Call for Papers: Five Sessions with a Latin American Emphasis / Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S)

Five Sessions with a Latin American Emphasis

Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)Annual Meeting.

November 2-5, 2011, Cleveland, Ohio USA.

http://www.4sonline.org/meeting

This year the 4S gathers in Cleveland, Ohio.  The issues dominating the news continue to be the global economic crisis, human rights (freedom, education, health), energy constraints, climate change, sustainable development, and global terror.  These inter-dependent challenges inspire much popular and scholarly attention, while advances in science and technology over the past century are often framed as both the culprit and panacea in discussions of how we arrived in these troubled global waters and how we might navigate our way out of them.

As has been noted in past STS work, the manner in which science and technology are produced or translated and then employed to address challenges depends greatly on historical and national contexts.  The production of knowledge about the interactions of science, technology and society is not exempt from this contextualization.  Yet much like the production of tehno-scientific knowledge, STS knowledge production remains primarily EuroAmerican despite the field's attempts to broaden its conceptual perspectives.

The 4S has committed to reducing the geographical and intellectual barriers that have divided and at times isolated global STS communities.  To this end, the 2014 4S meeting is scheduled for Buenos Aires, Argentina in conjunction with the annual meeting of its Latin American counterpart ESOCITE.  To continue the dialogue on Latin American STS (that stretches back to the 2004 Paris 4S joint meeting with EASST), the 4S Latin American section is proposing five thematic sessions for this year’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

The general goal of these five sessions is three-fold:

(1)  To explore the contributions to thinking about science, technology and society by scholars in Latin America: past and present.

(2)  To provide scholars from around the world working on Latin American STS issues a space to showcase their investigation and findings.

(3)  To further contextualize how science and technology innovation, diffusion and adaptation in Latin America are antecedents for, and perhaps solutions of, global and local challenges in this region.

Papers are invited to contribute to the following five thematic sessions:

1. In search of “lines of flights” in Latin America

Session Organizer:

Ivan da Costa Marques [imarques@nce.ufrj.br]

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Session Description:

Reliable knowledge today is strongly identified with scientific knowledge.  The overwhelming majority of scientific facts and artifacts, however, are produced in the North and arrive in their stable forms (as ready objects) in Latin America, where they enjoy the attributes of universality and neutrality (in spite of STS results).  In these terms it is possible to say that modern sciences from the West provide a cage that confines the space available for Latin Americans to search for solutions of their practical problems, since it would make no sense “to do” spaces and times or propose objects outside universal and neutral knowledge – they would be “simply wrong” since Latin Americans usually lack the resources to build counter-laboratories.  As an example, in the name of science the Brazilian Association of Nutritionists oppose local habits of nutrition that are found effective by large parts of the Brazilian population to nourish their children.  This session indicates a special welcome to papers about programs and/or controversies involving conflicts between Western scientific knowledge and local practical knowledge.

2. Technologies of Health Care in Latin America

Session Organizer:

Maria Olarte Sierra [olarteSierra@gamil.com]

University of Manchester

Session Description:

Given that the STS work on Latin American’s appropriation and transformation of technologies is increasing in numbers and relevance, we propose a panel that explores STS on health care technologies in Latin America.  The panel has three objectives.

(1)  To present the diverse academic interest and scientific productions from people working on medical technologies in Latin American realities

(2)  To give room to discussing the theoretical and methodological contribution that such scholars are making to the broader field of STS studies.

(3)  To enable a network of scholars, with similar interest, in the area of STS and medical technologies working in and on Latin America.

Papers are invited to address issues such as: Approaches at studying specific medical technologies; studies addressing medical technologies in relation with social processes; and studies on power/knowledge struggles over medical or technological authority

3. Bio-technologies: Policy, Practice, & Scientific Change in Latin America

Session Organizer:

Christina Holmes [christinapholmes@gmail.com]

EHESS-CNRS, Paris, France

Session Description:

Biotechnology represents an important 'growth' area, in terms of scientific knowledge and publication possibilities, as well as presenting potentially applied uses.  It has been suggested as an important way of improving agricultural cultivars; as a way of mapping, managing, and profiting from biodiversity; as a way of protecting a country's genetic patrimony; and as a way of creating new industrial and medical applications.

This panel aims to foster discussion about biotechnology and Latin America by asking the following three questions:

(1)  How has Latin America interacted with biotechnology?

(2)  How have the policies and practices surrounding biotechnology in Latin America compared to wider, global trends?

(3)   How are biotechnologies part of wider processes of scientific change?

