David hess
Biography
David J. Hess is a professor in the Sociology Department at Vanderbilt University and Director of Climate and Environmental Studies.[1] He also holds the James Thornton Fant Chair in Sustainability Studies and has served as Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and the Environment.[2]
He trained as an anthropologist and taught for many years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before moving to Vanderbilt. His research and teaching concern the policy and societal dimensions of science, technology, health, and the environment.[1]
He has been a Fulbright scholar and has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation and other organizations.[1] He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than a dozen books and edited volumes,[1] and his work has been cited more than 23,000 times.[3]
His awards include the Robert K. Merton Prize from the American Sociological Association, the Diana Forsythe Prize from the American Anthropological Association, the Star-Nelkin Prize shared with coauthors from the ASA, and the General Anthropology Division Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship from the AAA.[1]
Projects
Anthropology of science and technology
Hess coedited Knowledge and Society Volume 9: The Anthropology of Science and Technology with Linda Layne in 1992, under series editor Arie Rip, described as a founding volume in anthropological and cultural approaches to science and technology studies.[4] His contribution to that volume, "Introduction: The New Ethnography and the Anthropology of Science and Technology," set out the case for ethnographic method applied to laboratories and technical practice.[5]
Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia University Press, 1995) argued for the value of the culture concept, understood in diverse ways and particularly as anthropology understands it, within science and technology studies.[5] Hess has noted that the ethnographic and cultural analysis he was arguing for has since expanded considerably, and that the book remains useful as an overview of the different approaches.[5]
His review work on theories of the social construction of technology draws on both science and technology studies and the anthropology of science and technology, and applies them at the intersection of the two fields.[6]
Heterodox science and medicine
Spirits and Scientists (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), his first monograph, examined scientific and medical controversies surrounding the Spiritist religious movement in Brazil.[4] Related early publications include "The Many Rooms of Brazilian Spiritism" in Luso-Brazilian Review and "Religion, Heterodox Science, and Brazilian Culture" in Social Studies of Science.[4]
Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers and American Culture followed, treating the dispute between believers and skeptics as a cultural formation rather than adjudicating it.[6]
A later book examined the twentieth-century history of medical researchers and clinicians in Europe and North America who held that bacteria played a significant role in the etiology of cancer and could be addressed through vaccines, diet, and immunological therapies, including a substantial network of women researchers.[6]
Undone science
Hess's most portable concept. Undone science names areas of research that are systematically left unfunded and unperformed because no constituency with resources wants the answers, and which social movements identify as absences rather than as errors.
Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions (MIT Press, 2016) develops this into a theoretical integration of science and technology studies with social movement studies, finding both common ground and undone research between them.[2]
Alternative pathways and energy transitions
Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (MIT Press, 2007) examines how social movements and other forms of activism affect innovation in science, technology, and industry, offering a framework for the interaction between grassroots environmental action and mainstream industry.[2] It won the Robert K. Merton award.[5]
His current research concerns coalitions, social movements, scientific knowledge, and strategic action in energy transitions and technological change.[1] Recent work covers local opposition to renewable energy, community choice aggregation in California, clean energy conservatism, and the politics of the green energy transition in the United States.[4][7]
Wireless smart meters
A study of public acceptance of wireless smart meters, arguing that societal-implications research and regulatory policy focused on privacy, security, and accuracy while other grounds for public objection went unaddressed.[6]
Books
- Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture. Penn State University Press, 1991.
- Knowledge and Society Volume 9: The Anthropology of Science and Technology, ed. with Linda Layne. JAI Press, 1992.
- Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers and American Culture. University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
- Science and Technology in a Multicultural World. Columbia University Press, 1995.
- Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction. NYU Press, 1997.
- Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry. MIT Press, 2007.
- Localist Movements in a Global Economy. MIT Press, 2009.
- Good Green Jobs in a Global Economy. MIT Press, 2012.
- Undone Science. MIT Press, 2016.
Further Reading
- Cyborgs and Citadels
- Gary Lee Downey
- Cyborgs@Cyberspace?: An Ethnographer Looks to the Future
- Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative
- Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
- We Have Never Been Modern
- Emic Approach
- Etic Approach
- Careers in Digital Anthropology
- The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles
- What Technology Wants
- Simulation and Its Discontents
External Links
- davidjhess.net
- Faculty page, Vanderbilt
- Google Scholar
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 David J. Hess, Vanderbilt Department of Sociology.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 David J. Hess, MIT Press.
- ↑ David J. Hess, Google Scholar.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Curriculum Vitae, David J. Hess, Vanderbilt University.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 All Research, davidjhess.net.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 David Hess research profile, ResearchGate.
- ↑ David J. Hess, Brown Climate Social Science Network.
