Come and Join us in Stockholm at the 7th Nordic STS Conference, 11-13 June, 2025, at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

https://www.nordicsts.se

We invite contributors to participate in an open panel at the upcoming Nordic STS conference, centered on the theme: Revisiting Bildung in Science, Technology, and Society. This panel seeks to explore how the concept of Bildung—a complex and historically rich notion of education, self-cultivation, and societal engagement—can inform and challenge contemporary discussions around the purposes of education, the role of knowledge, and the intersection of science, technology, and society. 

By revisiting and reinterpreting Bildung, this panel aims to address critical questions about the cultivation of values, ethical responsibility, and human flourishing in an increasingly technoscientific world.

Context and Rationale  

At its core, Bildung emphasizes holistic development, integrating intellectual, moral, and cultural dimensions of education and society. Historically rooted in German idealism and Romanticism, Bildung advocates for the cultivation of free and critical thinkers who can engage meaningfully with cultural heritage and societal challenges. However, this ideal has often been critiqued for its individualism, elitism, Eurocentrism, and limited applicability in practical or diverse global contexts.

In recent decades, neoliberal policies have redefined higher education, shifting its focus toward vocationalism, employability, and market competitiveness. These changes have sidelined Bildung’s ideals, reducing education to a utilitarian enterprise at odds with its transformative aspirations. Yet, amidst global crises—social inequality, environmental degradation, and the erosion of democratic institutions—Bildung has resurfaced as a counter-narrative. It challenges narrow, instrumental views of education and reasserts the importance of cultivating critical, ethical, and engaged citizenship.

Bildung offers a rich framework for rethinking the relationship between knowledge, society, and technology. It challenges the reduction of education to a mere tool for economic growth and instead emphasizes the cultivation of critical, ethical, and culturally embedded ways of knowing. This aligns with core STS concerns about the entanglement of science and society, the politics of knowledge, and the ethical responsibilities of technoscientific actors to foster desirable, sustainable, and just futures. Notions of sociotechnical imaginaries and co-creation put forward by STS-scholars have focused on envisioning the relationship between individuals, societies, and technologies within a cultural and historical context. However, compared to the concept of Bildung, these approaches have generally been more confined to descriptive and analytical purposes.