- Docente: Marco Santoro
- Credits: 6
- SSD: SPS/07
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Philosophy (cod. 9216)
Learning outcomes
The student will learn the social and intellectual origins of Sociology, including its major theoretical traditions. He will be familiar with the main conceptual and methodological tools to cultivate discipline to apply the analysis of relevant aspects of science and the contemporary technological development.
Course contents
The course is aimed at introducing students to the rpesearc area called STS (Science and Technoogy Studies) moving from the acknowledgment of the central role played by sociology in science studies. Moving from the seminal contribution by Robert K. Merton and Ludwig Fleck (who was not a sociologist but was inspired by sociological imagination in his depition of how science works) the course will present some major theoretical positions and research traditions emerged in the last few decades, as the so called Strong Program (Bloor), ethnografic studies on labs, Actor-Network-Theory (Latur, Callon and Law). A special focus will be devoted to the social theory of the scientific reason by Pierre Bourdieu, with his concepts of the 'scientific field' and 'reflexivity', and their application to the social and human sciences.
Readings/Bibliography
Sergio Sismondo, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (Blackwell, 2003).
Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press 2004.
Teaching methods
Frontal lessons
Assessment methods
Oral exam
Teaching tools
Slides and supplementary readings
Office hours
See the website of Marco Santoro