Mark Carey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195396065
- eISBN:
- 9780199775682
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195396065.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change ...
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Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.Less
Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.
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.
Steve Woolgar and Daniel Neyland
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199584741
- eISBN:
- 9780191762994
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584741.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This book focuses on ways in which our lives are increasingly regulated and controlled in relation to ordinary objects and technologies. The analysis considers questions of governance, how this ...
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This book focuses on ways in which our lives are increasingly regulated and controlled in relation to ordinary objects and technologies. The analysis considers questions of governance, how this occurs, through what means, and with what consequence; accountability, to whom (or what) for which kinds of behaviour; and ontology; suggesting the very nature of people and things is entangled in governance. This book takes these questions as the starting point for exploring the ways in which relations of governance and accountability in contemporary life are organized around ordinary, everyday, pervasive objects, and technologies. In contrast to the contemporary literature on governance, the book argues for the importance of examining how governance and accountability relations are enacted on the ground, in relation to mundane objects and technologies. In particular, it is crucial to understand how governance and accountability are mediated through material relations involving ordinary everyday objects and technologies. The book argues that the key to understanding governance is to focus on political constitution at the level of ontology rather than just on the traditional politics of organization, structure, and human compliance. The term ontology is used here to draw attention to the social and cultural processes whereby the nature and existence of ordinary things come to matter. The argument is developed in relation to a wide variety of empirical materials drawn from three main areas of everyday life: waste management and recycling; the regulation and control of traffic (in particular, speed cameras and parking); and security and passenger movement in airports.Less
This book focuses on ways in which our lives are increasingly regulated and controlled in relation to ordinary objects and technologies. The analysis considers questions of governance, how this occurs, through what means, and with what consequence; accountability, to whom (or what) for which kinds of behaviour; and ontology; suggesting the very nature of people and things is entangled in governance. This book takes these questions as the starting point for exploring the ways in which relations of governance and accountability in contemporary life are organized around ordinary, everyday, pervasive objects, and technologies. In contrast to the contemporary literature on governance, the book argues for the importance of examining how governance and accountability relations are enacted on the ground, in relation to mundane objects and technologies. In particular, it is crucial to understand how governance and accountability are mediated through material relations involving ordinary everyday objects and technologies. The book argues that the key to understanding governance is to focus on political constitution at the level of ontology rather than just on the traditional politics of organization, structure, and human compliance. The term ontology is used here to draw attention to the social and cultural processes whereby the nature and existence of ordinary things come to matter. The argument is developed in relation to a wide variety of empirical materials drawn from three main areas of everyday life: waste management and recycling; the regulation and control of traffic (in particular, speed cameras and parking); and security and passenger movement in airports.
Taylor Dotson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036382
- eISBN:
- 9780262340861
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036382.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute ...
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This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis, asking “How might everyday technologies better support a thicker practice of community life?” In order to describe how more community-supportive technological societies might be possible, the various social barriers to thick communitarian technologies are explored. In other words, what policies, subsidies, institutional arrangements and patterns of thought would need to change in order to enable more citizens to strive toward thicker local communities? The book ends with a proposal for an “intelligent trial-and-error” approach to governing innovation so that any risks posed to thick community are reduced. Intelligent trial-and-error, however, is not merely a means for ensuring that technical innovations are properly assessed prior to adoption according to their effects on community life but also constitutes a set of strategies that can help assure the success of communitarian technologies. This book, as a result, contributes to the “reconstructivist” school of science and technology studies and extends the political philosophy of technology toward the good of community.Less
This book provides an account of community through the lens of the politics of technology. That is, how do the artifacts, infrastructures, sociotechnical systems and techniques that constitute everyday life influence the answer to “who gets what community, when and how?” This book responds with a conceptualization of community as a multidimensional phenomenon, which aids in the illustration of how different techniques, artifacts, organizational technologies and infrastructures encourage or constrain the enactment of the various dimensions of communality. Later chapters build upon this analysis, asking “How might everyday technologies better support a thicker practice of community life?” In order to describe how more community-supportive technological societies might be possible, the various social barriers to thick communitarian technologies are explored. In other words, what policies, subsidies, institutional arrangements and patterns of thought would need to change in order to enable more citizens to strive toward thicker local communities? The book ends with a proposal for an “intelligent trial-and-error” approach to governing innovation so that any risks posed to thick community are reduced. Intelligent trial-and-error, however, is not merely a means for ensuring that technical innovations are properly assessed prior to adoption according to their effects on community life but also constitutes a set of strategies that can help assure the success of communitarian technologies. This book, as a result, contributes to the “reconstructivist” school of science and technology studies and extends the political philosophy of technology toward the good of community.
Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027458
- eISBN:
- 9780262325509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027458.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The introductory chapter to the edited volume Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America argues that understanding international science and technology ...
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The introductory chapter to the edited volume Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America argues that understanding international science and technology requires moving beyond models of diffusion (or imported magic) into concepts developed in postcolonial science studies and Latin American studies. Such concepts, the introduction suggests, allow the field to formulate and incorporate new ideas and knowledge about how Latin American peoples, countries, cultures, and environments create, adapt, and use science and technology. The chapter reviews the book’s three themes: Latin American perspectives on science, technology, and society; local and global networks of innovation; and science, technology and Latin American politics. It also presents a genealogy of STS research in Latin America.Less
The introductory chapter to the edited volume Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America argues that understanding international science and technology requires moving beyond models of diffusion (or imported magic) into concepts developed in postcolonial science studies and Latin American studies. Such concepts, the introduction suggests, allow the field to formulate and incorporate new ideas and knowledge about how Latin American peoples, countries, cultures, and environments create, adapt, and use science and technology. The chapter reviews the book’s three themes: Latin American perspectives on science, technology, and society; local and global networks of innovation; and science, technology and Latin American politics. It also presents a genealogy of STS research in Latin America.
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.
Simone Tosoni and Trevor Pinch
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035279
- eISBN:
- 9780262336550
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035279.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Based on several rounds of academic interview and conversations with Trevor Pinch, the book introduces the reader to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and in particular to the social ...
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Based on several rounds of academic interview and conversations with Trevor Pinch, the book introduces the reader to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and in particular to the social constructionist approach to science, technology and sound. Through the lenses of Pinch’s lifetime work, STS students, and scholars in fields dealing with technological mediation, are provided with an in-depth overview, and with suggestions for further reading, on the most relevant past and ongoing debates in the field. The book starts presenting the approach launched by the Bath School in the early sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), and follows the development of the field up to the so called “Science wars” of the ‘90s, and to the popularization of the main acquisitions of the field by Trevor Pinch and Harry Collins’ Golem trilogy. Then, it deals with the sociology of technology, and presents the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach, launched by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker in 1984 and developed in more than 30 years of research, comparing it with alternative approaches like Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory. Five issues are addressed in depth: relevant social groups in the social construction of technology; the intertwining of social representations and practices; the importance of tacit knowledge in SCOT’s approach to the nonrepresentational; the controversy over nonhuman agency; and the political implications of SCOT. Finally, it presents the main current debates in STS, in particular in the study of materiality and ontology, and presents Pinch’s more recent work in sound studies.Less
Based on several rounds of academic interview and conversations with Trevor Pinch, the book introduces the reader to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and in particular to the social constructionist approach to science, technology and sound. Through the lenses of Pinch’s lifetime work, STS students, and scholars in fields dealing with technological mediation, are provided with an in-depth overview, and with suggestions for further reading, on the most relevant past and ongoing debates in the field. The book starts presenting the approach launched by the Bath School in the early sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), and follows the development of the field up to the so called “Science wars” of the ‘90s, and to the popularization of the main acquisitions of the field by Trevor Pinch and Harry Collins’ Golem trilogy. Then, it deals with the sociology of technology, and presents the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach, launched by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker in 1984 and developed in more than 30 years of research, comparing it with alternative approaches like Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory. Five issues are addressed in depth: relevant social groups in the social construction of technology; the intertwining of social representations and practices; the importance of tacit knowledge in SCOT’s approach to the nonrepresentational; the controversy over nonhuman agency; and the political implications of SCOT. Finally, it presents the main current debates in STS, in particular in the study of materiality and ontology, and presents Pinch’s more recent work in sound studies.
