Search Results for: linde

Maintenance of Forest Restoration: The Fragility of Promised Futures

Syed Shoaib Ali December 10, 2024

As a growing area of inquiry in STS, maintenance studies brings two critical insights to the post-Actor Network Theory (ANT) landscape. First, relations are not a state of nature, but once established, take a great amount of ongoing, behind-the-scenes effort to maintain and mend (Star, 1991; Denis and Pontille, 2019). Second, a greater locus of scientific research and innovation is invested in the assemblies of maintenance and repair than in the creation of novel ones (Edgerton, 2011). Stability is ever produced through a constant recognition and remediation of the material fragility of things (Denis & Pontille, 2023). In their seminal article in Theory, Culture & Society, Graham and Thrift (2007) dug forth the ever-expanding arena of maintenance and repair that constitute infrastructures and objects which otherwise remain invisible to the public eye, doing their job. Moments of breakdown cast socially unacceptable ruptures in the fabric of life, inviting all forms of labor, learning, and innovation to keep going. Their dig on the inevitable politics of maintenance, “to invent the train is to also invent the train crash” (p. 4), struck me as a gut-churning reflection on the state of Himalayan forests in the aftermath of large-scale tree plantation programs. On one hand, global afforestation and nature restoration programs aim to repair the historical excesses of extractive industry and empire. On the other hand, the science which guides these programs tends to be far removed from the place, history, and nature of the contagion. This dissonance instills a deep sense of fragility on the promise of restored futures in the Global South. What if the “politics of maintenance” never takes place, and rural populations are forced to live with the inevitable crash? (read more...)

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When Cash Rules: A Local Researcher/Activist’s Fieldnotes on “Passive Locals” Living Around Mailiao’s Petrochemical Complex

Lin Hung-Yang August 17, 2021
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Yunlin is a coastal county in Western Taiwan famous for its agricultural produce, also known as “the barn of Taiwan.” However, the exchange value of agricultural produce has plummeted significantly since the 1970s. This has led to the outmigration of the underemployed able-bodied rural workforce to the cities, leaving behind the old and the young. As a consequence of this migration and Yunlin’s agricultural history, the county developed a reputation for being backward and poor. Residents of Yunlin have been eager to prove this stereotype wrong. (read more...)

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Some Chloroquine-AZT Parallels and Science’s Credibility Struggles

Larissa Costa Duarte June 22, 2020
Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.

As an anthropologist and STS researcher, a great deal of my academic career has been proudly dedicated to studying and denouncing the bias, inequalities, and prejudice within both scientific and medical practices. Such critique, far from intending to undermine scientific credibility, comes from a place of deep respect, trust, and, I dare say, great optimism regarding what kind of project we have for science in the long term: one where knowledge is comprehensive and accessible, and where expertise is not build upon the concealment of information. (read more...)

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Siasa Za Kiwakati Za Ethnografia, Urithi, Na Maambukizi Katika Kipindi Cha Covid-19 Nchini Tanzania

Rebekah Ciribassi May 6, 2020
This content is also available in English.

Dondoo ya Mtoaji: Makala hii ni ya nne katika mfululizo wetu wa sehemu tano unaoitwa “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Bonyeza hapa kusoma utangulizi ulioandikwa na mtengenezaji wa mfululizo huu, Rebekah Ciribassi. Kuhusu tafsiri: Tafsiri hii isingewezekana bila msaada wa msingi wa Sophia George, lakini kama kuna makosa ya kiuandikaji ni ya mwandishi. Shukrani ya dhati kwake. Nimeishi Tanzania tangu mwezi wa tatu mwaka 2018, nikiwa nafanya utafiti wa kiethnografia na familia mbalimbali ambazo zina wagonjwa wenye ugonjwa wa kurithi wa damu unaoitwa siko seli. Nilianza kuvutiwa na utafiti huu wa maisha ya kijamii na ya kisiasa kuanzia mwaka wa 2012, nilipojifunza kwa mara ya kwanza kuhusu kundi la wanaharakati wa kisayansi wa Pan-Afrika, pamoja na Watanzania, wanayoipa kipaumbele huduma na utafiti wa ugonjwa wa siko seli barani kote Afrika. Nilitaka kujua: mabadiliko gani ya msingi ya kianthropolojia yanatokea ili kuhamisha nyakati za maingilio ya afya ya dunia kutoka kasi (read more...)

