In my earlier work (such as in Science and Technology in a Multicultural World and my paper in the Handbook of Ethnography), which was part of the diversification of the broader STS field, contributed to the historical integration of cultural analysis and ethnography into the broader interdisciplinary work of STS that occurred during the 1990s. I also edited the collected papers of the cultural anthropologist Diana Forsythe, a friend and colleague who died unexpectedly in a hiking accident and played an important role in the integration of feminist cultural analysis into the anthropology of science and STS..
I currently work mostly at the interface of STS, sociology, and anthropology and mostly related to studies of culture and ideology with respect to science, technology, the environment, and policy. Specifically, I am currently studying political ideology as a contentious field rather than a series of historical periods in which an older social liberal regime (associated with New Deal and Great Society politics in the US) was replaced by a neoliberal regime. Rather, I used field sociology to argue that there is ongoing conflict in specific policy fields between neoliberal and social liberal ideologies, and that new ideologies (developmentalism, localism) have also appeared. My most recent papers and book (2012) investigate the thesis that there is an emergent ideological shift toward "developmentalism" that is evident in the green energy policy fields in the United states. Prior to that, I studied localist thought and politics as a new current of political ideology that could not be reduced to neoliberalism or social liberalism. In addition, the forthcoming paper on "reflexive sociology" investigates the thesis that changes in social theory during the 1970s had "elective affinities" with neoliberal ideology. By focusing on underlying ideologies in a political field, I am also attempting to broaden field sociology's culture concept from its reliance on the more limited concept of habitus, but I am simultaneously attempting to broaden the sociology of technology from the mechanistic models that dominate the study of large sociotechnical systems and their changes.
In 2011 I also organized a conference on the political sociology of science and technology. Researchers in this field focus on issues of power and inequality that emerge in the relationship between the scientific field and the political, economic, and civil society fields. Our 2011 article in Theory and Society is a good introduction to basic concepts in the field, as is the 2006 edited volume by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, The New Political Sociology of Science (U Wisconsin Press).
I also have a general introduction to STS programs. Unfortunately, I have not had time to update it. Here.
Selected Publications and Conferences
2012 "Cultures of Science." In Sabine Massen, Mario Kaiser, Martin Reinhart, Barbara Sutter, eds. Handbuch Wissenschaftersoziologie. VS Verlag. Email me for a copy.
2012 Good Green Jobs in a Global Economy: Making and Keeping New Industries in the United States. MIT Press, in press.
2012 “The Green Transition, Neoliberalism, and the Technosciences.” In Luigi Pellozzoni and Marja Ylönen (eds.), Neoliberalism and Technosciences: Criticial Assessments. Edward Elgar. In press. Email me for a copy.
2012 "Neoliberalism and the History of STS Theory: Toward a Reflexive Sociology." Social Epistemology. Forthcoming. Email me for a copy.
2011 Conference on the political sociology of science and technology, 2011.
2011 "Boudieu and Science and Technology Studies: Toward a Reflexive Sociology." Minerva 49(3): 333-348. Email me for a copy.
2011 "Electricity Transformed: Neoliberalism and Local Energy in the
2011 Kelly Moore, Daniel Kleinman, David Hess, and Scott Frickel. "Science and Neoliberal Globalization: A Political Sociological Approach." Theory and Society 40(5): 505-532. Preliminary draft version of the article here.
2001 "Scientific Culture." In Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Bates, eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier.
2001 Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence, by Diana Forsythe (posthumous). Edited and with an introduction by David Hess. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2001 "Ethnography and the Development of Science and Technology Studies." Sage Handbook of Ethnography. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, Lyn Lofland, and John Lofland, eds. here
1998 "If You're Thinking of Living in STS....A Guide for the Perplexed." In Gary Downey and Joe Dumit (eds.), Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
1997 Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction. Monograph. New York University Press.
1995 Science and Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts and Artifacts. Monograph. Columbia University Press.
1992 Knowledge and Society Volume 9: The Anthropology of Science and Technology. Coedited with Linda Layne; series editor Arie Rip. JAI Press. Articles by Hess: "Introduction: The New Ethnography and the Anthropology of Science and Technology." This was the first edited collection of anthropologists of science and technology.