4. The Global South and the Global Cyberspace

Session Organizer:

Yuri Takhteyev [yuri.takhteyev at utoronto.ca]

University of Toronto

Fifteen years ago an American poet living in California proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, a world “both everywhere and  nowhere,” foretelling the coming obsolescence of the “Governments of the  Industrial World” from China to the United States, thanks to the rise of  the new digital information and communication technologies.  In the  following years, those technologies have played a key role in the  visions of the coming globalized world.  At the same time, the Cyberspace has for the most part been a “northern” domain.

This panel will explore the place of the Global South in the Global Cyberspace, as well as more broadly the relationship between ICTs and globalization in southern contexts.   We welcome papers looking at how ICTs are used by different actors as tools in their own globalization projects, as well as papers looking at the increasing globalization of the development of ICTs.  The latter could include the more recent outsourcing of what used to be considered “northern” high-tech work to the south, the increased role of the distributed communities of software developers (including those working on free / open source software), as the well as the more mundane importation of “northern” ICTs into the southern contexts.

The papers should focus on the Global South, including in particular Latin America, considering either the south-north ties or the lateral ties between southern regions. Historical perspectives on the relationship between ICT and globalization would be highly welcome, including those looking back to the days before the 1990s.

5. Environment, Technology and Society Interactions in Latin America

Session Organizer:

Rick B. Duque [rick.duque@univie.ac.at]

University of Vienna

Session Description:

This panel converges upon research focused on both the natural and anthropogenic risks inherent when communities and environments collide.  The impact and aftermaths of tragic tsunamis/floods in Indonesia, the US gulf coast, and Pakistan and recent earthquakes in Italy, China, Haiti, and Chile reminds us that both resource poor and rich communities are at risk of extreme natural forces, technological failures, bureaucratic mismanagement and root social asymmetries.  In resource-poor regions, environmental and technological risks are often magnified and the resilience of marginalized communities and indigenous peoples tested often beyond their limits.  To address sub-regional distinctions and offer solutions, this session invites comparative and case study papers that delve into historical and contextual accounts of colonial and post-colonial environmental and technological dialogues in Latin America. 

The session is particularly interested in attracting work that compares indigenous and non-indigenous techno-scientific responses to the environmental and social challenges of free-market global development like for example climate change, ozone depletion, water controversies, urban sprawl, waste management, alternative energy sources, disaster preparedness, industrial and natural toxic exposure, and the conservation of indigenous forests, fisheries and sacred artifacts and lands.

Please send an abstract of a paper (minimum 250 words, maximum of 400 words) to the appropriate session organizer above.

Submission deadline: March 7, 2011.

ReWired: Asian/TechnoScience/Area Studies - Call for Participation

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE presents
in conjunction with the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa 
 

SEMINAR IN EXPERIMENTAL CRITICAL THEORY (SECT VII)

ReWired:

Asian/TechnoScience/Area Studies

August 1-10, 2011 at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

The Seminar will address how technoscientific knowledge-systems are re-ordered when geo-political formations shift.

   You "don't invent the future," John Seely Brown famously noted - "you unleash it by leveraging the global community mind."

    Today the fastest expansion of technoscientific knowledge production and urban development is occurring across multiple Asian sites in the throes of techno-economic boom. Seely Brown's observation, made in conversation with Paul Duguid, was meant to characterize late 20th century knowledge institutions and sites of technological production in the US. It nevertheless uncannily predicts the radical de-centering of global technological futures in the 21st century, not least in the Asian context.

    The 2011 Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT VII) seeks to elucidate these rapidly transforming landscapes of knowledge production, the shaping of contemporary knowledge institutions, their impact on social life in intense urban contexts, and this century's techno-scientific horizons of possibility. Comprehending these movements, forces, and structures requires integrating deep understandings of history and politics represented by Asian and critical Area Studies with emergent work on the transnational dynamics of science and technology as well as on market economies and their modes of governance.

    The social life of information emerges in particular kinds of institutional structures and historical conditions. It refracts, reflects and embeds larger social forces and modes of production, extending some ideas and undercutting others. What are the impacts and influences of varying social arrangements and socio-technical assumptions on each other, and on learning practices and institutions? What sorts of networks are conducive to knowledge making now? How do the shapes and impacts of open source knowledge arrangements, for example, compare with proprietary ones?  What do these recent formations and experiences tell us about the knowledge institutions and production arrangements to come?