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The Temporal Politics of Ethnography, Heritability, and Contagion in Tanzania During Covid-19

Rebekah Ciribassi May 6, 2020
Toleo la kiingereza linapatikana hapa.

Editor’s note: This post is the fourth in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organizer Rebekah Ciribassi. I have been living in Tanzania since March of 2018, conducting ethnographic fieldwork with Tanzanian families that have a genetically-inherited blood disorder called sickle cell disease. My interest in studying the socio-political life of this particular diagnosis in this particular place started in 2012, when I learned of a Pan-African bioscience movement, sited partly in Tanzania, to prioritize sickle cell disease research and care across the continent. I became curious about what it might mean anthropologically to shift the timescales of global health intervention from the immediacy of more traditionally-prioritized communicable diseases like HIV and malaria, toward the intergenerational transmission of a genetic condition. Almost two years of interviews and observation with families, activists, and healthcare providers had me thinking about the (read more...)

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The Sounds of STS: In conversation with Prof. Stefan Helmreich

Aadita Chaudhury June 21, 2018

I was first introduced to the work Stefan Helmreich, an anthropologist of science at MIT, as a first year PhD student. As an STS student, I’ve always been intrigued by different methodologies used within the field, and I was compelled by Prof. Helmreich’s ethnography of microbial oceanographers Alien Ocean and its affective, narrative quality and engagements with various traditions of thought. Our conversation below covers Professor Helmreich’s  research, its relevance to the contemporary sociopolitical landscape, and the future of STS and anthropology of science, with a particular focus on the study of race, sound, biology and the arts. AC: You’re a prolific anthropologist of the life sciences/biology, but you are also a sound studies scholar. How do those two domains of interest interact for you in your research, or have they always been intertwined for you? Do they influence your methodological choices? SH: I arrived into conversations on the social (read more...)

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Can Sucro Futures Answer our Biotechnofix Dreams?

Katie Ulrich December 13, 2017

What would plastic containers, cosmetic fragrances, and paint thinners be made of if we stopped using petrochemicals? Some plant biologists and biotech companies are suggesting an answer: sugar. Amid calls for people to change the fossil-fuel consumption habits that drive climate change, replacing petroleum-based fuels with renewable ones frequently takes center-stage. However, we often overlook how petrochemicals—chemicals derived from petroleum, the mixture of hydrocarbons extracted from the ground as crude oil—pervade our everyday lives as an invisible ingredient in a vast array of ordinary materials and items, such as plastics, food preservatives, synthetic clothing, tires, and even toothpaste. (read more...)

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How (Not) to Talk about AI

Shreeharsh Kelkar April 12, 2017

Most CASTAC readers familiar with science and technology studies (STS) have probably had conversations with friends—especially friends who are scientists or engineers—that go something like this:  Your friend says that artificial intelligence (AI) is on its way, whether we want it or not.  Programs (or robots, take your pick) will be able to do a lot of tasks that, until now, have always needed humans.  You argue that it’s not so simple; that what we’re seeing is as much a triumph of re-arranging the world as it is of technological innovation. From your point of view, a world of ubiquitous software is being created; which draws on contingent, flexible, just-in-time, human labor; with pervasive interfaces between humans and programs that make one available to the other immediately. Your comments almost always get misinterpreted as a statement that the programs themselves are not really intelligent.  Is that what you believe, your friend asks?  How do you explain all those amazing robot videos then?  “No, no,” you admit, “I am not saying there’s no technological innovation, but it’s complicated, you know.”  Sometimes, at this point, it’s best to end the conversation and move on to other matters. (read more...)

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