STS 6042 - Making Experts

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

R. Slayton.

Experts have long been essential to societies around the world. Experts wield power not by physical force or popular mandate, but by credible claims to specialized skills and knowledge that others lack. Yet this power is ambivalent. Work in science and technology studies demonstrates that expert knowledge is fundamentally political, raising questions about how to integrate such knowledge with democratic processes that aim to ensure equality of representation and participation. This graduate seminar will examine different theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the making of experts and expertise, including institutional, experiential, and interactional approaches. We will discuss differences and similarities in the ways that disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, and science and technology studies conceptualize and research experts and systems of expertise.