EASST 2010 -
TECHNOLOGICALLY DENSE ENVIRONMENTS: A BRIDGE BETWEEN STS AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES

In the past years, a reflection has emerged around the connection between STS and other
domains, especially management and organization studies. That is exemplified, for ex-
ample, by the international workshop titled “Does STS mean business?” in 2004, the ses-
sion at EASST 2006 titled “STS as a boundary discipline: interacting with Organization
Studies”, where a number of established STS scholars shared their experiences of “be-
coming” STS researchers, or by the special issue of the journal “Organization” in January
2009, exploring the relationship between STS and Organization and Management Studies.
Regardless of these efforts, many are still struggling to engage with other disciplines, or
find the balance between being “STS” and “practically useful”.
Our intent, with this stream, is to deepen such reflection, focusing on the empirical issues
emerging in Technologically Dense Environments (TDE). In such an environment complex
socio-material practices mobilize the joint action of heterogeneous elements, both humans
and non-humans, in supporting collective work, blurring the distinction between natural
and artificial ontologies.
The connections that take place in TDE are the locus where the performance of science
and technology is enacted through organizational and working practices. Proposing such a
tightly integrated STS-informed Organization-oriented view suggests that we should not
speak from the STS perspective only, of which critical analysis de-constructs the making of
technological products or services or phenomena, but also apply our observation and find-
ings to the field in a more proactive way, helping to balance the construction of a TDE.
Through this lens, we would like to call for contributions studying TDE, that can be seen as
sites of scientific and technological production, as well as sites of working and organizing
practices using scientific and technical means.
Doing this kind of research pushes the STS scholars to confront situated methodological
challenges, act as a boundary worker across different fields. Such discussion can serve as
relationship building and networking between STS scholars for sharing experiences and
support, as well as a bridge for linking empirical, methodological and theoretical issues
that different disciplines (e.g., STS, Organization Studies) face, finding a common ground
to tackle and/or conceptualise these issues.
Possible topics are, but not limited to:
• empirical findings from TDE fields, studying organizing processes from a STS-in-
formed perspective;
• theoretical reflections on the bridge building and spanning between different fields;
• map, discuss and exchange methods and methodologies used in different fields.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent by email (following website instruc-
tions) by 2010 March 15th.

PDF version: http://events.unitn.it/sites/events.unitn.it/files/EASST_010_Track_...

More info: http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010


Convenors:

Manuela Perrotta is research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. Her main research interests concern the socio-materiality of working and organizing practices, technological change and knowing, and collective memories and technologies.
(http://www.unitn.it/rucola/members/perrotta.htm)

Maurizio Teli is researcher at Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, Trento. His main research interests concern the political dimensions of software development, three dimensional environments and the organizational transformation in the communication of science.
(http://www.maurizioteli.eu)