The Center for Science Technology and Medicine Studies (ST&MS) is an interdisciplinary, multi-campus center for the study of Science, Technology and Medicine, located within the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The group brings together historians, sociologists, and anthropologists and others from the UCSF and UC Berkeley campuses who share an interest in understanding and analyzing the global historical, cultural, and social dynamics of the relationships among scientific research, technological developments and medical endeavors.
The center recognizes the increasing importance of social science scholarship on this topic as well as the urgent need for training more scholars in interdisciplinary methods that can make sense of the powerful roles of sciences and technologies in medical settings the world over. While many participants in this center continue to conduct research mostly within their discipline, we all recognize that new disciplinary and methodological formations within the health sciences require disciplinary and methodological innovations in the humanities and social sciences that study them. Just as the biomedical sciences have recognized a need to combine scientific fields (from physics to evolutionary genetics), so too are social scientists compelled to work interdisciplinarily to apprehend the cultural, social, and material basis of the dramatic changes brought about by biotechnology and other technoscientific fields.
The ST&MS center offers a unique combination of methodological skills and topical interests. Other programs in science and technology studies generally consist of sociologists, philosophers, political scientists and historians who focus on non-medical subjects. The ST&MS center brings cultural anthropologists into a central role in the study of modern biomedical sciences and technologies, in association with historians, sociologists, and others. Whereas most existing science and technology studies programs in the country focus on Euro-American settings, the ST&MS center emphasizes the development of biomedical sciences, technologies and especially biotechnology in global contexts, investigating the transnational patterning of the new economies of science and medicine. The center provides opportunities for collaboration among an international network of scholars and centers around the world, particularly in countries where there already exists a vibrant and engaged intellectual interest in science and technology studies. One specific area of geographic focus is on the Pacific Rim, and a network of such scholars and centers of research has begun to develop.
Center for Science, Technology, and Medicine Studies
University of California, San Francisco
Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine
3333 California Street
Suite 485
San Francisco, CA 94143-0850