• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.51 no.3
• /
• pp.311-326
• /
• 2016

Assemblage has become a popular concept in modern socio-spatial theories with relational and material turns. This article investigates the concept of assemblage focusing on Deleuze and Guattari. By comparing similar concepts such as Foucault's apparatus and Actor-Network Theory, this article demonstrates that assemblage emphasizes not only deterritorialization but also (re)territorialization, and that the exteriality of relations is a critical aspect that differentiate assemblage from other relational spatial concepts. Assemblage can highlight the value of empiricism as an analytical tool, and be open to new spatial imaginations as well as multiple existences and possiblities of alternative political projects and practices.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.9 no.1
• /
• pp.89-127
• /
• 2009

The Korean Astronaut Project(KAP) aims to make the first Korean astronaut fly and take part in space activities in the International Space Station(ISS) in April 2008. KAP was on the purpose of studying the requirement to master manned space technologies as part of the long-term basic plan for national space development. However, people criticized that Ms. Yi was a 'space tourist' not an 'astronaut' because KAP was a program for pride, prestige in 21c's new space race, not specifically science and technology. The government emphasized that Yi carried out her 15 experiments in ISS very competently. In contrast people devaluated Yi's space experiments as below the level, though some of them are enough meaningful to be published on SCI journals. Why did the government fail to make people take Ms. Yi as an astronaut? I answer to this question using the notion of "Network Analysis" based on Actor-Network Theory(ANT).

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.67-90
• /
• 2007

Could STS throw another-colored light on the Hwang's Affair, the scientific fraud committed by Hwang Woo-Suk and his research team in Korea? And could analytic tools of STS unfold another meanings which have been overlooked in most of the traditionally social-sciences-oriented analyses? In this essay, I try to answer these questions by analyzing the Hwang's Affair in the view of STS, especially by using some concepts of actor-network theory(ANT): movement, translation and displacement. I want to say that the Hwang's Affair seems to be a part of normal scientific activity, not an abnormal phenomenon, and as an evidence, focus on the similarities of their life styles between "pure/real scientist" Louis Pasteur and "impure/political scientist" Hwang Woo-Suk. I try to mobilize some concepts of ANT, especially movement, and find out why scientists came to move toward the opposed direction on the pure/real-impure/political line. I suggest that there exists "laboratory politics" as the key factor in this bifurcation. My tentative conclusion is that Pasteur can take a position to make his great world, so-called the Pasteurian world, owing to the success of "double movement" in which he treated his laboratory as a fulcrum to lift up the world, but Hwang degrades himself to "ugly scientific politician" due to the loss of the momentum of his movement; Hwang treated his laboratory only as the symbolic resources and in turn failed to solidify material entities, his real political resources, even though he knew the importance of laboratory.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.1 no.1 s.1
• /
• pp.201-234
• /
• 2001

Sociology(or social science in general) is often diagnosed as in the state of 'crisis' after the collapse of socialism and the erosion of national societies because of rapid globalization. This paper introduces some recent work within science and technology studies(STS) and discusses its potentials to reinvigorate sociology. Although sociologists have rarely regarded STS as contributing to 'mainstream' issues in sociology, an increasing number of STS writers and sociologists have recently started to notice such possibilities. One main reason of this recent change is that STS is no longer merely concerned to convey substantive findings about science and technology, but instead attempts to reconstruct key notions of sociology such as 'social', 'society' and 'agency'. It is in this respect that the discussion below aims to introduce, discuss, and assess the potential contribution of some recent work of STS to sociology. In particular, it is 'actor-network theory'(ANT) that explicitly attempts to examine and suggest the ways in which STS ran help innovate sociology. One major characteristics of ANT is to impute 'agency' to things(nonhumans) unlike traditional sociology. ANT argues that if sociology studies heterogeneous relationships between humans and nonhumans instead of human relations only, it can become once again a vigorous discipline which is able to provide alternative worlds central to the basis of sociology. So this paper focuses on, not the diverse approaches of STS, the characteristics of ANT and its potential contribution to sociology. The author concludes that ANT can not only rejuvenate sociology by implicating new forms of alternative worlds but also open the possibility to contribute to the democratic reformulation of human-nonhuman relationships.