[Sci-tech-public] Roundtable: "Nature, Science, and Technology: A South-South Conversation"
Randyn A. Miller
randyn at MIT.EDU
Tue Apr 30 16:03:11 EDT 2013
Nature, Science, and Technology: A South-South Conversation
Roundtable
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
9 AM - 12 PM
E51-275, MIT
This conversation examines nature, science and technology, drawing upon research
and perspectives from the 'global South.' Recent transformations in the global
order and material world have challenged scholars to reimagine approaches to
social phenomena such as biomedicine, media technologies and human-animal
relations. Today, amid a new scramble for oil and mineral wealth, countries in
the developing world form an economic counterweight to the G8, while emerging as
leaders in research and design of renewable energy, computer software and
nuclear science. New South-South solidarities build upon long-standing
relationships established during the interlocking periods of the Cold War and
anti-colonial resistance, or from earlier periods of slavery and indentured
labor in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
While a turn toward Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers insights into
these transformations, it also - by focusing upon Western epistemologies and
expert populations, non-human agency and networks - has overlooked important
aspects of political, historical and social life, which concern the 'global
South.' Our conversation poses the following questions: (1) What local idioms
might be identified for such concepts as "nature," "science" and "technology"
before, during and after colonization? (2) What are the ethical and
epistemological limits and possibilities of allocating agency to "non-human
things"? (3) Some of the dominant tropes of STS include the expert
(scientists, engineers, technocrats) the spaces where experts do their work
(the lab, the engineering plant, and formal institutions), and their expertise
(inventions, innovations, policies and technologies). What histories,
cultures, forms of knowledge and practice do these tropes amplify or silence?
(4) How might scholars envision 'the South' in STS today and in the future?
In lieu of formal paper presentations, this conversation will be structured as
an informal, roundtable discussion, drawing from the cross-regional and
interdisciplinary research of social sciences faculty and graduate student
participants from MIT and Harvard.
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