Jess Bier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036153
- eISBN:
- 9780262339957
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036153.003.0002
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cartography
Chapter 2, “The Materiality of Theory”, tells the story of the (ir)rationalization of the landscape of Palestine and Israel after 1948. It explores how the colonial legacies of cartography continue ...
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Chapter 2, “The Materiality of Theory”, tells the story of the (ir)rationalization of the landscape of Palestine and Israel after 1948. It explores how the colonial legacies of cartography continue to influence land management and development efforts. It also outlines the benefits of combining critical geographical studies, including the literature on science and empire, with science and technology studies (STS) research that examines how specific technologies are intrinsically shaped by their social and material contexts.Less
Chapter 2, “The Materiality of Theory”, tells the story of the (ir)rationalization of the landscape of Palestine and Israel after 1948. It explores how the colonial legacies of cartography continue to influence land management and development efforts. It also outlines the benefits of combining critical geographical studies, including the literature on science and empire, with science and technology studies (STS) research that examines how specific technologies are intrinsically shaped by their social and material contexts.
Christopher Sneddon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284316
- eISBN:
- 9780226284453
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284453.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary ...
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Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary river systems. This ‘concrete revolution’ was deeply connected to global geopolitics and efforts by the United States foreign policy apparatus to exert influence over newly emerging nation-states via technical and economic assistance. This chapter introduces the book’s major themes: the intimate linkages among geopolitics, technologies, and large-scale environmental transformations carried out in the name of “development”; and the production and transfer of the powerful ideal that the river basin is the most appropriate unit for a host of inter-related water development and management activities. These themes are examined through a conceptual framework that integrates contemporary thinking on assemblages, technopolitics, environmental history and the geopolitics of development. Large dams, as technological objects constituted through assemblages of capital, knowledge and power, represent a crucial spatial and temporal node of technopolitics in the 20th century. These hybrids behave in often unpredictable ways, despite the best efforts to plan for and take account of the social and biophysical changes wrought by damming a river.Less
Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary river systems. This ‘concrete revolution’ was deeply connected to global geopolitics and efforts by the United States foreign policy apparatus to exert influence over newly emerging nation-states via technical and economic assistance. This chapter introduces the book’s major themes: the intimate linkages among geopolitics, technologies, and large-scale environmental transformations carried out in the name of “development”; and the production and transfer of the powerful ideal that the river basin is the most appropriate unit for a host of inter-related water development and management activities. These themes are examined through a conceptual framework that integrates contemporary thinking on assemblages, technopolitics, environmental history and the geopolitics of development. Large dams, as technological objects constituted through assemblages of capital, knowledge and power, represent a crucial spatial and temporal node of technopolitics in the 20th century. These hybrids behave in often unpredictable ways, despite the best efforts to plan for and take account of the social and biophysical changes wrought by damming a river.
Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525374
- eISBN:
- 9780262319461
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
The once distinct intellectual trajectories of communication & media studies and science & technology studies have begun to gather around a common purpose: to understand media technologies as ...
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The once distinct intellectual trajectories of communication & media studies and science & technology studies have begun to gather around a common purpose: to understand media technologies as complex, socio-material phenomena. However, efforts to develop this conversation struggle against the residual force of two historical tendencies. First, in communication and media scholarship, the overwhelming focus has been on the meaning of texts, the industries that produce them, and the viewers that consume them; the materiality of texts, devices, and networks has been understudied. Second, STS scholars have until recently largely overlooked media technologies, preferring to study technologies of industrial and knowledge production, and information technologies only when they fit this mold. However, conceptual intersections between these trajectories afford fruitful intellectual exchanges. So what should come next? The chapters in this volume intend to serve as foundational starting points for a new set of questions going forward. They urge scholars of media technologies to attend to the linkages between the symbolic elements of media and the materiality of its artifacts, and to look beneath the artifacts and within the networks to where people construct, maintain, and ultimately disassemble these socio-material things.Less
The once distinct intellectual trajectories of communication & media studies and science & technology studies have begun to gather around a common purpose: to understand media technologies as complex, socio-material phenomena. However, efforts to develop this conversation struggle against the residual force of two historical tendencies. First, in communication and media scholarship, the overwhelming focus has been on the meaning of texts, the industries that produce them, and the viewers that consume them; the materiality of texts, devices, and networks has been understudied. Second, STS scholars have until recently largely overlooked media technologies, preferring to study technologies of industrial and knowledge production, and information technologies only when they fit this mold. However, conceptual intersections between these trajectories afford fruitful intellectual exchanges. So what should come next? The chapters in this volume intend to serve as foundational starting points for a new set of questions going forward. They urge scholars of media technologies to attend to the linkages between the symbolic elements of media and the materiality of its artifacts, and to look beneath the artifacts and within the networks to where people construct, maintain, and ultimately disassemble these socio-material things.
Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525374
- eISBN:
- 9780262319461
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that they are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, to look at them rather as the product of ...
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In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that they are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, to look at them rather as the product of and embedded in distinct social, cultural and political practices. To better examine them in this light, communication and media scholars have increasingly taken theoretical perspectives originating in science and technology studies (STS), while at the same time some STS scholars interested in information technologies have linked their research to media studies questions about their symbolic dimensions. In this volume, scholars from both fields come together to advance this view of media technologies as complex socio-material phenomena. The first four contributors address the relationship between materiality and mediation, highlighting the linkages between the symbolic and the artifactual by considering such topics as the lived realities of network infrastructure and the informational embodiment of networked knowledge. A second set of four contributors highlight media technologies as always in motion, held together through the minute, unobserved work of many. This includes examining how the meanings of media technologies came to be and the work involved to keep them alive. After each of the two sets of essays, comments by senior scholars respond to the essays and articulate overarching themes. The volume intends to initiate conversations about the state of current scholarship around media technologies, as well as identify directions for future research.Less
In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that they are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, to look at them rather as the product of and embedded in distinct social, cultural and political practices. To better examine them in this light, communication and media scholars have increasingly taken theoretical perspectives originating in science and technology studies (STS), while at the same time some STS scholars interested in information technologies have linked their research to media studies questions about their symbolic dimensions. In this volume, scholars from both fields come together to advance this view of media technologies as complex socio-material phenomena. The first four contributors address the relationship between materiality and mediation, highlighting the linkages between the symbolic and the artifactual by considering such topics as the lived realities of network infrastructure and the informational embodiment of networked knowledge. A second set of four contributors highlight media technologies as always in motion, held together through the minute, unobserved work of many. This includes examining how the meanings of media technologies came to be and the work involved to keep them alive. After each of the two sets of essays, comments by senior scholars respond to the essays and articulate overarching themes. The volume intends to initiate conversations about the state of current scholarship around media technologies, as well as identify directions for future research.
Jess Bier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036153
- eISBN:
- 9780262339957
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cartography
Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine is an analysis of the ways that segregated landscapes have shaped digital cartography in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967. Extending work on how technology is ...
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Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine is an analysis of the ways that segregated landscapes have shaped digital cartography in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967. Extending work on how technology is socially constructed, it investigates the ways that knowledge is geographically produced. Technoscientific practices are situated in landscapes that are at once both social and material, and this influences the content of digital technology in sometimes unpredictable ways. Therefore it is necessary to reflexively engage with materiality and space in order to enable more diverse forms of knowledge. Maps are an iconic symbol of modernity, and they have been central to debates over the future of Palestine and Israel. This has only intensified as Geographic Information Science (GIS) mapmaking has led to increasingly minute forms of surveillance and control. Intended to display objective facts, maps inspire extensive discussions. However, the framing of these discussions cannot be divorced from the participants’ asymmetrical mobilities within the very terrains that they seek to portray. Therefore it is essential to investigate how Palestinian, Israeli, and international cartographers are unevenly affected by the segregated landscapes which their technologies have helped to create. Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine addresses these important issues by bringing together the disciplines of critical geography, postcolonial theory, and science and technology studies (STS). It presents an analysis of the maps and mapmaking practices that result when diverse cartographers chart the same landscapes that so condition their movement. It investigates the myriad ways that the segregated landscapes of the Israeli occupation shape knowledge about the occupation.Less
Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine is an analysis of the ways that segregated landscapes have shaped digital cartography in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967. Extending work on how technology is socially constructed, it investigates the ways that knowledge is geographically produced. Technoscientific practices are situated in landscapes that are at once both social and material, and this influences the content of digital technology in sometimes unpredictable ways. Therefore it is necessary to reflexively engage with materiality and space in order to enable more diverse forms of knowledge. Maps are an iconic symbol of modernity, and they have been central to debates over the future of Palestine and Israel. This has only intensified as Geographic Information Science (GIS) mapmaking has led to increasingly minute forms of surveillance and control. Intended to display objective facts, maps inspire extensive discussions. However, the framing of these discussions cannot be divorced from the participants’ asymmetrical mobilities within the very terrains that they seek to portray. Therefore it is essential to investigate how Palestinian, Israeli, and international cartographers are unevenly affected by the segregated landscapes which their technologies have helped to create. Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine addresses these important issues by bringing together the disciplines of critical geography, postcolonial theory, and science and technology studies (STS). It presents an analysis of the maps and mapmaking practices that result when diverse cartographers chart the same landscapes that so condition their movement. It investigates the myriad ways that the segregated landscapes of the Israeli occupation shape knowledge about the occupation.
