Editing Science and technology studies (section)

===The "turn to technology" (and beyond)===
{{see also|Social construction of technology}}

A decisive moment in the development of STS was the mid-1980s addition of technology studies to the range of interests reflected in science. During that decade, two works appeared ''en seriatim'' that signaled what [[Steve Woolgar]] was to call the "turn to technology".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Woolgar |first=Steve |date=January 1991 |title=The turn to technology in social studies of science |journal=[[Science, Technology, & Human Values]] |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=20–50 |doi=10.1177/016224399101600102 |jstor=690038|s2cid=145470661 }}</ref> In a seminal 1984 article, [[Trevor Pinch]] and [[Wiebe Bijker]] showed how the sociology of technology could proceed along the theoretical and methodological lines established by the sociology of scientific knowledge.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pinch |first1=Trevor J. |last2=Bijker |first2=Wiebe E. |date=August 1984 |title=The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other |journal=[[Social Studies of Science]] |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=399–441 |doi=10.1177/030631284014003004 |jstor=285355|s2cid=19157599 |url=https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-social-construction-of-facts-and-artefacts-or-how-the-sociology-of-science-and-the-sociology-of-technology-might-benefit-each-other(9370d395-f64e-418e-922e-bfbc59fb9250).html }} See also: {{cite book |editor1-last=Bijker |editor1-first=Wiebe E. |editor2-last=Hughes |editor2-first=Thomas Parke |editor3-last=Pinch |editor3-first=Trevor J. |date=2012 |orig-year=1987 |title=The social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology |edition=Anniversary |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |isbn=9780262517607 |oclc=759491749}}</ref> This was the intellectual foundation of the field they called the social construction of technology. Donald MacKenzie and [[Judy Wajcman]] primed the pump by publishing a collection of articles attesting to the influence of society on technological design (''Social Shaping of Technology'', 1985).<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=MacKenzie |editor1-first=Donald A. |editor2-last=Wajcman |editor2-first=Judy |date=1999 |orig-year=1985 |title=The social shaping of technology |edition=2nd |location=Buckingham |publisher=[[Open University Press]] |isbn=0335199143 |oclc=39713267 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/socialshapingoft0000unse }}</ref> Social science research continued to interrogate STS research from this point onward as researchers moved from post-modern to post-structural frameworks of thought, Bijker and Pinch contributing to SCOT knowledge and Wajcman providing boundary work through a feminist lens.<ref name=":1b">{{Cite journal |last=Law |first=John |date=November 2008 |title=On Sociology and STS |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.2008.00808.x |journal=The Sociological Review |volume=56 |issue=4 |pages=623–649 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-954x.2008.00808.x |s2cid=149088374 |issn=0038-0261|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The "turn to technology" helped to cement an already growing awareness of underlying unity among the various emerging STS programs. More recently, there has been an associated turn to ecology, nature, and materiality in general, whereby the socio-technical and natural/material co-produce each other. This is especially evident in work in STS analyses of biomedicine (such as [[Carl May]] and [[Annemarie Mol]]) and ecological interventions (such as [[Bruno Latour]], [[Sheila Jasanoff]], [[Matthias Gross]], [[Sara B. Pritchard]], and [[S. Lochlann Jain]]).