STS Archives

This textbook introduces how sociology, history and philosophy of science and technology (Science and Technology Studies or STS) approach the topic of war and security. It covers key concepts and theoretical approaches in STS and how they offer new insight into critical security, war and peace studies. To make the theory accessible, the book draws on seminal and contemporary empirical case studies, from weapons of mass destruction to everyday security and surveillance.

This textbook is ideal for students with no background knowledge of STS or as an introduction for more advanced researchers in other fields that study war and security, including politics and international relations, history, geography, sociology and anthropology.

Designed to support both independent and classroom learning, each carefully structured chapter begins by listing its key features and concepts so that readers understand the coverage at a glance. Chapters end with discussion questions to encourage critical thinking and suggested further readings. Online resources offer additional support in the form of learning activities and answer prompts for the discussion questions.

Software applications have taken over our lives. We use and are used by software many times a day. Nevertheless, we know very little about the invisibly ubiquitous workers who write software. Who are they and how do they perceive their own practice? How does that shape the ways in which they collaborate to build the myriad of apps that we use every day?

Coderspeak provides a critical approach to the digital transformation of our world through an engaging and thoughtful analysis of the people who write software. It is a focused and in-depth look at one programming language and its community – Ruby – based on ethnographic research at a London company and conversations with members of the wider Ruby community in Europe, the Americas and Japan. This book shows that the place people write code, the language they write it in and the stories shared by that community are crucial in questioning and unpacking what it means to be a ‘coder’. Understanding this social group is essential if we are to grasp a future (and a present) in which computer programming increasingly dominates our lives.