    Envisioning the technological future has too often seemed the province of western technologists. Recent media and economic analyses accurately identify the importance of new technological practices in contemporary Asia. Nevertheless, they often reduce complex historical processes to simplistic narratives: about the invisible hand of technoscience, or about the formerly ignorant attaining progress and becoming newly-empowered individuals and societies. The dominant questions that follow are equally misleading: Does information technology liberate developing countries from their legacy of poverty? Is Asian science as good as western science? Are women empowered by the digital revolution?

    This way of viewing things presumes Asian modernities to be marked by lack and belatedness. It views technology as the sole or dominant driver of social, economic, political and cultural change. It sees scientific ability as inherent to certain kinds of peoples. And it highlights the Asian "tiger "and "dragon" as representative of particular techno-political threats to US dominance.

Sect VII--ReWired: Asian/TechnoScience/Area Studies--will seek a more nuanced understanding of these processes by engaging a diverse set of critical accounts of science and technology as they apply to the historical conditions of these developments in Asia. Computing practices, unlike older forms of technoscience from physics and mathematics to botany and forestry, are increasingly recognized as emerging via networks shaped by, in, and across the formerly "underdeveloped" world, including India, China, South Korea and Taiwan. The Seminar will experiment with juxtaposing histories of "older" sciences with the contemporary practices of "digital natives;" integrating critical knowledge of states, science, and social movements from the histories and social sciences of Asia; engaging studies of cultural production in Asian contexts; and broadening studies of peer-to-peer creative and community-based practices generated by the transnational digital sphere.

Asia has long been part of global flows of knowledge, commodities, and culture, all too readily overlooked in conventional accounts of its "emerging" development. Accordingly, SECT VII will avoid euphoric claims of radical novelty, as well as assumptions of simple continuity with colonial pasts. We approach Asia's disparate hybrid modernities without postulating a unifying Asian modernity, seeking to understand their various, often contradictory but productive discourses of science, technology, digital revolution, political economy, community, nation, and identity.   

    In this experimental critical space, SECT VII will seek to nurture, across disciplinary and regional borders, discussions of the kind that have not flourished within the more established Area Studies or disciplinary paradigms. The seminar space will be one of practical invention and intellectual innovation. We find continuities with other ongoing projects: most notably, the Digital Media Learning initiative of the UCHRI, and the HASTAC program, that aim to create "a generation of scholars equally at ease with current (which is also to say historical) knowledge in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, on the one hand, and with the technological, scientific, and engineering knowledge on the other, with a view to facilitating development of new discoveries and new relations between currently available knowledge sources, in order to digitally prompt new bodies of important knowledge." SECT VII similarly builds on the Poor Theory Manifesto developed out of UC Irvine's Critical Theory Institute that sees the past, present, and future as mutually constitutive and "heterotemporal", attending to the "unsystematic" and undisciplined "practices of the everyday."

SECT VII: ReWired is thus concerned with the large questions of infrastructure and information, social technology and technoscience, institutions of knowledge making and learning. It will be of particular interest to those concerned with Science and Technology Studies, Asian Studies, Global Studies, Digital Media, and their interface. And it will appeal to those drawn to theoretical modesty, tinkering and improvisation, appropriation and recombinatorial experimentation, to relationalities and rearticulations.

Dates: August 1-10, 2011

Location: University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Instructional faculty:
Itty Abraham, University of Texas
Ivan da Costa Marques, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Wendy Chun, Brown University
Joe Dumit, UC Davis
Roger Hart, University of Texas
Cori Hayden, UC Berkeley
Tim Lenoir, Duke University
Kavita Philip, UC Irvine
Achal Prabhala, Wikimedia Foundation
Sha Xin Wei, Concordia University, Montreal
Nishant Shah, Center for Internet and Society
Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University
Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia
Kath Weston, University of Virginia

Application Fee: $20

Registration Fee: $1250

Registration fee includes shared housing, instruction, and some meals. 

Applicants are urged to seek funding from their home institutions. A very limited number of scholarships may be available to full time registered students.

Presented by the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa. For additional information, please visit http://www.uchri.org/sect.php or contact us at sect@hri.uci.edu or 949-824-8900.

Progress Report 1: The Untold Story of Technology

For my research project, I’d really like to expose the other side of technology and advancements of Western culture. For example, I feel that engineering, being born out of capitalism and modern technology, is a lot history. HIS-story is told, the story of the conqueror and it is the same with technology and engineers who create or implement this technology. We only see benefits and progress come out of it because we are the ones who are benefit from it, but what about the other effects that it has on other communities? What may be progress and advancements to us, may be taking a huge step back for others. It is important I feel to realize different world views and how these world views may affect how we view progress.

