Science and technology studies

Nancy D. Campbell

Chapter 15 in Research Handbook on Drugs and Society, 2026, pp 178-192 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a critical interdisciplinary formation that promotes self-reflexivity about the social organization and impacts of scientific knowledge production. STS is pursued from myriad conceptual frameworks, including laboratory studies, sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), social construction of technology (SCOT), actor-network theory (ANT), and feminist, antiracist, postcolonial, and decolonial STS. These frameworks are used to study drugs as objects and subjects involved in processes of social construction and transformation. STS is keenly focused on the politics of knowledge, tracing how scientific and vernacular knowledges are produced or unsettled, stabilized or destabilized, closed or opened, contested or negotiated. Rather than treat social knowledge as naturalized, STS demonstrates the non-self-evident character of drugs in their multiplicity and plurality. This chapter offers a genealogy of STS as contributory to opening new conceptual and empirical questions about drugs, society, and social change.

Keywords: Science and technology studies; Social construction; Social problems; Addiction research; Drug use; Situated knowledges (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802209136
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