Jonathan Sterne
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525374
- eISBN:
- 9780262319461
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This article reviews essays by Pablo Boczkowski and Ignacio Siles, Leah Lievrouw, Finn Brunton and Gabriella Coleman, and Geoffrey Bowker. It argues that, in several areas of media studies and ...
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This article reviews essays by Pablo Boczkowski and Ignacio Siles, Leah Lievrouw, Finn Brunton and Gabriella Coleman, and Geoffrey Bowker. It argues that, in several areas of media studies and science and technology studies, scholars have gone off in search of materiality as a grounding term for their work. Yet there is little agreement as to the actual referent of the term materiality; it signals several traditions that sometimes contradict one another. In addition to giving an account of the confusion around the term, this paper offers a history of the constructivism against which many new materialists rebel, arguing that whatever epistemological position we want to take up, the political questions raised by the constructivists are still with us today.Less
This article reviews essays by Pablo Boczkowski and Ignacio Siles, Leah Lievrouw, Finn Brunton and Gabriella Coleman, and Geoffrey Bowker. It argues that, in several areas of media studies and science and technology studies, scholars have gone off in search of materiality as a grounding term for their work. Yet there is little agreement as to the actual referent of the term materiality; it signals several traditions that sometimes contradict one another. In addition to giving an account of the confusion around the term, this paper offers a history of the constructivism against which many new materialists rebel, arguing that whatever epistemological position we want to take up, the political questions raised by the constructivists are still with us today.
Taichi Isobe, Nozomi Mizushima, and Osamu Sakura
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199682676
- eISBN:
- 9780191763168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682676.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
The importance and effectiveness of public participation and upstream engagement have been emphasized in the field of STS (Science, Technology, and Society) studies. Here, the authors introduce these ...
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The importance and effectiveness of public participation and upstream engagement have been emphasized in the field of STS (Science, Technology, and Society) studies. Here, the authors introduce these as potential tools to clear away unethical “optimism,” which Gareth criticizes in his target article. the authors present three cases (AIDS, muscular dystrophy research, and the shepherds of Cumbria) in which public participation proved to be beneficial. Participation of non-experts within fields in which experts are exclusively involved can potentially break biases and restricted perspectives, and views from non-experts may even lead to newer research directions. Incorporation of patient and subject perspectives into research may reduce unethical, or biased, optimism in clinical research and even basic experiments. the authors surmise that this argument holds true even in the research fields of nerve grafting and nerve regeneration.Less
The importance and effectiveness of public participation and upstream engagement have been emphasized in the field of STS (Science, Technology, and Society) studies. Here, the authors introduce these as potential tools to clear away unethical “optimism,” which Gareth criticizes in his target article. the authors present three cases (AIDS, muscular dystrophy research, and the shepherds of Cumbria) in which public participation proved to be beneficial. Participation of non-experts within fields in which experts are exclusively involved can potentially break biases and restricted perspectives, and views from non-experts may even lead to newer research directions. Incorporation of patient and subject perspectives into research may reduce unethical, or biased, optimism in clinical research and even basic experiments. the authors surmise that this argument holds true even in the research fields of nerve grafting and nerve regeneration.
Lesley A. Sharp
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520299245
- eISBN:
- 9780520971059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520299245.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
What are the moral challenges and consequences of animal research in academic laboratory settings? Animal Ethos considers how the inescapable needs of lab research necessitate interspecies encounters ...
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What are the moral challenges and consequences of animal research in academic laboratory settings? Animal Ethos considers how the inescapable needs of lab research necessitate interspecies encounters that, in turn, engender unexpected moral responses among a range of associated personnel. Whereas much has been written about the codified, bioethical rules and regulations that inform proper lab behavior and decorum, Animal Ethos, as an in-depth, ethnographic project, probes the equally rich—yet poorly understood—realm of ordinary or everyday morality, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox thought and action evidence concerted efforts to transform animal laboratories into moral, scientific worlds. The work is grounded in efforts to integrate theory within medical anthropology (and, more particularly, on suffering and moral worth), animal studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Contrary to established scholarship that focuses exclusively on single professions (such as the researcher or technician), Animal Ethos tracks across the spectrum of the lab labor hierarchy by considering the experiences of researchers, animal technicians, and lab veterinarians. In turn, it offers comparative insights on animal activists. When taken together, this range of parties illuminates the moral complexities of experimental lab research. The affective qualities of interspecies intimacy, animal death, and species preference are of special analytical concern, as reflected in the themes of intimacy, sacrifice, and exceptionalism that anchor this work.Less
What are the moral challenges and consequences of animal research in academic laboratory settings? Animal Ethos considers how the inescapable needs of lab research necessitate interspecies encounters that, in turn, engender unexpected moral responses among a range of associated personnel. Whereas much has been written about the codified, bioethical rules and regulations that inform proper lab behavior and decorum, Animal Ethos, as an in-depth, ethnographic project, probes the equally rich—yet poorly understood—realm of ordinary or everyday morality, where serendipitous, creative, and unorthodox thought and action evidence concerted efforts to transform animal laboratories into moral, scientific worlds. The work is grounded in efforts to integrate theory within medical anthropology (and, more particularly, on suffering and moral worth), animal studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Contrary to established scholarship that focuses exclusively on single professions (such as the researcher or technician), Animal Ethos tracks across the spectrum of the lab labor hierarchy by considering the experiences of researchers, animal technicians, and lab veterinarians. In turn, it offers comparative insights on animal activists. When taken together, this range of parties illuminates the moral complexities of experimental lab research. The affective qualities of interspecies intimacy, animal death, and species preference are of special analytical concern, as reflected in the themes of intimacy, sacrifice, and exceptionalism that anchor this work.