One example of where I got this idea is the emergence of a ‘new field’ in which humans study animals and their use of plants as medicine. This has been in existence for thousands of centuries, Native peoples’ have always done this, this has been part of the reason they have been able to gain knowledge of the plants and eco-system. This is exactly what I intend to explore with this research project, how we may feel we are using ‘cutting edge’ technology and ‘progressing’ because we are a superior Western culture, but, what if other countries employ the same methods in different ways, but are ignored simply because they do not compete with the West? What if others have more effective and efficient methods?

I don’t have a specific country that I’d like to look at, but I feel it’d be interesting to look at indigenous cultures and go from there. I plan on going to your office hours for a better discussion on direction I should take this.

I also think it'd be interesting to look more into the Academic Military Industrial Complex and how it affects our education as well as shapes our entire world view as a Western Culture.

Project Progress Report #1: Leapfrogging the Fossil Fuel Model

Fossil fuel use has been the backbone of western development for over a century. Any country that wished to compete either militarily or financially with global powers had to adopt the petroleum derived energy model. This technological progression has led to almost every country in the world basing their economy on fossil fuel energy production. The pollution and climate change effects of this use has had marked impacts on the health of our globe.

When fossil fuels are the only basis for supplying energy for a country, the need to obtain more oil to fuel more growth creates an addiction cycle of a never ending need for a limited resource. Because most countries must purchase and import the oil they need for development, they are dependent on the willingness of other countries to supply this resource. The financial woes of agricultural countries are held at the whim of oil rich nations. As these resource-poor countries develop, they get more dependent of fossil fuels, which they must import. This relationship causes political distrust, energy instability, and security concerns for large portions of the globe.

 
A way to get around this limited and destructive model is to have developing countries utilize resources they do have, such as biomass electrical generation or agricultural waste products to make ethanol. Brazil is a good example of a developing nation that has utilized its agricultural resources to create the world’s most efficient ethanol production system. Brazil chose to invest in its own agricultural resources during the oil crisis of the 1970s. Their national vision has helped them achieve energy security with approximately half of all their energy use coming from domestically produced ethanol. This model has the possibility to be transferred to other nations, as nearly every region of the world has a crop that can be grown which has ability distilled into ethanol.

 
Still, there are some countries might not have agricultural resources either, for example the desert countries in Saharan Africa or the Middle East. These countries might be able to use solar technology or wind resources to meet the needs of its cities. Often times individual solar instillations are more effective than large generating facilities because desert towns tend to be small and spread out. Having self-sufficient renewable energy generation is necessary for these communities that cannot afford the huge infrastructure investments necessary for long-distance transmission lines.

During my further research, I plan on showcasing technologies and projects that hold the promise for leapfrogging the fossil fuel based development model. As the population of the world rises, and affluence along with it, more energy will be needed; it has to come from somewhere. This research is not only interesting, but necessary for the future prosperity of the planet. The supply of fossil fuels is limited and is running out, and as it does its price will rise. The amount of greenhouse gases, which are released with the burning of fossil fuels, is on the rise and will only get worse as we use the remaining supply. The future of the human prosperity and the health of the planet is at stake.

Reasearch Progress Report 1: Thailand & Technological Development

Research Progress Report #1

For this report, I am planning to focus on the effect of engineering (and specifically, “appropriate technology”) in Thailand. I traveled abroad with the Cal Poly program and did an independent study project with a partner to develop a means of cleaning up the drinking water filtration system. Many Thai citizens collect the water they drink for the entire year during their rainy season from March-June. The water is collected off their roofs, and many currently have it flow directly into the storage tank. This poses a problem because the debris that is now present in the tank can take hours to settle. Our engineering challenge was to develop a means of making a purification system that would not be overly bulky, it had to hold enough water to effectively get the debris out (estimated to take the first 60 liters), and it had to be of reasonably low cost. After deliberating on a solution, we came up with a tank that the water (and debris) would flow into initially. Once the water filled to the top of this initial tank, it would automatically divert into the storage tank, and be safe for immediate drinking. Having worked with the people to see what they needed, we were able to effectively work for a solution, while also working with the current filtration system they had, which consisted of a mesh net to catch the larger debris before it flowed into the main storage tank.

