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This chapter reflects on the novel ways of knowing that artistic practices have to offer to mobilities studies. Building on the work of Bruno Latour (‘matters of concern’) and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (‘experimental systems’), some of the epistemological questions that are related to artistic interventions as ways of knowing mobile worlds are explored through the analysis of two cases from artistic practice. The first focuses on a sound artwork by the Italian artist and researcher Daniela de Paulis who has extensively worked on mobilities in her artistic practice. In the project Night Mail, inspired by the eponymous 1936 British documentary showing how mail is transported from London to Glasgow by night train, she made a contemporary sonic documentation of a parcel traveling between these cities. The entire journey was recorded with an MP3 player inside the package. The second recounts the site-specific theater project Cargo Sophia-X (2006) of the German theater group Rimini Protokoll. They adapted a freight truck so that an audience could be seated in its cargo hold. While the truck drivers followed their regular route, the audience looked at actual highways and haulage sites through a large window on the side of the truck. Framing these exemplary cases as mobile research helps to investigate the systemic gestures of transportation and mobilities that stretch out from urban fabrics to connect them over large distances. By analyzing how artists stage the movements of a parcel and not a person, a qualitative difference is articulated between Flaneuring and inhabiting a system we normally do not know from the inside.

The Jesuit Collection of the University Library in Maastricht houses a collection of over 260.000 volumes, including several hundreds of often lavishly illustrated travel books. The international mindset of the Jesuits seems to be suitable for the international student population in Maastricht today. To explore the Jesuits’ ‘travel treasures’, the authors of this chapter initiated in 2013 the ‘On Expedition’ project within the framework of the Maastricht Research Based Learning (MaRBLe) programme and the Honours programme – in close cooperation with the University Library. The aim of this research-based learning project was to link research and teaching in such a way, that undergraduate students would be stimulated to do research themselves, preferably as independently as possible. The ‘On Expedition project’ was strongly student-centred. The students had to undertake the research themselves, not only because of didactical principles, but in this particular case also because initially the two authors did not have a very extensive knowledge about this field of research. Therefore, the ‘On Expedition project’ was a challenging adventure for both students and staff members, that would allow them to work together in a ‘community of inquiry’. This chapter presents an evaluation of the ‘On Expedition’ project with respect to student-centred learning, the creation of an academic community and societal valorisation.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book probes the mutual entanglement of ecology and space from a historical perspective. Its first and most immediate goal is to advance space as a critical context for the study of the history of scientific ecology. The second goal of the book is to use ecological knowledge processes as a lens to shed new light on the spatial history of the natural environment. Space and place, for a long time only the preoccupation of geographers, have recently begun to occupy a central role in the research agenda of the humanities and social sciences. This 'spatial turn', as this reorientation has been dubbed, has manifested itself in a new interest in the cultural dimension of spatial entities such as cities, regions, nations, and landscapes.

The use and abuse of anachronism is often seen as the quintessence of the writing of history. Historians tend to conceive it as the hardcore of their m?tier to avoid anachronism. It designates a confusion in order of time, especially the mistake of placing an event, attitude, or circumstance too early. The awareness of historical anachronism is omnipresent in times of a radical rewriting of history, in particular as a result of political transformation. History reflects the needs and ambitions of a political context, and the sense of what is deemed historically significant does not remain unattached hereby. Chronology and anachronism are essential to particular conceptions of history, and if history is in a process of being rewritten, they are the first items to be addressed by the defenders of the old system and the advocates of a new discourse. In political debates on the use or abuse of history anachronism is often seen as ultimate proof of the (un-)reliability of new insights and conceptions. As anachronism is defined as a way of transferring contemporary sets of values, assumptions and interpretative categories, every political reorientation inevitably provokes a discussion on that level. If a ?new nation? is in search of a ?new past?, a new reflection on the basic categories of historical thinking becomes necessary. The changing discourses in South African historiography since the end of Apartheid serve here as an illuminative example.

It used to be taken for a given fact that children&rsquo, s literature is written by adults for children. This assumption is contested by the emergence of &ldquo, another children&rsquo, s literature&rdquo, namely literature about, for, and by children. Facilitated by digital platforms, this alternative type of children&rsquo, s literature is gathering momentum, compelling us to rethink the (im)possibilities of children&rsquo, s creative agency. As research into children&rsquo, s literature is largely premised upon the asymmetry between adult authorship and juvenile readership, we need to rethink some fundamental tenets of this academic field in order to come to terms with child authorship. This article reviews leading publications on the topic, to address the question of how we can best acknowledge, facilitate, and appreciate children&rsquo, s creative agency as an indispensable dimension of their emergent citizenship. Methodological deliberations are illustrated with references to primary works by child authors about topical societal issues such as ethnic conflict, homelessness, and migration. Its aim is not so much to provide a complete survey of all available publications on the topic, but rather to stake out representative publications that exemplify more and less fruitful approaches to the problem at hand.