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.
Steve Woolgar and Daniel Neyland
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199584741
- eISBN:
- 9780191762994
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584741.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter explores contemporary approaches to governance. It considers corporate governance, Foucauldian approaches to governance, and forms of science and technology governance. The chapter ...
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This chapter explores contemporary approaches to governance. It considers corporate governance, Foucauldian approaches to governance, and forms of science and technology governance. The chapter suggests that these approaches neglect the ontological status of people and things. It then explores relations of accountability. Two main kinds of accountability are distinguished. First, there is an understanding of accountability as a mutual, constitutive sense-making action. This contrasts with organizational accountability whereby accountable entities are taken as the basis for assessment. This distinction provides the basis for understanding the production of accountable material and for examining processes through which people and things are called to account, whom or what is held to account, through what means, and with what outcomes. It then continues to explore these through drawing on ideas from science and technology studies on objects and technologies and ontologies, in particular, through exploring the work of Latour.Less
This chapter explores contemporary approaches to governance. It considers corporate governance, Foucauldian approaches to governance, and forms of science and technology governance. The chapter suggests that these approaches neglect the ontological status of people and things. It then explores relations of accountability. Two main kinds of accountability are distinguished. First, there is an understanding of accountability as a mutual, constitutive sense-making action. This contrasts with organizational accountability whereby accountable entities are taken as the basis for assessment. This distinction provides the basis for understanding the production of accountable material and for examining processes through which people and things are called to account, whom or what is held to account, through what means, and with what outcomes. It then continues to explore these through drawing on ideas from science and technology studies on objects and technologies and ontologies, in particular, through exploring the work of Latour.
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.
Xin Wei Sha
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262019514
- eISBN:
- 9780262318914
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262019514.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we ...
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Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. This philosophical and interdisciplinary investigation reworks our understanding of embodiment and the formation of subjective experience. The investigation also puts in play notions such as interaction, responsive media and performativity, contributing to contemporary exchanges between art and philosophy. This draws on emerging techniques in computational video, realtime gestural sound, sensors, and active textiles, as well as experimental techniques in performance, movement, and visual arts. It also offers insights and inspirations for designers, media artists, musicians, movement artists, architects, researchers in multimedia, interaction design, interactive and responsive environments, architecture, science and technology studies, philosophy and cultural studies.Less
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. This philosophical and interdisciplinary investigation reworks our understanding of embodiment and the formation of subjective experience. The investigation also puts in play notions such as interaction, responsive media and performativity, contributing to contemporary exchanges between art and philosophy. This draws on emerging techniques in computational video, realtime gestural sound, sensors, and active textiles, as well as experimental techniques in performance, movement, and visual arts. It also offers insights and inspirations for designers, media artists, musicians, movement artists, architects, researchers in multimedia, interaction design, interactive and responsive environments, architecture, science and technology studies, philosophy and cultural studies.
Henning Schmidgen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263691
- eISBN:
- 9780823266555
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263691.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour (*1947) is a major figure of contemporary thought. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Latourian oeuvre, from his early ...
