Short Abstract:

Author Meets Critics Session: 2015 Fleck Prize Winner Banu Subramanium, Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014) In this panel, we will discusses the winner of the 2016 Ludwik Fleck Prize, Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press). The Fleck prize is named after microbiologist Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961), author of The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Each year it honors the best book in the area of science and technology studies. As ‘science and technology studies’ is an interdisciplinary field, so the range of eligible books is very broad. It includes, but is not limited to, the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, economics, education, geography, and psychology as well as works combining or outside of the traditional academic disciplines. It includes studies of knowledge, policy, government, R&D, the uses of expertise, feminist and gender studies, technological controversies, technology transfer, rhetorical and literary analyses, and studies of specific technologies. Further, it includes works addressing science and technology for the public and for educational audiences. The main criterion is that the substantive content of the work be framed by a social science or humanities perspective of science and/or technology.