Techno-scientific activisms: collective action with, against and beyond the burden of proof - Detailseite

This course will seek to provide an introduction to the wide literature in the social sciences around collective action and social movements from the particular standpoint of science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theory (ANT). Interestingly, these ethnographic works (1) provide interesting insights on the transformation entailed by the irruption of many groups and collectives in the once sacred space and activities of science and technology production: From the participatory engagements of lay people in expert-driven processes–such as citizen science– to articulations of counter-expertise and evidence-based activism–such as the work on affected communities, concerned groups, embodied health and environmental justice activisms to engage in conversations with experts–, many of these practices and activities are not only transforming the who and the how of technoscientific production, but also its spaces and outputs; but they also (2) entail an opening of our accounts of collective action beyond the all-too-human and usually male-dominated heroic narratives of political struggles, showing the variegated roles animals, devices, ecologies, atmospheres, the Earth, ancestors, and a range of eventful beings play in different forms of political action. Building from this, the main aim of this course would be to train ourselves in understanding the nuances and specificities of different registers of technoscientific activism (counter-expertise, translation, issue publics, cosmopolitics, and self-experimentation), paying minute attention not only to the complex distributions and attributions of agency they entail, but also to the particular relations these forms of collective action have with the burden of proof and different forms of ‘truth politics.’

- Obligatory reading

Callon, M., & Law, J. (1997). Agency and the Hybrid Collectif. In B. Herrnstein Smith & A. Plotnitsky (Eds.), Mathematics, Science and Postclassical Theory (pp. 95–117). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hess, D., Breyman, S., Campbell, N., & Martin, B. (2008). Science, Technology, and Social Movements. In E. J. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Third Edition (pp. 473–498). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rodríguez-Giralt, I. (2011). Social movements as actor-networks: Prospects for a symmetrical approach to Doñana’s environmentalist protests. Convergencia, 18(56), 13–35.

- Case studies: For potential further reading

1. Counter-expertise

Brown, P., Zavestoski, S., McCormick, S., Mayer, B., Morello-Frosch, R., & Gasior Altman, R. (2004). Embodied health movements: new approaches to social movements in health. Sociology of Health & Illness, 26(1), 50–80.

Callon, M. (1999). The Role of Lay People in the Production and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge. Science Technology & Society, 4(1), 81–94.

Epstein, S. (1995). The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS Activism and the Forging of Credibility in the Reform of Clinical Trials. Science, Technology & Human Values, 20(4), 408–437.

Jasanoff, S. (2003). Technologies of humility: citizen participation in governing science. Minerva, 41(3), 223–244.

Orsini, M., & Smith, M. (2010). Social movements, knowledge and public policy: the case of autism activism in Canada and the US. Critical Policy Studies, 4(1), 38–57.

2. Translation

Callon, M., & Rabeharisoa, V. (2003). Research “in the wild” and the shaping of new social identities. Technology in Society, 25, 193–2004.

Callon, M., & Rabeharisoa, V. (2008). The Growing Engagement of Emergent Concerned Groups in Political and Economic Life: Lessons from the French Association of Neuromuscular Disease Patients. Science, Technology & Human Values, 33(2), 230–261.

Callon, M., Lascoumes, P., & Barthe, Y. (2011). Chapters 1 ‘Hybrid Forums’ (pp. 13-36), 3 ‘There’s Always Someone More Specialist’ (pp. 71-106), 4 ‘In Search of a Common World’ (pp. 107-152) & 5 ‘The Organization of Hybrid Forums’ (pp. 153-190). Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rabeharisoa, V., Moreira, T., & Akrich, M. (2014). Evidence-based activism: Patients’, users’ and activists’ groups in knowledge society. BioSocieties, 9(2), 111–128.

3. Issue publics

Marres, N. (2007). The Issues Deserve More Credit: Pragmatist Contributions to the Study of Public Involvement in Controversy. Social Studies of Science, 37(5), 759–780.

Marres, N. (2012). The Invention of Material Publics: Returns to American Pragmatism. In Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics (pp. 28-59). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Marres, N., & Lezaun, J. (2011). Materials and devices of the public: an introduction. Economy and Society, 40(4), 489–509.

4. Cosmopolitics

Blaser, M. (2016). Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? Cultural Anthropology, 31(4), 545–570.

de la Cadena, M. (2010). Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond “Politics.” Cultural Anthropology, 25(2), 334–370.

Latour, B. (2004). Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2004), 225–248.

Latour, B. (2005). From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public. In B. Latour & P. Weibel (Eds.), Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy (pp. 14–41). Karlsruhe / Cambridge, MA: ZKM / MIT Press.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science, 41(1), 85–106.

Stengers, I. (2005). The cosmopolitical proposal. In B. Latour and P. Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public (pp. 994–1003). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

5. Self-experimentation

Corsín, A. (2014). The right to infrastructure: Prototype for open source urbanism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(2), 342–362.

Criado, T.S., & Cereceda, M. (2016). Urban accessibility issues: Techno-scientific democratizations at the documentation interface. City, 20(4), 619–636.

Criado, T.S., Rodríguez-Giralt, I., & Mencaroni, A. (2016). Care in the (critical) making. Open prototyping, or the radicalisation of independent-living politics. ALTER - European Journal of Disability, 10(2016), 24–39.

Delgado, A. (2013). DIYbio: Making things and making futures. Futures, 48, 65–73.

Murphy, M. (2004). Immodest witnessing: The epistemology of vaginal self-examination in the US feminist self-help movement. Feminist Studies, 115–147.

Murphy, M. (2006).  How to Build Yourself a Body in a Safe Space. In Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (pp. 151-178). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Die Veranstaltung findet im Raum 107a im IfEE statt.