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The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour (*1947) is a major figure of contemporary thought. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Latourian oeuvre, from his early anthropological studies in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) to his influential books like Laboratory Life and Science in Action and his most recent reflections on an empirical metaphysics of “modes of existence.” The book argues that the basic problem to which Latour’s work responds is that of social tradition, i.e. the complex relationship of culture, knowledge, and time. It shows that Latour’s understanding of this problem is deeply informed by his early involvement with Biblical exegesis, in particular the work of the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Against this background, the book questions the innovative potential of actor-network theory (ANT) and the fruitfulness of Latour’s philosophical attempts to understand the plurality of “modes of existence.”Less
The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour (*1947) is a major figure of contemporary thought. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Latourian oeuvre, from his early anthropological studies in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) to his influential books like Laboratory Life and Science in Action and his most recent reflections on an empirical metaphysics of “modes of existence.” The book argues that the basic problem to which Latour’s work responds is that of social tradition, i.e. the complex relationship of culture, knowledge, and time. It shows that Latour’s understanding of this problem is deeply informed by his early involvement with Biblical exegesis, in particular the work of the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Against this background, the book questions the innovative potential of actor-network theory (ANT) and the fruitfulness of Latour’s philosophical attempts to understand the plurality of “modes of existence.”
Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027458
- eISBN:
- 9780262325509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027458.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the ...
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The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors’ explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present and further conversations among STS scholars in South America, North America, and Europe. The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; athe design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.Less
The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors’ explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present and further conversations among STS scholars in South America, North America, and Europe. The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; athe design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.
Phaedra Daipha
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226298542
- eISBN:
- 9780226298719
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226298719.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Science, Technology and Environment
This book draws on a two-year ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service (NWS) to theorize decision-making in action. Contrary to popular wisdom, weather forecasters are ...
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This book draws on a two-year ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service (NWS) to theorize decision-making in action. Contrary to popular wisdom, weather forecasters are considerably better than most other so-called expert decision-makers at mastering uncertainty. Following them in their quest for ground truth, therefore, promises to hold the key to the analytically elusive process of diagnosis and prognosis as it actually happens. That is the ultimate objective of this book—by systematically excavating how weather forecasters achieve a provisional coherence in the face of deep uncertainty, how they harness diverse information to project themselves into the future, it endeavors to develop a better conceptual framework for studying uncertainty management in action. Accordingly, the six empirically substantive chapters of the book illuminate key aspects of the process of meteorological decision-making at the NWS: the institutionalized socio-technical environment in which forecasters operate, the forecast production routine; the distillation of atmospheric complexity; the negotiation of accuracy and timeliness in the face of hazardous weather and after a missed forecast; the organization of future anticipation at different time horizons; the tradeoffs of offering expert advice to multiple audiences. The proposed conceptual framework provides the analytic tools to maintain sustained attention to the stable cultural and broader social field of decision-making practice but without losing sight of the situationally-driven micro-context of action and interaction. It reinstates decision-makers as makers of decisions, creatively implementing institutional goals in locally rational ways in order to fashion a workable solution to the decision-making task at hand.Less
This book draws on a two-year ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service (NWS) to theorize decision-making in action. Contrary to popular wisdom, weather forecasters are considerably better than most other so-called expert decision-makers at mastering uncertainty. Following them in their quest for ground truth, therefore, promises to hold the key to the analytically elusive process of diagnosis and prognosis as it actually happens. That is the ultimate objective of this book—by systematically excavating how weather forecasters achieve a provisional coherence in the face of deep uncertainty, how they harness diverse information to project themselves into the future, it endeavors to develop a better conceptual framework for studying uncertainty management in action. Accordingly, the six empirically substantive chapters of the book illuminate key aspects of the process of meteorological decision-making at the NWS: the institutionalized socio-technical environment in which forecasters operate, the forecast production routine; the distillation of atmospheric complexity; the negotiation of accuracy and timeliness in the face of hazardous weather and after a missed forecast; the organization of future anticipation at different time horizons; the tradeoffs of offering expert advice to multiple audiences. The proposed conceptual framework provides the analytic tools to maintain sustained attention to the stable cultural and broader social field of decision-making practice but without losing sight of the situationally-driven micro-context of action and interaction. It reinstates decision-makers as makers of decisions, creatively implementing institutional goals in locally rational ways in order to fashion a workable solution to the decision-making task at hand.
