunity arises from the interpretive flexibility and varied practices contained within …
Collecting, Testing and Convincing: Forensic DNA Experts in the Courts
Forensic DNA typing evidence has become increasingly accepted within American courts. This acceptance has been largely achieved through slow legitimation in a number of `mundane' cases. Treating DNA typing as a `sociotechnical network', I explore how elements of this technology have been alternatively opened for contestation within the courts or `black-boxed'. Elements outside the view of expert communities have been largely ignored; elements bla…
The Disunity of Consensus: International Population Policy Coordination as Socio-Technical Practice
Using the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study, this paper challenges standard approaches to understanding political consensus. Neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for ‘getting along’ within a structured disunity. Structure derives from commitment to a socio-technical network, while disunity arises from the interpretive flexibility and varied practices contained within …
Collecting, Testing and Convincing: Forensic DNA Experts in the Courts
Forensic DNA typing evidence has become increasingly accepted within American courts. This acceptance has been largely achieved through slow legitimation in a number of `mundane' cases. Treating DNA typing as a `sociotechnical network', I explore how elements of this technology have been alternatively opened for contestation within the courts or `black-boxed'. Elements outside the view of expert communities have been largely ignored; elements bla…
Encountering Birth: Negotiating Expertise, Networks, and My STS Self
The births of my two children—one in the hospital, one at home—provide a context for thinking about being an STS scholar and practitioner in our technological world. Birth has long served as a site for critical encounters with expertise, medical systems, and technology, and has inspired a great deal of the scholarship and activism that characterizes the women's health movement. Although well versed in that literature, I was unprepared, emotionall…
Confronting the WTO: Intervention Strategies in GMO Adjudication
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been the target of social justice activists since its inception in 1994, with many seeking to reshape or rescind the WTO agreements. This article instead explores possible interventions into WTO adjudication by compelling the reinterpretation of existing WTO documents. Such an approach can take several forms: mobilizing professional expertise, engaging technical standards, and constructing companion regimes.…
Reconstructing Iraq: Merging discourses of security and development
This article argues that reconstruction is an emerging discourse of international politics that merges security and development discourses in powerful and troubling ways. We focus on Iraq as a site for articulating and institutionalising a particular version of reconstruction, uncovering five narratives that constitute Iraqi reconstruction discourse. We conclude by suggesting that reconstruction repackages security and development into a singular…
Cultivating intellectual community in academia: Reflections from the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN)
Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and A…
Collecting, Testing and Convincing: Forensic DNA Experts in the Courts
Forensic DNA typing evidence has become increasingly accepted within American courts. This acceptance has been largely achieved through slow legitimation in a number of `mundane' cases. Treating DNA typing as a `sociotechnical network', I explore how elements of this technology have been alternatively opened for contestation within the courts or `black-boxed'. Elements outside the view of expert communities have been largely ignored; elements bla…
The Disunity of Consensus: International Population Policy Coordination as Socio-Technical Practice
Using the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study, this paper challenges standard approaches to understanding political consensus. Neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for ‘getting along’ within a structured disunity. Structure derives from commitment to a socio-technical network, while disunity arises from the interpretive flexibility and varied practices contained within …
Reconstructing Iraq: Merging discourses of security and development
This article argues that reconstruction is an emerging discourse of international politics that merges security and development discourses in powerful and troubling ways. We focus on Iraq as a site for articulating and institutionalising a particular version of reconstruction, uncovering five narratives that constitute Iraqi reconstruction discourse. We conclude by suggesting that reconstruction repackages security and development into a singular…
Depleted Uranium, Public Science, and the Politics of Closure
The public controversy over depleted uranium (DU) seems to follow a standard trajectory—scientific closure, via the reduction of scientific uncertainty, led directly to policy closure, as government bureaucracies increasingly downplayed its dangers and denied redress to exposed individuals. Closer inspection, however, reveals a more complex dynamic. A series of expert, public science reports, while articulating a shared narrative of DU safety, ac…
Encountering Birth: Negotiating Expertise, Networks, and My STS Self
The births of my two children—one in the hospital, one at home—provide a context for thinking about being an STS scholar and practitioner in our technological world. Birth has long served as a site for critical encounters with expertise, medical systems, and technology, and has inspired a great deal of the scholarship and activism that characterizes the women's health movement. Although well versed in that literature, I was unprepared, emotionall…
Confronting the WTO: Intervention Strategies in GMO Adjudication
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been the target of social justice activists since its inception in 1994, with many seeking to reshape or rescind the WTO agreements. This article instead explores possible interventions into WTO adjudication by compelling the reinterpretation of existing WTO documents. Such an approach can take several forms: mobilizing professional expertise, engaging technical standards, and constructing companion regimes.…
Science and the Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle is a regulatory approach, under conditions of scientific uncertainty , requiring that a new chemical or technology be regulated or banned until it is proven safe. This principle was developed in opposition to the dominant regulatory standard, which requires affirmative evidence of harm before regulatory action can be taken. These two approaches designate a central conflict in environmental and food regulation, particul…
Engaging Theatre, Activating Publics: Theory and Practice of a Performance on Darwin
The Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology and Society (TWISTS) is a unique public engagement project. Theoretically, TWISTS seeks to activate publics around contemporary science and technology issues by producing agonistic cultural spaces in which participants are confronted with and engaged by multiple perspectives. It thus seeks to enact a model of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (PEST) that is oriented toward neither individual…
Cultivating intellectual community in academia: Reflections from the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN)
Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and A…
Pluralistic Collaboration in Science and Technology: Reviewing Knowledge Systems, Culture, Norms, and Work Styles
This paper challenges the language of “interdisciplinarity,” suggesting “pluralistic collaboration” as a better alternative. Interdisciplinarity, team science, and transdisciplinarity frame academic and problem-focused collaborations narrowly, overemphasizing epistemology, downplaying extra-disciplinary divides and nonacademic collaborators, and either ignoring or psychologizing individual-level phenomena. We first paint a picture of the tensions…
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · Social science (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration (3 works)