Beddoes always managed, through his many commitments and enthusiasms, to raise high expectations but, too often, as Roy Porter put it, he “suffered from trying to do too much too fast.”2 But his underlying philanthropy was never in doubt. This is abundantly true of his long-forgotten educational plans, which involved the promotion and then the manufacture of what were then known as “rational toys” (i.e. toys for use by the general public and for the educational advancement of their children).3

Prescribing is the most common healthcare intervention, and is both beneficial and risky. An important source of risk in UK general practice is the management of ‘repeat prescriptions’, which are typically requested from and issued by nonclinically trained reception staff with only intermittent reauthorisation by a clinical prescriber. This paper ethnographically examines the formal and informal work employed by GPs and receptionists to safely conduct repeat prescribing work in primary care using Strauss’s (1985, 1988, 1993) concept of ‘articulation work’ across eight UK general practices. The analytical lens of articulation work provided an investigative framing to contextually map the informal, invisible resources of resilience and strength employed by practice team members in the achievement of repeat prescribing safety, where risk and vulnerability were continually relocated across space and time. In particular, the paper makes visible the micro-level competencies and collaborative practices that were routinely employed by both GPs and receptionists across different socio-cultural contexts, with informal, cross-hierarchical communication usually considered more effective than the formal structures of communication that existed (e.g. protocols). While GPs held formal prescribing authority, this paper also examines the key role of receptionists in both the initiation and safe coordination of the repeat prescribing routine.

The kind of government Wells envisaged in his future state was technocratic and socialist. Given this future of the planet, he praised the Catholic Church as 'the first clearly conscious attempt to provide such a government in the world'. Wells hoped that after the war its deeper causes would be dealt with and that some sort of supranational government would be established. All the questionable claims Wells made in this passage are placed in perspective by his final analogy: world government as scientific process. But democratic forms of government met with Wells's reservations too. Both works were meant to provide a basis for more rational and planned forms of government. Wells did not envisage the encyclopaedic project as laying the groundwork for world government, but as world government itself. The encyclopaedic organisation was to be something very close to the open conspiracy or the society of samurai that he had pictured before.

Controlled human malaria infections are clinical trials in which healthy volunteers are deliberately infected with malaria under controlled conditions. Controlled human malaria infections are complex clinical trials: many different groups and institutions are involved, and several complex technologies are required to function together. This functioning together of technologies, people, and institutions is under special pressure because of potential risks to the volunteers. In this article, the authors use controlled human malaria infections as a strategic research site to study the use of control, the role of trust, and the interactions between trust and control in the construction of scientific knowledge. The authors argue that tandems of trust and control play a central role in the successful execution of clinical trials and the construction of scientific knowledge. More specifically, two aspects of tandems of trust and control will be highlighted: tandems are sites where trust and control coproduce each other, and tandems link the personal, the technical, and the institutional domains. Understanding tandems of trust and control results in setting some agendas for both clinical trial research and science and technology studies.

This chapter focuses on scientists from the Netherlands and their work in international organisations. One of the most striking features of the internationalism of Dutch scientists of the twentieth century is the extent to which they combined it with expressions of nationalism. In 1919 formerly Allied scientists replaced the International Association of Academies (IAA) by the International Research Council (IRC), an organization with the stated aim of excluding the Central Powers from membership. Despite the turbulence created by the Great War then, the internationalism enacted by Dutch scientists was still of the pre-war, Olympic kind. The Social Relations of Science Movement was a grouping of left-leaning scientists who were noisily campaigning for a larger role of science in British society. Gathered in the Royal Institution, scientists from 29 countries met with state officials to discuss how a new society could be built up after the war with the aid of scientific methods and in keeping with scientific values.

The chapter analyses the role of the Jewish German scientist in exile Hermann Salmang in setting up a R&D laboratory in the Maastricht pottery firm Sphinx. It also gives an overview of the evolution of the R&D organization between ca. 1935 and 1965.

Taking up the understudied relationship between the cultural history of childhood and media studies, this volume traces twentieth-century migrations of the child-savage analogy from colonial into postcolonial discourse across a wide range of old and new media. Older and newer media such as films, textbooks, children's literature, periodicals, comic strips, children's radio, and toys are deeply implicated in each other through ongoing 'remediation', meaning that they continually mimic, absorb and transform each other's representational formats, stylistic features, and content. Media theory thus confronts the cultural history of childhood with the challenge of re-thinking change in childhood imaginaries as transformation-through-repetition patterns, rather than as rise-shine-decline sequences. This volume takes up this challenge, demonstrating that one historical epoch may well accommodate diverging childhood repertoires, which are recycled again and again as they are played out across a whole gamut of different media formats in the course of time.