In this report, I would like to focus on the types of engineering projects going on in Thailand. I’d like to investigate engineering practices mainly in the smaller villages. I have researched projects done by Engineers Without Borders (EWB), and I am looking to do more research on Thai-company based engineering work. My proposed thesis I am focusing on is: How is the western world looking to the eastern world with respect to engineering and technology, and how can they help foster a more effective and appropriate engineering style for the systems already in place in the other country? If anyone has suggestions on how I can improve or better focus my thesis, I would love to hear them!

My goal in this paper will be to show how engineering done in the western world (mostly relating to the US), is not directly applicable to the life of a Thai person. Having lived there, I have experienced how the day to day interactions of Thais are very different in comparison to those we have here in the United States. My goal is to expose these differences, and hopefully determine an approach to engineering education and its ability to expand its focus to a more global outlook. From the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal titled Civil Engineering, there is acknowledgment for the need to alter our view of engineering and how we apply it: “As the trend toward a more global and more knowledge-based society continues, the practice of engineering must be changed, and this change must be accomplished through engineering education reform.” As professional societies like EWB and ASCE move toward a more applicable style of engineering, we may be able to see a heightened value of global engineering and alternatives to expensive building.

I am mainly going to journals found on the Cal Poly Library website, and the aforementioned society pages. I will also be looking into the anti-globalization arguments against the application of appropriate technology. If anyone has more suggestions on where to look, I’d be happy to hear them!

Patricia D. Galloway, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, “The 21st-Century Engineer: A Proposal For Engineering Education Reform”. Engineering Education Reform, Civil Engineering. ASCE. November 2007, Pages: 46-47

Progress Report 1: A Revolution?

Is Latin America’s dependency on the United States a result of technology? It can be hard for people to comprehend the notion that technological advancements are not always beneficial but, unfortunately, countless scholars are proving that the development of underdeveloped countries, like Mexico, is due to the United States technological advancements.

Of course, no one can disregard the benefits technology has brought, especially, to the medical field. And the daily chores of the average American have definitely become much less strenuous, or not strenuous at all. However, the majority of the people in underdeveloped worlds, like Latin America, are currently working in worse conditions than if the United States hadn’t had an Industrial Revolution and ignited the movement towards technological advancement because “education, training, science, and technology are all very unevenly distributed through the world” (Arocena 18).

Although, advancements in the medical field have, of course, proven to help people in both developed and under-developed countries, the terrible work conditions in factories and the lack of means for an education are just hitting the surface of reasons why it doesn’t balance out in the end. The life of a factory worker in Mexico is, without a doubt, an undesired life and education is the most promising way to a satisfying life. Technology in Mexico, therefore, hurts the people more than helps them.

So what exactly is appropriate technology in the United States during the 21st century? If the United States has such an overwhelmingly wealth of knowledge within the technical field shouldn’t they be expected to use only technology that benefits the world? Organizations such as, National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have the right intentions. Their goals entail using new technology to benefit less fortunate people, with culture and environment, always in mind. With that, this introduces the main problem society faces in the field of technology: greed.

The misuse of technology is due to greed. The wealthy business man who only cares about how to turn one dollar in to two dollars is disheartening. The people are forgotten. In Mexico, the people’s culture is not even considered. It is because of greed and so many American’s established independent way of thinking that explains why so many underdeveloped countries are currently stuck in a vicious cycle. For example, “genetic engineering is being used to increase poor people’s dependence on the corporate sector for seeds, agricultural inputs, and produce,reinforcing farmers’ dependence on chemical herbicides and fertilizers” (Arocena 24). When practices, such as this, become installed in to the society it becomes very hard to change and it prevents room for innovation and or small farmer success. Native born American’s do not understand or comprehend other countries more “family” way of thinking.

In my opinion, it is, hands down, the development of technology that led to the “development of the underdeveloped” countries, such as those in Latin America. Frank’s idea “reproduces Baran’s thesis that the extraction of surplus from the periphery by the center limits the for- mer’s ability to grow” (Vernango 555). Suggesting that there was a determined man or woman to end the circle of dependency how would he or she accomplish it? Theotônio dos Santos concluded in his dependency analysis that only “a revolution—would allow a break in the circle of dependency and permit true development in the periphery” (Vernango 555).

Works Cited

Technology, Finance, and Dependency: Latin American Radical Political Economy in Retrospect

Matias Vernengo

Review of Radical Political Economics, Fall 2006; vol. 38: pp. 551-568

Technology, Inequality, and Underdevelopment: The Case of Latin America

Rodrigo Arocena and Peter Senker

Science, Technology & Human Values, January 2003; vol. 28: pp. 15-33