• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.167-200
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• 2019

In recent years, the material has mattered to the humanities and social sciences in the West and feminism is no exception. It is a notable change that feminist analyses, which had previously shown critiques against science and technology, attempted to build new engagements with matter. STS (science and technology studies) has also accumulated scholarships and developed conceptual tools on the thing or the existence itself through "the ontological turn." The objective of this paper is not to introduce new materialism or new material feminism in full, but to reveal the possibility and potential of doing science, technology and women studies by selectively relying on the achievement of new materialism feminism. This article shows a way to study women's practice of science and technology by analyzing the case of plastic surgery practices through the ontological concepts of STS, particularly those of Annemarie Mol, Karen Barad, and Charis Thompson, and proposes a new engagement among new materialism, feminism, and STS. This article is organized as follows. First of all, after briefly discussing main issues in new material feminism, I will show the limitations of previous feminist studies of plastic surgery under the light of new material feminism. The rest of the article introduces the conceptual tools of ontological STS, describes plastic surgery practices with those tools, and finally provides their feminist implications.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.97-119
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• 2011

This paper, as an initiative to fertilize analyses on women's technoscientific practices, reviews theoretical discussions and empirical studies in-between feminism and STS, mainly owing its thinking technologies to Karen Barad's Agential Realism. The first part of this paper shows that women's technoscientific practices as research sites are not only fertile grounds between STS and feminism but also conflict areas between constructivist theories and feminist politics. The second part proposes Agential Realism as an way of thinking to deal with 'conflicts' between STS and feminism in analytical levels. Agential Realism provides useful conceptual tools for 'techno-scientific ways of thinking' through the reconceptualization of agency, the displacement of agency by accountability, and the configuration of STS analysis as 'apparatus.' The third part finds three examples of 'techno-scientific ways of thinking' on women's technscientific practices from previous feminist STS works, which suggests how to analyze not only women's technoscientific practices but also diverse practices of science, technology, and medicine as follows: follow 'the invisible', account for 'ontological choreography', and 'care' for what is analyzed.