International Workshop on Science, Technology and International Affairs: An Historical Perspective, March 2004, at Georgetown University

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This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the USA, Europe and Latin America who will explore the place of science and technology in international affairs, above all since World War II. Its seeks to go beyond the usual studies of the technological arms race and the space race between the superpowers to show how the content of scientific and technological knowledge is integrated into policy debates and informs negotiations between states and power blocs in the international arena. It will emphasize the contrast between the need to base decisions on well-established truth-claims, and the inherent fragility and tentativeness of those truth-claims. While major political initiatives and policy decisions should ideally be based on "objective" knowledge in many areas of global concern today (most obviously, global warming and climate change) the evidence is itself highly contested and politicized. This workshop will explore the significance of this uncertainty for the political and policy process, opening a dialogue between historians and sociologists of science and technology, scholars in international affairs, and policy makers themselves. In line with this intellectual agenda, the PI is an historian of science and technology, while the Co-PI is a researcher in international affairs. The project is not only intended to facilitate multidisciplinary interactions between researchers. It also aims to reach out to graduate students, policymakers and administrators. To this end the workshop will be held at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington DC in March 2004. Approximately 20 leading scholars have already expressed their willingness to participate in the project, and have provided topics and abstracts of their proposed presentations. About 15-20 additional people from the local area, including students and practitioners in the policy field, will be encouraged to participate. In addition, the promotion of the project and the dissemination of its results, will be secured by building a webpage that will originally be hosted at George Washington University. The PI and Co-PI will also co-edit Volume 21 of Osiris (an annual research journal devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences, published by the History of Science Society) in which the best papers presented at the workshop will be published in 2006.