Everyone interested in the topic is cordially welcomed to participate the workshop (no fees).

Call for Proposals

In recent years, researchers from social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies analyzed the relation between societies and their architecture (e.g. Yaneva and Guy 2008; Fischer und Delitz 2009; Delitz 2010). They discuss both theoretical concepts and problems of empirical research in this field. They show that within urban sociology and the sociology of architecture, the specific relations between objects and "the social", thus between non-human and human actors, and the focus on the constitutive role of materiality for social relations are new topics. In contrast to this comparatively new approach, Science and Technology Studies (STS) analyzed the influence of materiality and non-human actors for a long time. E.g. authors of the so called laboratory studies analyzed the influence of the laboratory space and the scientific instruments and objects on the production of scientific knowledge (e.g. Latour and Woolgar 1979; Knorr Cetina 1981; Star 1995) and showed that technologies have "semiotic power" that enable them to influence the social (Bijker 1997). Others argue that technologies stabilize social organization (Beck 1996) while both human and non-human beings are interactionally and rhetorically re-classified so that the borders between human and non-human actors are challenged (Knorr Cetina 1999). Last but not least, one of the most prominent approaches, Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), conceptualizes the world as a network made of socio-material elements (Callon 1986; Latour 1988).

We start our workshop with the hypothesis that the STS-approach may be fruitful for urban sociology and the sociology of architecture and want to end with an answer to the following question: What can a theoretically and empirically ambitious sociology of architecture learn from STS?

Some authors already used the vocabulary of STS to analyze the relation between architecture and "the social" (e.g. Gieryn 2002; Hommels 2005; Yaneva 2005). Still, they focus on the influence architectonic objects have on the society. Some STS-ideas may broaden this perspective, because they claim a reciprocal influence of non-humans and the social world (Law 1987). Thus, the sociology of architecture emphasizes only one side of the relation between buildings and the society, whereas for STS this relationship is potentially symmetrical. How can this supposed symmetry, the mixing of social beings and technical artifacts, be fruitful for the sociology of architecture? Or is it better to speak just about their relations, like ANT-representants do? Furthermore, we ask if architectural objects are open for any possible use or if they allow only specific forms of use, with this being subject to a "located accountability", as Suchman (2002) suggests.

This workshop calls for theoretical and empirical papers that analyze the architecture of societies and aim at including concepts and methods developed by STS.
A broad variety of questions are of interest:

• Which STS-concepts may be translated into questions of the sociology of architecture?
• Which conceptual modifications are necessary?
• What methodological consequences result from these modifications for the analysis of architecture and its relation to society?
• How can empirical studies include the possibility of reciprocal influences of buildings and society?
• What can the sociology of architecture learn from authors who criticize the inclusion of non-human actors (e.g. Collins 2010)?

We are pleased to announce that the workshop will be opened by two well-known sociologists: Prof. Dr. Karin Knorr Cetina (University of Chicago) and Prof. Dr. Martina Löw (Technical University Darmstadt) will present their ideas on the interrelation of STS and the sociology of architecture in an opening public lecture on Thursday, June 6th 2013. On Friday, June 7th, and Saturday, June 8th, panels with paper presentations by international researchers follow.

Proposals
Write your proposals in English or German with no more than 400 words including a summary of your central arguments, research methods, and possible results of your paper. Please send the proposal to arch.sts.2013@gmail.com.
Selection process: The papers will be selected in a two-step process, including double-blind reviews by urban sociologists and STS researchers.

Deadlines
Submission Deadline: February 15, 2013, please send proposals to arch.sts.2013@gmail.com
Notification of Acceptance: March 15, 2013
Final Papers Due: May 15, 2013
Workshop Date: June 6-8, 2013

Workshop Schedules
Start: June 6, 2013 public lecture in the evening
Panel discussions until noon of June 8, 2013.

Organizors
Anna-Lisa Müller, HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany
Werner Reichmann, University of Konstanz, Germany

References

• Beck, Stefan. 1996. Umgang mit Technik. Kulturelle Praxen und kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungskonzepte. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
• Bijker, Wiebe E. 1997. "Demokratisierung der Technik - Wer sind die Experten?" In Aufstand der Laien. Expertentum und Demokratie in der technisierten Welt, ed. by Max Kerner, 133-155. Aachen: Thouet-Verlag.
• Callon, Michel. 1986. "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay" In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. by John Law, 196-223. London: Routledge.
• Collins, Harry. 2010. "Humans not Instruments". Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 4 (1): 138-147.
• Delitz, Heike. 2010. Gebaute Gesellschaft: Architektur als Medium des Sozialen. Frankfurt am Main, New York: Campus.
• Fischer, Joachim, and Heike Delitz, eds. 2009. Die Architektur der Gesellschaft: Theorien für die Architektursoziologie. Bielefeld: transcript.
• Gieryn, Thomas F. 2002. "What buildings do". Theory and Society 31 (1): 35-74.
Hommels, Anique. 2005. "Studying Obduracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion Between Technology Studies and Urban Studies". Science, Technology, & Human Values 30 (3): 323-351.
• Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon.
• Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures. How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
• Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Reprint. Newbury Park: Sage.
• Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
• Law, John. 1987. "Technology and Heterogenous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion". In The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, 111-134. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.
• Star, Susan Leigh, eds. 1995. Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and Politics in Science and Technology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Suchman, Lucy A. 2002. "Practice-Based Design of Information Systems: Notes from the Hyperdeveloped World". The Information Society 18 (2): 139-144.
• Yaneva, Albena. 2005. "Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design". Social Studies of Science 35 (6) : 867-894.
• Yaneva, Albena, and Simon Guy. 2008. "Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society." Science Studies 21 (1) (Juni): 3-7.