A whole body of work has revealed the local, the particular and the culturally variable contexts that constitute science in its various branches. The explicit promotion of the unity of science in the interwar years is best known from the Unity of Science Movement set up by the philosophers of the Vienna Circle. Otto Neurath, Rudolph Carnap and their fellows strove to unify all science into a single body of knowledge, stripped of any 'dogmatic', 'metaphysical' and otherwise unscientific contaminations. The world in which interwar pursuits of the unity of science emerged was one of deep division and splintering antagonism. Interwar unity of science pursuits, however, were distinguished by their enormous scope and their often overt political commitment. The promotion of unified science as a rational basis for social planning and international cooperation formed a collective answer to the feeling of general devastation that followed the Great War.

Coagulation factor V (FV) is the inactive precursor of FVa, which acts as an essential cofactor of factor Xa (FXa) in the prothrombinase complex. FV is maintained in the inactive state by the interaction between a basic and acidic region in the B-domain. The C-terminus of tissue factor pathway inhibitor-α (TFPIα) is highly homologous to the FV basic region and also binds to the acidic region of FV. In fact, a large fraction of plasma TFPIα circulates in complex with FV. Thanks to this interaction, FV acts as a cofactor of TFPIα in the inhibition of FXa and TFPIα inhibits prothrombinase complexes containing forms of FVa that retain the acidic region. However, when FV is activated through cleavage at Arg709, Arg1018 and Arg1545 by FXa or thrombin, it loses its anticoagulant properties and becomes a strong procoagulant. Recently, a FV splicing variant (FV-short) that lacks the basic region and binds TFPIα with high affinity has been described. FV-short is present in all individuals and represents ~5% of all plasma FV.To gain more insight in the functional implications of the FV-TFPIα interaction, we studied the effects of a peptide identical to the TFPIα C-terminus (TFPIα C-term) on thrombin generation in plasma and on FV activation in model systems. All major findings were confirmed with full-length TFPIα.TFPIα C-term (0-5 µM) prolonged the lag time and decreased the peak height of tissue factor- and FXa-triggered thrombin generation in a dose-dependent manner. These effects were more pronounced at low procoagulant stimuli and in the presence of plasma TFPIα. TFPIα C-term also inhibited thrombin generation in FV-depleted plasma reconstituted with FV, but not in FV-depleted plasma reconstituted with FVa, suggesting an effect on FV activation and/or prothrombinase. In model systems, TFPIα C-term inhibited the activation of purified FV by FXa and thrombin in a dose-dependent manner. This could be due to inhibition of FV proteolysis and/or to inhibition of prothrombinase in the assay used to quantify FVa activity. Therefore, FV activation was also followed by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting. This showed that TFPIα C-term (1 µM) interferes with FV proteolysis by both FXa and thrombin by selectively impairing cleavage of FV at Arg1545, which is located close to the FV acidic region (residues 1493-1537). The effect of TFPIα C-term on FV activation by thrombin was 3-fold stronger for FV-short than for full-length FV, in line with their respective affinities for the TFPIα C-terminus. Full-length TFPIα (10 nM) also inhibited FV cleavage at Arg1545 and delayed FV activation by thrombin. Its effect was also more pronounced on FV-short than on FV.In summary, binding of the TFPIα C-terminus to the acidic region of FV inhibits FV activation by FXa or thrombin by blocking access to the Arg1545 cleavage site. Since cleavage at this site marks the transition of FV from an anticoagulant form (TFPIα-cofactor) to a procoagulant form (FXa-cofactor), this may represent an important new anticoagulant function of TFPIα. The main target of this anticoagulant mechanism is presently unclear, but it is unlikely to be intact FV, whose plasma concentration is 100-fold higher than the TFPIα concentration. More likely candidates are low-abundance FV species that lack the basic region but retain the acidic region, and therefore bind TFPIα with high affinity, such as FV-short, early FV activation intermediates and/or platelet FV.Supported by grant nr. 2014-1 from the Dutch Thrombosis Foundation.DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

This article is a elaborate review of Teun Zuiderent's book 'Situated Intervention: Sociological Experiments in Health Care' (2015) The MIT Press. The article is based on our comments and the discussions made during the launch of the book at Linköping University in Sweden in October 2015.

From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science as the driving force of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells' World State. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise.

The political engagement of scientists is not necessarily left-wing, and even when it is, it can take widely varying forms. This is illustrated by the specific character of Dutch scientific activism in the 1930s and 40s, which took shape in a society where 'pillarized' social divisions were more important than horizontal class structure. This paper examines how, within this context, the Delft physicist Jan Burgers developed a version of scientific politics, built on a philosophy of value-laden science.

