Washington, D.C. October 6-9, 2019

Kellogg Conference Hotel at Gallaudet University

The third in a series of conferences that celebrates and unpacks the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world.

Maintainers III Goals

Bring together practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, and activists who have deep engagements with maintenance
Develop and sustain communities of practice in specialized areas
Contribute to a broad public movement around the importance of maintenance and maintainers in modern life. Continue reading →

Goldsmiths. June 5, September 12, November 29, 2019

In this forthcoming symposium series, we propose to experiment, from an interdisciplinary and global perspective, with a pressing question for our troubled times: can we reimagine human and more-than-human arts of living and flourishing from the ruins of the modern idea of progress? The notion of “progress” is arguably the defining idea of modernity: a civilisational imagery of a boundless, linear, and upwards trajectory towards a future that, guided by reason and technology, will be “better” than the present. It was this notion that placed techno-science at the heart of the modern political culture, and it was the global unevenness of “progress” that imagined European imperialism as a civilising mission inflicted upon “backward” others for their own sake. Continue reading →

Belo Horizonte. August 15-17, 2019

Resumos devem ser enviados até o dia 1/5. Mais informações no site do evento: http://www.esocite8.cefetmg.br/.

Coordenadores(as) Tiago Ribeiro Duarte (UNB), Marko Monteiro (UNICAMP), Lorena Cândido Fleury (UFRGS)

Resumo da Proposta

As ciências e as tecnologias são elementos cruciais para a compreensão de questões ambientais, sejam elas de natureza local ou global. As C&T estão presentes desde o momento em que um determinado problema é definido enquanto tal (seja ele mudanças no clima, riscos de rompimento de barragens ou contaminações na água e no solo) até as ações de remediação, mitigação ou prevenção de problemas. Além disso, as tecnociências estão diretamente vinculadas à produção de riscos socioambientais, incluindo aqui a emissão de gases estufa, a construção de grandes infraestruturas que podem levar a desastres ou a produção de resíduos em larga escala. Dessa forma, questões ambientais em geral, e mais recentemente as mudanças globais (que incluem o clima, mas também o transcendem) são um tópico fundamental dos estudos CTS – ciência, tecnologia e sociedade. Continue reading →

Santiago de Chile. September 5-7, 2019

La historia tradicional ha tendido a privilegiar el modelo del “déficit” en la interpretación de las dinámicas que acompañaron la difusión de la ciencia, entendiendo a esta última como el quehacer de un grupo de expertos, que habiendo elaborado su trabajo y realizado los esperados hallazgos, difundieron sus resultados a la sociedad o públicos legos. El modelo del déficit supone una visión ortodoxa de la elaboración de conocimiento científico, que postula que el saber circula desde los expertos dentro de las instituciones, hacia los inexpertos que están fuera de estas. Esta perspectiva a su vez asume que la movilidad del saber científico opera bajo la lógica de transmisión desde el centro hacia la periferia -de lo global hacia lo local-, cuando se ha podido demostrar que el conocimiento local y popular también ejerce un rol fundamental en el proceso de elaboración del conocimiento científico. Sin embargo, los enfoques teóricos desarrollados durante los últimos años (por Secord, Schaffer, Renn, Lipphardt, Ludwig, Broks, Nieto-Galán, entre otros) han hecho posible dudar y cuestionar dicho modelo, al proponer a “los públicos” como agente activo del proceso de construcción de conocimiento científico. Continue reading →

Edinburgh. June 12-13, 2019

The field of Science and Technology Studies has attained global reach. In some regions, the study of science and technology has been around for more than five decades, already stabilized as a discipline in itself. During that time, this discipline has been expanded not only by incorporating insights from other disciplines –like the study of innovation dynamics- but also by adding different methodological traditions and a growing number of geographical boundaries. Beyond the traditional centres (North America and Europe) where the study of science and technology emerged, the discipline has been able to adapt to the aforementioned circumstances, developing interesting lessons and addressing multiple challenges along the way. For example, in the Latin American region, the early studies of science and technology were characterised by an approach that could be categorized as developmental, seeking to reduce the scientific and technological gap between this region and the “developed world”. Consequently, scholars oriented these studies on the creation of new public policies and institutional programs. Continue reading →