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‘Big Science’ as a notion was coined in 1960 by physicist Alvin Weinberg and physicist-turned-historian Derek de Solla Price, and immediately became the center of heated discussions in the U.S. Simultaneously, in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, a counterpart of the American discussion of Big Science was epitomized in the concept of Scientific-Technological Revolution, which became the center of a theoretically significant discussions focused on the conditions and consequences of scientific-technical, social and economic change in different political systems. Throughout the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union advocated their ability to offer and display different visions of a modern industrial society, and Big Science played major role in these powerful Cold War imageries. This chapter examines different ways in which Big Science was deployed as a resource to debate, negotiate, and rationalize the concerns and anxieties of the Cold War, on the opposite sides of the political divide. In both political settings, scientists, as well as social theorists, promoted the view that Big Science needs what might be called “Big Science Studies” – an independent expertise, which would provide a systematic assessment and characterization of Big Science, and advise governments accordingly.

This chapter argues that one way to re-imagine Europe is to re-imagine science and technology policy instrumentation as a moment when actors come together and enact ‘their’ Europe. To show this, the chapter conceptualises the regulatory tool of Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) as a space for political action. Drawing on empirical material gathered through interviews and observation of meetings, Diego de la Hoz del Hoya presents two modelling exercises whereby fishers, marine biologists and Commission officials mobilised to agree the setting of fishing thresholds. In showing the detail of actor arguments and practices, he argues that far from being sites of mere technical regulation, IIAs provide critical new spaces for European political work. IIAs emerge as ‘political’ in two ways: first, in the course of IIA, important value judgments are made, not only about the content of policy (here, fisheries), but also about the very nature of Europe itself; second, IIAs confront actors with issues of distribution of power and authority. Overall, the chapter contributes to the cross-fertilisation of Science and Technology Studies with a political sociology of the EU.

The future has come early for Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland. Here, at what is sometimes considered the periphery, is the site of the European Marine Energy Centre and an energy-aware and self-determined way of living that is only imagined as a future elsewhere. This chapter forms a prose-poem, written to evoke the island landscape of light and liminality, and to give voice to the people and places working on the edge–both at the geographic edge and on the leading edge–of energy futures. The poem and subsequent discussion explores the qualities of design and development in Orkney that make such futures: Self-Sufficiency, Modest Innovation, Mutable Futures, and Early Adapters. Woven through the poem is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to the future as situated in social and technical practice, as located and partial. For it seems that islands that were once seen as far from ICT industry innovation, may now be better understood as test sites for collaborative experimentation and different conceptions of design and innovation.

The study of computing infrastructures has grown significantly due to the rapid proliferation and ubiquity of large-scale IT-based installations. At the same time, recognition has also grown of the usefulness of such studies as a means for understanding computing infrastructures as material complements of practical action. Subsequently the concept of “infrastructure” (or “information infrastructures,” “cyberinfrastructures,” and “infrastructuring”) has gained increasing importance in the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) as well as in neighboring areas such as Information Systems research (IS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, as such studies have unfolded, the very concept of “infrastructure” is being applied in different discourses, for different purposes, in myriad different senses. Consequently, the concept of “infrastructure” has become increasingly muddled and needs clarification. The chapter presents a critical investigation of the vicissitudes of the concept of “infrastructure” over the last 35 years.

Maps—whether they are on paper or online—have become ubiquitous. While maps used to be the purview of a trained cadre of experts and came about with the rise of the nation-state, mapping practices have increasingly become democratized. Now everyone with mapping software and an internet connection can engage in map-based activism and put forth particular geopolitical visions. Maps produced in a conflict region like Israel/Palestine exemplify how various top-down and bottom-up mapping practices speak to how maps can become part of map wars over how to present a territory and its boundaries. Israel/Palestine’s map wars also exemplify how visual rhetoric can become a powerful tool in the war of maps. In order to trace the social history of mapping practices in Israel/Palestine we use various theoretical tools drawn from Science and Technology Studies, sociology, and geography and we draw on archival material, in-depth interviews, and ethnographies to trace the historical significance of maps in Israel/Palestine.

