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CAS Discussion Series: "Natural Sciences and Social Worlds"

CAS 29/09/2007

In fall 2007 CAS will launch a new Discussion Series.

It is generally assumed that social sciences are subject to ideological usage whereas natural sciences are closer to “pure knowledge”. The aim of CAS' Discussion Series on "Natural Sciences and Social Worlds" is the problematisation of this popular view.

The debate will seek to answer a wide range of questions, among which:

How does medicine construct man?

What is the relation between modern ideologies and the way plants, animals and stones are classified?

How do geography, geology, botany and zoology contribute to the idea of a national homeland? How does space become an ideological space?

What makes ecologists revise the project of Modernity?

What are the stakes behind the genetic engineering debate and what does biogenetics mean?

Discussion Zones

Medicine Zone

Maya Grekova / Ivaylo Tarnev - Health and Social Profile of the Roma population in Bulgaria Milena Yakimova - Sociology of a City Periphery: The Construction of Social and Health Status Milena Angelova - Social and Scientific Construction of Disease. Tuberculosis at the End of XIX and the First Half of XX centuries

Christian Promitzer - Typhus and Minorities in Bulgaria

Gergana Mircheva - "Health Qualification" for Army Service in Bulgaria (1878 – 1944): Medical Criteria for Corporal and Mental Fitness

Bioethics Zone

Hristo Todorov - Norms for Embryos Stilian Yotov Solidarity and Distribution in Health Insurance

Zoology Zone

Alexey Kalionski - Small Peoples and Small Breeds: Physical Anthropologists and Veterinaries about “Bulgarian Antiquity”

Andrey Lunin - Breed: Bulgarian Dimitar Grigorov Cats and Pussies' Census: Zoo Humour in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (1948 - 1953)

Botany zone

Kristina Popova - Where Do Bulgarian Butterflies Fly?
Iren Krumova - Linear Botanic Classification: Resistance or Reflection of Social Norms

Geography Zone

Ivan Elenkov - The Vagueness of Desire and the Futility of Ascesis. Prince Ferdinand and Zahari Stoyanov’s Climbing of Mount Musala in 1889. Towards the Roots of Our Tourism

Dessislava Lilova - The Imagined Geographies of Bulgarian Renaissance

Technology Zone

Todor Hristov - Land and Technology: The Enlightenment of Farmers Martin Ivanov Science, Technics, Revolution

Ivaylo Dichev - Cosmism, Cosmos, Communism

Albena Hranova - Science Fiction, Exact Sciences and Social Worlds: Lem’s Project

Lachezar Antonov - Identity in the Age of Its Technical Reproduction. The Transition from the Socially - Constructed "Self" towards the Engineering - Designed "Self"

Taxonomies Zone
Dimitar Vatsov - Mathematics and Philosophy: the Wittgenstein Casus
Orlin Spasov - Taxonomies’ Decline and Tags’ Ascent: from Classification Trees to Users’ Vote on the Internet

Three workshops encompassing the above zones and topics have been envisaged in 2007 (see the preliminary programme (in Bulgarian) attached below).

The project is coordinated by Dessislava Lilova, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies, Southwestern University, Blagoevgrad.