Christina Dunbar-Hester
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262028127
- eISBN:
- 9780262320498
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028127.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next ...
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The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. This book describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users. The book focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the “old” medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that “microradio” broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group’s methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work with radio hardware, although the activists’ hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered by persistent issues of race, class, and gender. This study of activism around an “old” medium offers broader lessons about how political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies.Less
The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. This book describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users. The book focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the “old” medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that “microradio” broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group’s methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work with radio hardware, although the activists’ hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered by persistent issues of race, class, and gender. This study of activism around an “old” medium offers broader lessons about how political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies.
Taylor Dotson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036382
- eISBN:
- 9780262340861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036382.003.0011
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter provides a summary of the book’s argument. It begins by drawing analogies between the contemporary provision of belonging in technological societies and the Oneida religious commune. The ...
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This chapter provides a summary of the book’s argument. It begins by drawing analogies between the contemporary provision of belonging in technological societies and the Oneida religious commune. The two are more similar than one might first expect. Next, the book’s arguments are summarized. The preceding analysis is described as presenting the networking of community as a case of technological lock-in: The sociotechnical makeup of many so-called advanced nations has made any mode of life other than networked individualism increasingly difficult to realize. Not only do artifacts, techniques, infrastructures and organizations stymie citizens’ efforts but policies, dominant economic arrangements, cultural norms and beliefs, and entrenched practices, in turn, reinforce and stabilize their influence. The chapter ends with a discussion of the advantages of the reconstructivist approach to the question concerning technology and community taken in this book and a call for more technology studies research to focus explicitly on providing assistance ordinary citizens. If technology scholars are not on the forefront of exploring how a more desirable technological civilization might be realized, who will be?Less
This chapter provides a summary of the book’s argument. It begins by drawing analogies between the contemporary provision of belonging in technological societies and the Oneida religious commune. The two are more similar than one might first expect. Next, the book’s arguments are summarized. The preceding analysis is described as presenting the networking of community as a case of technological lock-in: The sociotechnical makeup of many so-called advanced nations has made any mode of life other than networked individualism increasingly difficult to realize. Not only do artifacts, techniques, infrastructures and organizations stymie citizens’ efforts but policies, dominant economic arrangements, cultural norms and beliefs, and entrenched practices, in turn, reinforce and stabilize their influence. The chapter ends with a discussion of the advantages of the reconstructivist approach to the question concerning technology and community taken in this book and a call for more technology studies research to focus explicitly on providing assistance ordinary citizens. If technology scholars are not on the forefront of exploring how a more desirable technological civilization might be realized, who will be?
Teun Zuiderent-Jerak
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029384
- eISBN:
- 9780262329439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029384.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing epistemic distance and sociological identity trough over-involvement, or that of insufficient engagement through over-detachment from issues of concern. This dual fear dates back to positions of Weber and Marx and regularly resurfaces through e.g. discussions on Public Sociology. After reviewing such debates, this chapter introduces the emerging scholarly approach of situated intervention as an alternative way of relating sociologists and their fields. Drawing on the work of Ian Hacking on the importance of interlocking representing and intervening in the sciences, on the position proposed by Howard Becker of combining attachment with avoiding sentimentality, and on discussions within Science and Technology Studies on scholarly involvement, intervention is not presented as a matter of engagement but rather as an approach to producing sociological knowledge and normativity. Experiments with the organization of care thereby reclaim the notion of intervention from static understandings of objectivity and ethics.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing epistemic distance and sociological identity trough over-involvement, or that of insufficient engagement through over-detachment from issues of concern. This dual fear dates back to positions of Weber and Marx and regularly resurfaces through e.g. discussions on Public Sociology. After reviewing such debates, this chapter introduces the emerging scholarly approach of situated intervention as an alternative way of relating sociologists and their fields. Drawing on the work of Ian Hacking on the importance of interlocking representing and intervening in the sciences, on the position proposed by Howard Becker of combining attachment with avoiding sentimentality, and on discussions within Science and Technology Studies on scholarly involvement, intervention is not presented as a matter of engagement but rather as an approach to producing sociological knowledge and normativity. Experiments with the organization of care thereby reclaim the notion of intervention from static understandings of objectivity and ethics.
