Calls for papers

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Contents 1 How to post Call for papers in reverse chronological order 2 Call for Papers - Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science - Volume 4: Scientific Instruments: Knowledge, Practice, and Culture 3 Call for Research Proposals Enabling Bio-innovations for Poverty Alleviation in Asia-31 March 2009 4 Free/Libre Software (posted 28 May 2006; deadline 29 Oct 2006 4.1 Instructions to authors 4.2 Important dates 5 Privacy and surveillance - deadline 8/18/06 6 New Chemical Bodies: Biomonitoring, Body Burden, and the Uncertain Threat of Endocrine Disruptors

How to post Call for papers in reverse chronological order

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Call for Papers - Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science - Volume 4: Scientific Instruments: Knowledge, Practice, and Culture

Spontaneous Generations is an open, online, peer-reviewed academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto.

In addition to articles for peer review, opinion essays, and book reviews, Spontaneous Generations is seeking contributions to its focused discussion section. This section consists of short peer-reviewed and invited articles devoted to a particular theme. This year, the theme is "Scientific Instruments: Knowledge, Practice, and Culture." See below for submission guidelines.

We welcome submissions from scholars in all disciplines, including but not limited to HPS, STS, History, Philosophy, Women's Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, and Religious Studies. Papers from all periods are welcome.

The journal consists of four sections:

1. A focused discussion section devoted to Scientific Instruments (see below). (1000-3000 words recommended.)
2. A peer-reviewed section of research papers on various topics in the field of HPS. (5000-8000 words recommended.)
3. A book review section for books published in the last 5 years. (Up to 1000 words.)
4. An opinions section that may include a commentary on or a response to current concerns, trends, and issues in HPS. (Up to 500 words.)

With the “practical turn” in history and philosophy of science came a renewed interest in scientific instruments. Although they have become a nexus for worries about empiricism and standards of evidence, instruments only rarely feature as primary sources for scholars in the history and philosophy of science. Even historians of technology have been accused of underutilizing the evidence embodied in material objects (Corn 1996). The fundamental questions are not settled. First, there is no general agreement as to what counts as a scientific instrument: Are simulations instruments? Can people function as instruments? Do economic or sociological instruments operate in the same way as material instruments? There is a second, related debate about how scientific instruments work: Is there a unified account? Do instruments produce knowledge or produce effects? Do they extend our senses (Humphreys 2006) or embody knowledge (Baird 2006)? Third, HPS has seen a variety of approaches to fitting instruments into broader historical and philosophical questions about scientific communities and practices: Shapin and Schaffer (1985) relate instruments to the scientific life, Galison (1997) gives instrument makers equal footing with theorists and experimentalists within the trading zone of scientific discourse, and Hacking (1983) elevates instruments to central importance in the realism-antirealism debate. Finally, it seems plausible that there are methodological concerns specific to scientific instruments: What lessons can we draw from anthropology, material culture, and other allied fields?

We welcome short papers exploring the history and philosophy of scientific instruments for inclusion in Spontaneous Generations Volume 4. Submissions should be sent no later than 26 February 2010 in order to be considered for the 2010 issue.

For more details, and a preview of Volume 3 (2009): Epistemic Boundaries, please visit the journal homepage at

http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/

Call for Research Proposals Enabling Bio-innovations for Poverty Alleviation in Asia-31 March 2009

The Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, with support from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has launched in February 2009 a small grants competition program to tackle bio- innovation and its social and policy implications for poverty alleviation in the Asian Region.

Details of the Call for Proposal, guidelines for submission and other relevant information can be accessed at: http://www.bioinnovationpolicies.ait.asia/

Selected research projects will be up to 12 months and will focus mainly on bio-innovations demonstrated to be directly relevant to the social phenomenon of poverty – whether alleviating, worsening or creating new forms of poverty. The scope of poverty is further narrowed down to two important areas: on poor people's livelihoods and basic health.

Deadline for submission of Letters of Intent - 31 March 2009.

Announcement of Short-listed Letters of Intent– 15 April 2009.

Deadline for submission of Full Proposal - 15 May 2009.

Announcement of Results - 30 May 2009.

Small Grants Inception and Launching- June 2009.

