Arama Sonuçları

Listeleniyor 1 - 2 / 2
  • Yayın
    Placing STS in and through Turkey
    (Soc Social Studies Science, 2023-03-02) Alkan, Aybike; Kaşdoğan, Duygu; Maral, Erol
    Why and how does it matter to undertake an STS praxis in a country where the field lacks adequate institutional recognition and capacity? This article investigates this question by tracing multiple, fragmented and contingent stories of placing STS in and through Turkey. At first sight, discontinuous stories of STS programs established in universities and unrecognized nature of STS as a discipline by the Council of Higher Education draw attention to the "underdeveloped" nature of the field in this country. This article counters such a perspective by rendering visible the works that support STS ethos as well as loose institutions within which STS is expected to flourish. By following people and artifacts in institutional and more-than institutional places of STS, this article acknowledges the efforts both to translate STS into the particular places of Turkey and to use STS as an intellectual space through which technoscientific knowledge can be questioned and translated into the local contexts of the country. The analysis of these translation efforts reveals that STS can be thought of as a space that enables one to be attuned to the sensibilities and realities of the country and search for ways to democratize the processes of technoscientific knowledge production whether it be in the universities or in public spaces.
  • Yayın
    Unpacking the discursive construction of heirloom seeds: discourses, contests, connections
    (Bursa Uludağ University, 2024-08-31) Pandır, Müzeyyen; Erol, Maral
    The 2006 Turkish Seed Law prohibited the selling of uncertified heirloom seeds, triggering heated debates on and around seeds. This paper examines the construction of discourses on heirloom seeds in Türkiye, focusing on the arguments of the key social actors in the field with a view to understand how knowledge production is taking place on seed. Conducting interviews with key state and non-state actors and analyzing their published documents related to heirloom seed through discourse-historical approach, we examined the argumentative perspectives shaping the discourse on seed. The results revealed a discursive dichotomy constructed between "heirloom seed" and "certified hybrid seeds." In particular, built on commercial and food security concerns, the state discourse frames heirloom seeds as low-yield and unable to feed the nation in comparison to certified hybrid seeds, whereas non-state discourse using the perspectives of agrobiodiversity and farmers’ sovereignty construct heirloom seeds with superior features, qualifying them as compatible with biodiversity and the current global and regional economic, environmental and climate problems. The study concludes that different perspectives and interests produced contradictory knowledge about seed (hence food) and caused different realities to exist simultaneously within this knowledge.