Search Results for: scale

Bodies as Proxies, or The Stratigraphic Evidence of Our Appetites, at Metabolic Scales from the Human to the Planetary, on the Occasion of the Anthropocene’s Ongoing Debate About Itself

Allie E.S. Wist April 3, 2025
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The atmosphere of anxiety concerning the Anthropocene amplifies when considering how its eerie and unwieldy forces affect our bodies. Across posthumanist, science studies, and new materialist discourse, the concern about corporeal impacts seems to huddle around a particular set of words: porous, permeable, vulnerable, sensitive. These are invoked as scholars seek to describe the status of bodies threatened by invisible, global, and pernicious toxins. In a looping story of strata and sediment and edible rocks, this essay similarly seeks to articulate the material instabilities of bodies in an epoch that itself resists clear definition. (read more...)

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Rethinking Scale in Social Media: An Ethnographic Perspective

Jordan Kraemer July 23, 2013

Scale has been a recent buzzword in discussions of social and digital media, as our editor Patricia G. Lange traced out in her January retrospective post. From MOOCs to Big Data, emerging communication technologies are making possible (and visible) large-scale interactions that have been attracting attention from many quarters, including anthropology. I want to revisit this conversation by discussing further what scale means in the context of networked media, especially social and mobile technologies. Is scale the new global? On the cusp of the new millennium in the late 1990s, there was a lot of buzz over the global reach of the Internet, linked to broader interest in how new communication technologies were entwined with globalizing processes. The World Wide Web itself was envisioned as spanning the globe, while globalism infected the popular imagination. Nearly twenty years on, the Internet has yet to bring about global equality or democracy, though (read more...)

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Looking Ahead to 2013: A Question of Scale

Patricia G. Lange January 10, 2013

The CASTAC community joined together in 2012 to launch this blog and begin dialogue on contemporary issues and research approaches. Even though the blog is just getting off the ground, certain powerful themes are already emerging across different projects and areas of study. Key themes for the coming year include dealing with large data sets, connecting individual choices to larger economic forces, and translating the meaning of actions from different realms of experience. Perhaps the most visible trend on our minds right now involves dealing with scale. How can anthropologists, ethnographers, and other STS scholars address large data sets and approaches in research and pedagogy, while also retaining an appropriate relationship to the theories and methods that have made our disciplines strong? As we look ahead to 2013, it would seem that a big question for the CASTAC community involves finding creative and ethical ways to deal with phenomena that (read more...)

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Renouncing and Returning to Shareholder Value

Sakari Mesimäki November 18, 2025
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As pandemic restrictions began to ease in late 2021, the annual Finnish startup conference Slush made its return as an in-person event. Held for the first time in 2008, Slush grew through the 2010s to become a major international startup event with tens of thousands of attendees—a symbol of the “success story” of Finnish startup culture and a focus of national pride and economic hope. (read more...)

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Space Selfie: Rethinking Scalarity Between Orbit and Home

Denis Sivkov November 6, 2025
Этот материал также доступен на русском
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We are in Ruzaevka, a small town near Saransk, the regional capital of Mordovia, Russia. Ham radio operator Dmitry Pashkov, photographer Sergei Karpov, and I climb the roof of the local technical college. Sergei and I are on the roof because we are interested in so-called bottom-up space exploration. Dmitry works at this college as an IT specialist. It is a cloudy day in March, and there is a cold wind on the roof, still icy from the winter. Dmitry promises to show us how to get an image of the European part of Russia using an American weather satellite. (read more...)

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Космическое селфи: переосмысляя масштабирование между домом и орбитой

Denis Sivkov November 6, 2025
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Мы в Рузаевке – маленьком городе рядом с Саранском – столицей Мордовии, Россия. Радиолюбитель Дмитрий Пашков, фотограф Сергей Карпов и я карабкаемся на крышу местного технического колледжа. Сергей и я на крыше потому, что мы интересуемся так называемым низовым освоением космоса. Дмитрий работает в этом колледже системным администратором. Пасмурный мартовский день, на обледенелой крыше дует холодный ветер. Дмитрий обещал нам показать, как можно поймать изображение европейской части России с американского метеоспутника. (read more...)

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Los Que se Alejan de Internet

Martina Di Tullio October 31, 2025
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En la cosmovisión andina, las constelaciones no se forman uniendo los puntos de luz de las estrellas, sino a partir de las manchas de oscuridad en el cielo. La más importante es la Yakana, que tiene forma de llama, el animal más importante para vivir en los Andes (Zuidema & Urton, 1976). Lo que puede parecer un vacío, entonces, puede revelar tanto o más que la estrella más brillante. (read more...)

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Transplante de Útero: Avanço Científico ou Reflexo de Estereótipos de Gênero?

Juliana Vieira October 27, 2025
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O transplante de útero tem sido apontado como uma das tecnologias reprodutivas mais inovadoras dos últimos anos (Brännström 2018). O procedimento permite que mulheres sem útero possam engravidar e dar à luz a partir de um órgão doado, cuja retirada acontece após o nascimento do bebê em grande parte dos casos (Brännström 2024). Mas, por trás desse avanço, existe também uma discussão sobre os valores e crenças que impulsionam o desenvolvimento dessa tecnologia. Afinal, até que ponto tecnologias médicas consideradas altamente inovadoras, como o transplante de útero, deixam de expressar uma visão progressista de futuro para, em vez disso, reforçar valores moralmente conservadores relacionados à maternidade, ao gênero e à gestação? Será que esta é realmente uma solução para um problema médico ou uma resposta a uma construção social que prioriza a maternidade biológica em detrimento de outras formas de parentalidade? (Luna 2004; Luna 2007). (read more...)

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