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General enquiries regarding the Call for Proposals can be directed to:

Enabling Bio-innovations for Poverty Alleviation in Asia Project School of Environment Resources and Development Asian Institute of Technology Thailand

Tel. no: 66 2 524 5671 Fax. no: 66 2 524 6166 Email: bio-innovations@ait.ac.th Website: www.bioinnovationpolicies.ait.asia c/o Ms Mary Caspillo

or to the AIT Project Core Team: Dr Edsel Sajor, Urban Environmental Management esajor@ait.ac.th Dr Bernadette Resurreccion, Gender and Development Studies babette@ait.ac.th Prof Sudip K Rakshit, Food Engineering and Bioprocess Technology and Vice President for Research rakshit@ait.ac.th

Free/Libre Software (posted 28 May 2006; deadline 29 Oct 2006

Call for Papers for a special issue 'Socio-technical Dynamics in the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Social World' in the journal Science Studies, an Interdisciplinary Journal for Science and Technology Studies ([[1]]), to be published autumn 2007. Guest Editors: Yuwei Lin (University of Manchester) & Lars Risan (University of Oslo).

The development of Free/Libre Open Source Software not only intrigues computer scientists to review processes and methods in software engineering, but also stimulates social scientists to look into what have become a mythical phenomenon of our digital era. Questions around how distributed groups of individuals work together in an on-line environment, seemingly without formal ties, to produce high-quality software that acquire cross-sector acceptance continue to puzzle social scientists. Over the past years, anthropologists, economist, historians, lawyers, philosophers, and sociologists have tried to provide various explanations to the phenomenon of on-line social networking, on-line collaboration and on-line knowledge creation and sharing (i.e. common-based peer production). However, the existing body of literature on FLOSS faces a bottleneck, namely that of lacking a STS-inspired empirical investigation of the multiplicity of FLOSS-practices. Here, we try to raise some provocative questions: What kind of questions do FLOSS-practices and networks pose to STS? And does STS really possess theoretical tools that are good enough to analyse the FLOSS development? Might it be that the materiality - and the immateriality - of code needs theoretical and methodological contributions from other fields in social sciences such as politics and economics (such as network effects, lock in and abstract objects)? But then, that challenge is also bidirectional: How does the theoretical vocabularies and the empirical methods of STS add something new to the more economical understandings of FLOSS?

This special issue aims to meet these theoretical and methodological challenges in both FLOSS and STS studies. It does so by encouraging research based on qualitative research methodologies and methods. Such a qualitative inquiry challenges the universally vocal and normative way of depicting FLOSS culture and practices (e.g. a homogeneous gift-giving and volunteering culture). The special issue will take a practice-based view to exploring multiple cultures and practices in developing, localizing, appropriating, commodifying, customizing FLOSS. The issue would also like to address the diversity in FLOSS communities through asking how seemingly global FLOSS culture is translated (un)successfully into different contexts and locales.

We believe that this issue will demystify several stereotypes and misunderstandings about FLOSS and shed light on many emerging and changing cultural and socio-technical practices in our digital society and knowledge driven economies. Thinking reciprocally, we would also like to allow peculiar im/materialities of FLOSS practices challenge the way STS has traditionally dealt with socio-technical networks.

Instructions to authors

Manuscripts in English in any area relevant to the special issue should be submitted electronically to the guest editor Yuwei Lin <yuwei{at}ylin.org> and Lars Risan <lars.risan{at}tik.uio.no>. You will normally receive an acknowledgement within a few days. Please provide email addresses for all authors.

Papers, no exceeding 10,000 words including notes, references and abstract, are accepted in electronic format, with Open Document Text (.odt) or OpenOffice.org 1.0 Text Document (.sxw) being the preferred formats (other formats are acceptable by prior arrangement). Files should not be security protected, and should be anonymised. The editors reserve the right to make the style of presentation uniform prior to publication, whilst making every effort not to alter the content of an article. Paper submission will be acknowledged via email. Subsequent enquiries concerning paper progress should be made to the guest editor Yuwei Lin <yuwei{at}ylin.org> and Lars Risan <lars.risan{at}tik.uio.no>.

For details of preparation of the manuscript, see the Science Studies Journal website [[2]] and [[3]].

Important dates

October 29, 2006: full paper submissions to guest editors. January 15, 2007: Guest editors and authors complete manuscripts and round robin referee each other's articles. February 7, 2007: Guest editors submit a complete set of articles to Science Studies for review. Science Studies may return articles for revision if needed before sending to outside referees. April 25: Deadline for referee reports to be sent back to Science Studies. Reports and decisions sent to authors and guest editors. August 22: Final Copy Due September - October 2007: Layout and proof-reading. November 2007: Issue goes to press.

Privacy and surveillance - deadline 8/18/06

The Globalisation of Personal Data (GPD) project at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) invites you to submit a paper proposal for a workshop happening November 17-18, 2006. The purpose of the workshop is to discuss the findings from our International Survey on Privacy and Surveillance conducted this summer in nine countries (Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, Brazil, France, Spain, Hungary, China and Japan).

