What happened to provocation in science and technology studies?

Science and technology studies (STS) is an important and often controversial interdisciplinary field which has proved to be provocative and influential. But has its institutionalization and influence occurred at the expense of some of its provocative power? This paper considers the fate of provocative ideas associated with STS as they become appropriated and transformed by new social institutions and audiences. It aims to sketch a preliminary framework for analysing the social dynamics of the persistence and/or attenuation of its ideas and impacts. The argument reviews the main early aspirations and targets of STS. It suggests that changing emphases in STS can be understood as responses to successive versions of the principle of symmetry. It argues that the continual renewal and recruitment of audiences for STS is central to sustaining its capacity for provocation.     

Manx Folk-Lore and Superstitions

Mythes, Cultes et Religion, par A. Lang, traduit par Léon Marillier. Bibliothèque de Philosophic contemporaine, Paris: F. Alcan. 1896. By A. C. H.

Bahama Songs and Stories. A contribution to Folklore. By Charles L. Edwards, Ph. D., Professor of Biology in the University of Cincinnati. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin &; Co., 1895.

Studies in Ancient History : The Second Series, comprising an Inquiry into the Origin of Exogamy. By the late John Ferguson M'Lennan. Edited by his Widow and Arthur Platt. London : Macmillan and Co. Limited. 1896.

Henry Callaway, M. D., D. D., First Bishop of Kaffraria. His Life-History, and Work. A Memoir by Marian S. Benham. Edited by the Rev. Canon Benham. London: Macmillan &; Co., Limited. 1896.

Horde und Familie in ihrer urgeschichtlichen Entwickelung. Eine neue Theorie auf statistischer Grundlage von Dr. Joh. Richard Mucke. Stuttgart, Enke: 1895, 8vo.     

The Portraiture of the Ancients

Analytical field survey of the major earthworks at Stanwick has provided a more detailed context for the various programmes of excavation than has hitherto been published. The account also emphasizes some of the problems that remain in the interpretation of this massive and extremely complex site. The recognition of some of the later changes in the landscape, interesting in their own right, contributes significantly to our limited understanding of the prominent late prehistoric and Roman phases.     

On the Preservation of Monumental Inscriptions

An extensive Late Iron Age settlement (SP 842430), with Middle Iron Age predecessor, was succeeded by an early Roman land management/drainage scheme accompanied by roads, and a timber bridge. This was followed by the construction of storehouse and barns adjoining a timber wharf, the whole encircled by an engineered river channel enclosing at least three ha, with an outlying cemetery. In the early/mid second century at least four, and possibly six, separate substantial stone buildings, all apparently of villa quality, were constructed over an area more than 250 m across. There were hints of a late Antonine destruction. Subsequently structural additions were made up to the early third century. Decline in the mid third century was followed by extensive rehabilitation in the late third/early fourth century, succeeded by slum/industrial conditions in the mid fourth, with iron working and smithing. Notable finds include parts of an early black and white mosaic, rib vault voussoir tiles, stamped tegulae, part of a luxury bronze folding tripod, a lead coffin, an anvil and a coulter. The pottery series extends from the middle Iron Age to the seventh century A.D., with a gap in the late fourth. Coinage extended from a stater of c. 40–20 B. C. to issues of the House of Valentinian, c. A.D. 375.     

Histoire embrouillée: Making material histories in Southern Africa

This article examines how historical knowledge about Southern African chiefdoms was produced in D.F. Ellenberger's research archive (c. 1860–1913) and archaeology drawing on his scholarship. I describe a historiographic approach detailing how Ellenberger's work co-opted the material world to create historical facts, obscuring diverse meanings of home, movement, and authority.