[Sci-tech-public] Reminder: STS Circle, November 7th - Lee Vinsel - (Please RSVP)

[STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
 *


*
*Lee Vinsel
*
*Program on Science, Technology, and Society and the School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences, Harvard*
*
*
on
*
The Politics of the Dummy Light: Liberalism and US Federal Regulation of
Technological Risk, 1960-1980
*
Monday, November 7th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106


Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts
<sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>by 5pm
Thursday, November 3rd.
*
*
*Abstract:*  Do artifacts have politics? Langdon Winner asked that question
in the title of his influential 1980 article. Since then, it has puzzled
scholars in science and technology studies and the history of science and
technology. In this talk, I take Winner’s question as a provocation for
deeper analysis of the subtlety of politics. I follow Winner in arguing
that artifacts assuredly do have politics. In the US liberal society,
however, these politics are often weaker, subtler, and more diffuse than
the oppressive, authoritarian cases he explores. I examine the history of
automotive air pollution regulation as an iterative example of
co-production: “technology-forcing” regulations shaped technical change,
while obdurate materiality pushed policy-makers to respond in kind. The
1970 Clean Air Act Amendments created some of the toughest technological
standards in US history. Yet policy-makers attempted—legally and
technologically—to reconstitute the world while respecting traditional
boundaries of responsibility and self-determination for both citizens and
private firms.  These efforts experienced great resistance, however, as
consumers bristled, emission control systems melted, and automakers
red-baited regulators. In such a context, mundane technology, such as a
dashboard light bulb, took on heated political meanings and, indeed,
embodied the political itself.

*Biography*:  *Lee Vinsel** *holds a joint appointment as a post-doctoral
fellow with the Program on Science, Technology, & Society at the Harvard
Kennedy School of Government and the School of Engineering & Applied
Sciences. In 2011, he earned his PhD in history from Carnegie Mellon
University, where he was a member of several interdisciplinary research
groups, including the Climate Decision Making Center. His book manuscript,
“Braking Detroit: State Management of the Automobile in the United States,”
examines the history of the automobile as a risky object and the actions
local, state, and federal governments have taken to exorcise this “devil
wagon.” His research has been funded by a number of National Science
Foundation grants as well as several fellowships and awards.

A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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