Please find the call for papers and a background paper on the survey at our website (http://queensu.ca/sociology/Surveillance). The survey instrument is available upon request. Paper abstracts are due August 18th.

On behalf of the GPD survey team,

L. Lynda Harling Stalker PhD (Carleton) Postdoctoral Fellow The Surveillance Project, Dept. Sociology Queen's University Privp...@queensu.ca <mail%20to:Privp...@queensu.ca>

-- Jason Pridmore Ph.D. Candidate Department of Sociology Queen's University Kingston, Ontario Canada

Instructor:

SOCY 273 Social Psychology

SOCY284U Sociology of Information and Communication Technology

Queen's Science & Technology Studies Research Group http://www.queensu.ca/sociology/QSTS/index.htm

Internet Studies @ Queen's http://queensu.ca/sociology/ISQ/

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New Chemical Bodies: Biomonitoring, Body Burden, and the Uncertain Threat of Endocrine Disruptors

Deadline 1 December 2006

The Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, PA will host the 2007 Gordon Cain Conference, “New Chemical Bodies: Biomonitoring, Body Burden, and the Uncertain Threat of Endocrine Disruptors,” on 22-23 March 2007. The conference is designed to foster cross-disciplinary discussion and collaboration between those working in the chemical, ecological, environmental/public health, and social sciences to address the problems and challenges associated with the use and proliferation of human body burden studies, especially as they relate to research into endocrine disrupting chemicals. We will employ a format focused on discussion rather than paper presentation; as such, this call is for participation rather than specifically for papers (see below for further details). Please submit inquiries and statements of interest to Jody Roberts (jroberts@chemheritage.org), Gordon Cain Fellow, Chemical Heritage Foundation. Statements should include an abstract-length (approx. 200 words) description of how your work bears on the issues outlined below, along with appropriate publication(s) or work(s) in progress (graduate students are certainly encouraged to apply). Deadline for submission is 1 December 2006 with notification of acceptance no later than 1 January 2007. Some travel assistance will be available for participants through the Gordon Cain Fellowship.

Background and Prospectus In July of 2005, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released its Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. Through the process of biomonitoring—measuring the amount of a chemical in a blood or urine sample—the CDC aims to track the accumulation of synthetic chemicals into the human population through direct measurement of the populace. As the report states: “Biomonitoring measurements are the most health-relevant assessments of exposure because they measure the amount of the chemical that actually gets into people from all environmental sources (e.g., air, soil, water, dust, or food) combined.” But just what happens once these chemicals enter our bodies, and what exactly we are to do with this information remains unclear. This conference aims to address the uncertainty that surrounds the now well established fact that organisms of all types, kinds, and geographies—including but certainly not limited to humans—find themselves carrying/composed of a cadre of chemicals heretofore unknown to the planet.

Additionally, the class of chemicals generally referred to as environmental endocrine disruptors presents challenges to our current systems of monitoring and regulating synthetic chemicals in the environment. These chemicals have potential activity at orders of magnitude lower than current dose limits for other toxins. Perhaps more troubling, these chemicals leave no “smoking gun” with effects manifested years if not decades later, and often times in a body only indirectly exposed (such as developing fetuses). Thus, new modes of thinking about these problems seem necessary and timely. Understanding the new chemical bodies of the twenty-first century requires new analytical tools – both instrumental and conceptual. A primary goal for this conference, then, is to begin thinking about what this new set of tools might look like.

The conference will bring together individuals from a diversity of research areas and institutional backgrounds in order to represent and address the breadth and scope of the issues while initiating collaboration towards the construction of new modes of dealing with our new chemical bodies. It will be held over two days and will utilize two different formats. The opening day will feature keynote lectures on topics related to biomonitoring, body burden, and environmental endocrine disruptors. It will provide an opportunity for a public forum where leaders in the field can offer their perspectives on the current state of the fields involved with these issues. The second day of the conference will be devoted to an intensive and focused conversation about the future trajectories of the field. This academic-styled meeting will be smaller and centered on a set of pre-circulated papers from conference participants, designated commentators for each of the papers, and with the remaining time left to open discussion by all participants.

Confirmed participants include: Terrance Collins (Carnegie Mellon University) Carl Cranor (University of California, Riverside) Kim Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Scott Frickel (Tulane University) Alistair Iles (University of California, Berkeley) Nancy Langston (University of Wisconsin) John Peterson Myers (Environmental Health Sciences) Fred vom Saal (University of Missouri)