This chapter focuses on Manchester city centre to argue that exploring the futures that different stakeholders envisage for the city centre reveals tensions that are otherwise glossed over. Critically engaging with urban futures as they are mobilised by institutional stakeholders, and eliciting those that other actors envisage, highlights whose interests are currently being prioritised and whose are traded off. Engaging in an analysis of these urban futures reveals not only important tensions connected to future developments and imagined uses of the city centre, but also opens up to scrutiny the present experiences and uses of the city centre, and the competing interests that a range of actors currently have.

The first essay examines narratives of gestation and growth in medieval medical science, natural philosophy, zoology, and cosmology. Mitchell argues that embryology and infancy enable an exigent critique of human self-sufficiency. Likewise, dream visions and love allegories deploy infancy and childishness in ways that question the autonomy and agency of the human.

The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a larger twentieth century history of women’s sexological work, one that is international in its scope and grapples with the rupture in female sexual knowledge production affected by the Second World War and its geopolitical realignments, the reshuffling of the ideological landscapes after 1945, and the rise of new social movements in the 1960s. Finally, the Conclusion argues that the history of women’s sexological work is especially significant at this particular moment in time, as twenty-first century feminist theorists positively embrace science and nature as intellectual and rhetorical resources once again.

The importance and effectiveness of public participation and upstream engagement have been emphasized in the field of STS (Science, Technology, and Society) studies. Here, the authors introduce these as potential tools to clear away unethical “optimism,” which Gareth criticizes in his target article. the authors present three cases (AIDS, muscular dystrophy research, and the shepherds of Cumbria) in which public participation proved to be beneficial. Participation of non-experts within fields in which experts are exclusively involved can potentially break biases and restricted perspectives, and views from non-experts may even lead to newer research directions. Incorporation of patient and subject perspectives into research may reduce unethical, or biased, optimism in clinical research and even basic experiments. the authors surmise that this argument holds true even in the research fields of nerve grafting and nerve regeneration.

When the phenomenon of coloured rain struck Kerala in 2001, the ambivalences and contradictions in the explanation provided by the researchers from the Centre for Earth Science Studies raised public ire. Following this, the scientific public sphere was transformed into a channel for scientific communication between different groups of researchers who attempted to solve the mystery. In this context a group of researchers proposed that the red colour of the rain was due to biological cells of meteoric origin, against the biologists’ argument that the reason was algal and fungal spores. Skilfully promoting their findings with the help of global media, these researchers surpassed the hierarchies of science. By examining the controversy, the chapter highlights the role of media in helping scientists and the public to engage with a wide range of scientific explanations that were proposed, discussed, and falsified or accepted through a complex deliberative process.

The second essay takes up both physical and literary examples of childish things. The anarchic forces of miniature matters are palpable even as such small-scale things articulate with human fantasy. Mitchell also explores literary miniaturization in Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Usk.

The third essay proposes that the condition of human dependency and self-estrangement at the dining table. Otherwise incommensurable matters (mineral, vegetable, and animal) are incorporated at mealtime. Conduct literature trains the young to become deeply involved in the material medium, and romance and allegory is equally invested in the objective mess.

When a series of micro-earthquakes struck Kerala, various scientific institutions provided contradictory explanations regarding the epicentres and magnitudes, leading to public criticism. The regional media actively facilitated the public contestation of knowledge claims by different groups of experts. The media deliberation also brought in public anxiety about reservoir-induced seismicity as the epicentre of the quakes was near the Idukki dam. The gradual shift of deliberative focus from the potential threat posed by Idukki dam to the old Mullaperiyar dam is analysed to expose how regionalism and inter-state conflicts crucially shaped the scientific controversy. The controversy intensified after the devastating Gujarat earthquake on 26 January 2001. The fear of a looming disaster aggravated when a range of unnatural geophysical phenomena, among which well collapses were the most prominent, appeared in Kerala, leading to more conflicts among researchers as well as between the experts and the public.