Search Results for: scale

Uterus Transplantation: A Scientific Advance or the Reflection of Gender Stereotypes?

Juliana Vieira October 27, 2025
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Uterus transplantation has been touted as one of the most innovative reproductive technologies in recent years (Brännström 2018). The procedure allows women without a uterus to become pregnant and give birth using a donated organ, which is removed after the baby is born in most cases (Brännström 2024). But behind this advancement, there is also a debate about the values and beliefs that drive the development of this technology. After all, to what extent do highly innovative medical technologies, such as uterus transplantation, cease to express a progressive vision of the future and instead reinforce morally conservative values related to motherhood, gender, and gestation? Could this really be a solution to a medical problem, or is it a response to a social construct that prioritizes biological motherhood over other forms of parenthood? (Luna 2004; Luna 2007). (read more...)

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Trasplante de Útero: ¿Avance Científico o Reflejo de Estereotipos de Género?

Juliana Vieira October 27, 2025
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El trasplante de útero se ha promocionado como una de las tecnologías reproductivas más innovadoras de los últimos años (Brännström, 2018). Este procedimiento permite a las mujeres sin útero concebir y dar a luz utilizando un órgano donado, que en la mayoría de los casos se extrae tras el nacimiento del bebé (Brännström, 2024). Sin embargo, tras este avance, también existe un debate sobre los valores y creencias que impulsan el desarrollo de esta tecnología. Al fin y al cabo, ¿hasta qué punto las tecnologías médicas consideradas altamente innovadoras, como el trasplante de útero, no expresan una visión progresista del futuro y, en cambio, refuerzan valores moralmente conservadores relacionados con la maternidad, el género y el embarazo? ¿Es esto realmente una solución a un problema médico o una respuesta a una construcción social que prioriza la maternidad biológica sobre otras formas de paternidad (Gerente 2004; Gerente 2007). (read more...)

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Collaborating Bodies: Community Gardens and Food Forests in Central Texas

Nadia Luis September 11, 2025
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Almost every aspect of life on earth interacts with soil. Soils are old. Soils take time to develop from their parent material. Soils embody life itself. Yet, the concept of soil varies depending on the epistemic culture applied to define what soil is. Often soils exist in states of naturalness or unnaturalness. For example, Minami (2009) describes the Chinese compound character for agricultural soil 土壤 (tǔ rǎng), the first character (tǔ) represents soil in its natural state, and the second character (rǎng) represents soil once it has been broken up for agricultural purposes. Here, an interesting dichotomy presents itself: soil as it is and soil as it is once altered by human intervention. This dichotomous classificatory system describes changes that result from soil processes interacting; however, curiously, soil in only one category is the product of perceived human interaction. (read more...)

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The Politics of Translation Across Policy, Grant Proposal, and Agricultural Landscapes

Cydney Seigerman August 26, 2025
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On Monday, April 14th, my stomach sank as I read an e-mail from the principal investigators of a large-scale, multi-institutional project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that supported half of my livelihood as a postdoctoral research associate. Following that day’s press release from the USDA—“USDA Cancels Biden Era Climate Slush Fund, Reprioritizes Existing Funding to Farmers”—the email transformed the cloud of uncertainty that loomed over all federally funded scientific inquiry into concrete dejection. (read more...)

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Patch-“working” the Field: Methodological Reorientations During a Global Pandemic

Anushree Gupta July 29, 2025
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I began my doctoral journey right before the pandemic set in. My project was going to critically examine the notion of “technology for social good” within the hyper-charged tech startup and innovation ecosystem in a rapidly digitizing India. I wanted to examine how top-down imaginaries rooted in technocratic governance regimes were shaping emerging communities of practice and cultures of technology-based entrepreneurship. Deeply inspired by Ho’s (2009), Irani’s (2019), and Gupta’s (2024) ethnographies, I hoped to develop my research similarly through an in-depth investigation of techno-entrepreneurial cultures from within and examine their capture of the public imagination for charting pathways to economic growth and social mobility. The idea was to try and uncover the finer threads that were weaving the tapestry of neoliberal development in what would later be deemed as “pre-pandemic” India. Enter the pandemic and the paralyzing lockdown in March 2020 that brought “normal” life to a screeching halt. A sudden and totalizing isolation was mandated by the social distancing rules meant to keep the virus out. However, it didn’t keep the feeling of disaster at bay. The scenes that unfolded during the lockdown–on national television and social media screens, both closer to home as well as globally–demanded loudly and aggressively a reconsideration of everything important and urgent, and hence, worth studying. (read more...)

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Technics in the Dust

Spencer Kaplan July 22, 2025
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One early morning in August 2024, I boarded a coach bus in downtown San Francisco. We drove over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, past Reno, and through the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. After six hours, the bus entered the Black Rock Desert and arrived at Burning Man: an annual, week-long event where 63,000 “Burners” create a temporary city dedicated to art, self-expression, decommodification, and self-reliance. (read more...)

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STS Academic Publishing As a Work of Service and Hope: A Conversation with Vivette García-Deister

Vivette García-Deister June 19, 2025
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Thinking, writing, and publishing from Latin America pose significant challenges, especially for younger researchers. Academic work is affected by various kinds of asymmetries, but when we add to this the centrality of the English language and the predominance of theoretical perspectives from the Global North, the landscape becomes even more challenging. In response to this situation, several projects have emerged that view publishing as an intervention in the politics of knowledge. One such project that aims to undo these asymmetries and contribute to more horizontal practices is Tapuya: Latin American Science Technology and Society, an international journal that fosters conversations between the global North and South and helps its authors navigate the complexities of diverse languages and traditions of critical thinking. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to speak with Vivette García-Deister, the editor-in-chief of this journal. In this interview, she talks about why she considers academic publishing a service, how some editorial processes —such as reading, reviewing, and providing feedback— can theoretically and methodologically support young authors’ texts, and why publishing can be a form of hope. (read more...)

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Peasant Reserve Zones as Techno-socio-environmental Assemblages

Julián Medina-Zárate, Nicolas Lara-Rodriguez June 12, 2025
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Peasant Reserve Zones (Zonas de Reserva Campesina, or ZRCs in Spanish) constitute a legal framework established to organize territories historically inhabited by peasant communities in Colombia. Designed as part of agrarian reform efforts, these zones are intended to promote environmental conservation and socioeconomic sustainability in rural areas. The ZRCs provide peasant organizations with a set of tools to structure their social, economic, political, and environmental governance. However, their effectiveness in achieving social and environmental objectives remains a subject of ongoing research across disciplines such as ecology, sociology, and economics. Existing studies yield inconclusive results, instead highlighting the complexity of the dynamics surrounding this institutional mechanism.   (read more...)

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