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.
Charlotte P. Lee and Kjeld Schmidt
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- April 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198733249
- eISBN:
- 9780191797736
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198733249.003.0006
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Computational Mathematics / Optimization
The study of computing infrastructures has grown significantly due to the rapid proliferation and ubiquity of large-scale IT-based installations. At the same time, recognition has also grown of the ...
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The study of computing infrastructures has grown significantly due to the rapid proliferation and ubiquity of large-scale IT-based installations. At the same time, recognition has also grown of the usefulness of such studies as a means for understanding computing infrastructures as material complements of practical action. Subsequently the concept of “infrastructure” (or “information infrastructures,” “cyberinfrastructures,” and “infrastructuring”) has gained increasing importance in the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) as well as in neighboring areas such as Information Systems research (IS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, as such studies have unfolded, the very concept of “infrastructure” is being applied in different discourses, for different purposes, in myriad different senses. Consequently, the concept of “infrastructure” has become increasingly muddled and needs clarification. The chapter presents a critical investigation of the vicissitudes of the concept of “infrastructure” over the last 35 years.Less
The study of computing infrastructures has grown significantly due to the rapid proliferation and ubiquity of large-scale IT-based installations. At the same time, recognition has also grown of the usefulness of such studies as a means for understanding computing infrastructures as material complements of practical action. Subsequently the concept of “infrastructure” (or “information infrastructures,” “cyberinfrastructures,” and “infrastructuring”) has gained increasing importance in the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) as well as in neighboring areas such as Information Systems research (IS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, as such studies have unfolded, the very concept of “infrastructure” is being applied in different discourses, for different purposes, in myriad different senses. Consequently, the concept of “infrastructure” has become increasingly muddled and needs clarification. The chapter presents a critical investigation of the vicissitudes of the concept of “infrastructure” over the last 35 years.
Taylor Dotson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036382
- eISBN:
- 9780262340861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036382.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter presents a far different approach to concerns regarding technologically driven changes to communal life than is typical. Rather than lament lost community or celebrate the present, it ...
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This chapter presents a far different approach to concerns regarding technologically driven changes to communal life than is typical. Rather than lament lost community or celebrate the present, it describes the status quo as sociotechnically constructed. Technological societies need not be characterized by the relatively thin and fragmented social practices of networked individualism; things could be otherwise. This take on community and technology is further distinguished by how it sees different arrangements for providing belonging as political: They provide some people with a satisfying experience of community but not others. Although network scholars see networked individualism as liberating, many people are as lonely as ever. Finally, this approach parts ways with traditional science and technology studies: 1) Rather than focus on sexy, esoteric technoscience, it concerns itself with the needs and experiences of average people 2) It analyses the barriers to change instead of merely providing an historical or ongoing account of it 3) It emphasizes the role of the built environment, a technology often overlooked within technology studies.Less
This chapter presents a far different approach to concerns regarding technologically driven changes to communal life than is typical. Rather than lament lost community or celebrate the present, it describes the status quo as sociotechnically constructed. Technological societies need not be characterized by the relatively thin and fragmented social practices of networked individualism; things could be otherwise. This take on community and technology is further distinguished by how it sees different arrangements for providing belonging as political: They provide some people with a satisfying experience of community but not others. Although network scholars see networked individualism as liberating, many people are as lonely as ever. Finally, this approach parts ways with traditional science and technology studies: 1) Rather than focus on sexy, esoteric technoscience, it concerns itself with the needs and experiences of average people 2) It analyses the barriers to change instead of merely providing an historical or ongoing account of it 3) It emphasizes the role of the built environment, a technology often overlooked within technology studies.