Laura Watts
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262027168
- eISBN:
- 9780262322492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027168.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Information Technology
The future has come early for Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland. Here, at what is sometimes considered the periphery, is the site of the European Marine Energy Centre and an ...
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The future has come early for Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland. Here, at what is sometimes considered the periphery, is the site of the European Marine Energy Centre and an energy-aware and self-determined way of living that is only imagined as a future elsewhere. This chapter forms a prose-poem, written to evoke the island landscape of light and liminality, and to give voice to the people and places working on the edge–both at the geographic edge and on the leading edge–of energy futures. The poem and subsequent discussion explores the qualities of design and development in Orkney that make such futures: Self-Sufficiency, Modest Innovation, Mutable Futures, and Early Adapters. Woven through the poem is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to the future as situated in social and technical practice, as located and partial. For it seems that islands that were once seen as far from ICT industry innovation, may now be better understood as test sites for collaborative experimentation and different conceptions of design and innovation.Less
The future has come early for Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland. Here, at what is sometimes considered the periphery, is the site of the European Marine Energy Centre and an energy-aware and self-determined way of living that is only imagined as a future elsewhere. This chapter forms a prose-poem, written to evoke the island landscape of light and liminality, and to give voice to the people and places working on the edge–both at the geographic edge and on the leading edge–of energy futures. The poem and subsequent discussion explores the qualities of design and development in Orkney that make such futures: Self-Sufficiency, Modest Innovation, Mutable Futures, and Early Adapters. Woven through the poem is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to the future as situated in social and technical practice, as located and partial. For it seems that islands that were once seen as far from ICT industry innovation, may now be better understood as test sites for collaborative experimentation and different conceptions of design and innovation.
Lesley A. Sharp
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520277960
- eISBN:
- 9780520957152
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520277960.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
The extraordinarily surgically successful realm of organ transplantation is plagued worldwide by the scarcity of donated human parts, a quandary that generates ongoing debates over the marketing of ...
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The extraordinarily surgically successful realm of organ transplantation is plagued worldwide by the scarcity of donated human parts, a quandary that generates ongoing debates over the marketing of organs, as patients die waiting for replacements. These widespread anxieties within and beyond medicine over organ scarcity inspire seemingly futuristic trajectories in other fields. Especially prominent, longstanding, and promising domains include xenotransplantation, or efforts to cull organs from animals for human use, and bioengineering, a field peopled with “tinkerers” intent on designing implantable mechanical devices, where the heart is of special interest. Scarcity, suffering, and sacrifice are pervasive and, seemingly, inescapable themes that frame the transplant imaginary. Xenotransplant experts and bioengineers at work in labs in five Anglophone countries share a marked determination to eliminate scarcity and human suffering, certain that their efforts might one day altogether eliminate any need for parts of human origin. A premise that drives Sharp’s compelling ethnographic project is that high-stakes experimentation inspires moral thinking, informing scientists’ determination to redirect the surgical trajectory of transplantation and, ultimately, alter the integrity of the human form.Less
The extraordinarily surgically successful realm of organ transplantation is plagued worldwide by the scarcity of donated human parts, a quandary that generates ongoing debates over the marketing of organs, as patients die waiting for replacements. These widespread anxieties within and beyond medicine over organ scarcity inspire seemingly futuristic trajectories in other fields. Especially prominent, longstanding, and promising domains include xenotransplantation, or efforts to cull organs from animals for human use, and bioengineering, a field peopled with “tinkerers” intent on designing implantable mechanical devices, where the heart is of special interest. Scarcity, suffering, and sacrifice are pervasive and, seemingly, inescapable themes that frame the transplant imaginary. Xenotransplant experts and bioengineers at work in labs in five Anglophone countries share a marked determination to eliminate scarcity and human suffering, certain that their efforts might one day altogether eliminate any need for parts of human origin. A premise that drives Sharp’s compelling ethnographic project is that high-stakes experimentation inspires moral thinking, informing scientists’ determination to redirect the surgical trajectory of transplantation and, ultimately, alter the integrity of the human form.