Failing is a common problem among elderly people and has many negative consequences. In the Netherlands, there is a need for effective fall prevention interventions aimed at elderly persons with an increased risk of falling. For this reason, we adapted a successful British fall prevention program comprising a medical occupational therapy assessment to the Dutch health care setting. This article describes the adaptation of this program and a pilot study to assess its feasibility in Dutch health care according to the implementers of the intervention as well as the participants (n = 21). This study showed that the Dutch intervention protocol is feasible in Dutch health care for both participants and implementers of the program. However, minor refinement of the intervention is warranted to improve its feasibility. The structured approach to adapt and pretest an intervention protocol appeared to be essential when aiming to implement a complex intervention program in a different health care setting.

Dealing with uncertain risks is an important challenge. Uncertain risks need to be sharply distinguished from traditional, simple risks which can be calculated by means of statistics. Arguably current governance of uncertain risks tends to erode into organized irresponsibility, i.e., society's ill-preparedness and inability to deal with surprises, negative consequences and/or long-term impacts which are associated with uncertain risks, notwithstanding all institutions and procedures in place. In such cases, a particular pattern in risk regulation can be identified, the uncertainty paradox, which is an umbrella term for situations in which uncertainty is acknowledged, but the role of science is framed as one of providing certainty. This article highlights the need to further understand the uncertainty paradox by investigating actual decision-making processes. Through case-study research on EU GMO regulation this article examines how various actors actually deal with science, knowledge and uncertainty. Four mechanisms sustaining the uncertainty paradox are inferred: 1) uncertainty intolerance; 2) boundary work; 3) the inclination to equate uncertainty with risk; and 4) technocratic provisions. In conclusion, some suggestions are advanced as to how to break through the uncertainty paradox.

In the last decade, there has been a growing awareness that ethnography and intervention are not distinct but interwoven practices. Especially approaches such as interactive social science, partici...

This article shows how Dutch technological culture has historically dealt with and developed around vulnerability with respect to flooding and indicates recent developments in attitude towards the flood threat. The flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina temporarily made the Dutch public worry about the flood defense infrastructure in the Netherlands, exemplified by the Delta Works. Could this happen in the Netherlands? After the flooding disaster of 1953, a system of large dams was built to offer safety from flooding with—in theory at least—protection levels that are much higher than in New Orleans. In the public's perception the protection offered is absolute. In practice not all flood defense structures are as secure as they are supposed to be, but their upgrading takes time and money. Katrina has served as a reminder of what is at stake: Can the Dutch afford to take another 10 years to restore the protection level of their flood defenses? Calls for pride in clever engineering are the latest in a continuing debate on the best way to continue life below sea level.

Things are thick with politics. This essay illustrates the point by focusing on a variety of technologies that help to manage water: anicuts and tanks in India, dikes and a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands, and levees in New Orleans. Technologies are not only shaped by political forces; they also exert political force themselves: on social stratification in Indian villages or on government stability in the Netherlands. We should recognize, then, that the functioning of technologies and the functioning of societies are intricately linked. The essay traces this interlinking by using the concept of “technological culture.” It argues that the different styles of coastal engineering in the United States and in the Netherlands can be explained by differences in their technological cultures, particularly the different styles of risk handling. This conclusion is then applied to the Indian case and to issues of development, democracy, and innovation.

How do professional futurists contend with prognostic uncertainty? There is an impressive body of medical–sociological research on how medical staff deals with uncertainty. We have used these insights to study patterns and manners in foresight practice that might not be evident otherwise. The question “Do professional futurists use approaches to deal with uncertainty that resemble those of medical staff?” is addressed by ongoing ethnographic research in Dutch foresight practice. The observed manners are grouped into four analytic categories: the construction of solidity, numeric discourse, communication habits and experience as anchor. In this paper, the construction of solidity and experience as anchor are described in detail. It is further more suggested that “certainification” is a possible upshot of these manners in use.

The proliferation of information and communication technologies (icts) into all aspects of life poses unique ethical challenges as our modern societies become increasingly dependent on the flawless operation of these technologies. As we increasingly entrust our privacy, our well-being and our lives to an ever greater number of computers we need to look more closely at the risks and ethical implications of these developments. By emphasising the vulnerability of software and the practice of professional software developers, we want to make clear the ethical aspects of producing potentially flawed software. This paper outlines some of the vulnerabilities associated with software systems and identifies a number of social and organisational factors affecting software developers and contributing to these vulnerabilities. Scott a. Snook’s theory of practical drift is used as the basis for our analysis. We show that this theory, originally developed to explain the failure of a military organisation, can be used to understand how professional software developers “drift away” from procedures and processes designed to ensure quality and prevent software vulnerability. Based on interviews with software developers in two norwegian companies we identify two areas where social factors compel software developers to drift away from a global set of rules constituting software development processes and methods. Issues of pleasure and control and difference in mental models contribute to an uncoupling from established practices designed to guarantee the reliability of software and thus diminish its vulnerability.