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Counting on Zero: Imaginaries of Energy and Waste in the New Green Economy

 Nandita Badami  October 21, 2016

When the Indian government promoted the large scale introduction of solar energy for powering traditional charkhas (wooden wheels used to spin khadi or homemade cloth) in early 2016, the fabric was rebranded “zero carbon” and sold as “green khadi.” Few journalists covering the new development seemed to notice that khadi in its original form was already zero carbon: woven on wooden spinning wheels without electricity or additional machinery, the production process of khadi is inherently environmentally friendly. The rebranding of khadi as “zero carbon” in the face of its waning popularity marks a decisive cultural shift away from traditional frameworks in which the cloth has historically been given importance. Khadi has historically represented the overthrow of colonialism, the virtues of labor, and the mantra of self-reliance popularized by Gandhi during the freedom struggle. In the early twenty-first century, however, khadi is being rebranded for an environmentally conscious global market. The invocation of “zero” is hardly incidental in this context. That number has recently (forgive the pun) colonized our collective imagination of what it means to be “environment friendly.” Evidence for this claim can be found in a small, but fast multiplying lexicon of “zerologisms” that have begun influencing policy and economic discourse. Terms increasingly taken for granted in environmental discourse include: zero carbon, zero waste, zero landfill, zero emissions, (net) zero energy. The zero has, in effect, become a conceptual placeholder, offering up an ideal on which we can pin our hopes as we search for ecologically sensible political alternatives that don’t necessitate a complete overhaul of how societies are structured. (read more...)

Local Power: The Politics of Renewables in California

 Emily Brooks  August 2, 2016

“This is something you won’t find written down,” says George, watching intently for my reaction. “But it’s been agreed upon at the highest level of government—the highest level—that the California desert is designated as a sacrifice zone. We are worth sacrificing.” He holds my gaze, making sure I take down what he says word for word. George speaks with confidence and ease, a natural choice for the face of his neighborhood conservation group. “I’ve done the calculations. More renewable energy is available from rooftop solar in San Diego and Los Angeles Counties than will be derived from the large-scale generating facilities on two million acres of desert habitat called for in the Desert Renewable Energy Plan. It doesn’t make sense! But they don’t care, because they’ve decided that we’re a sacrifice zone.” (read more...)

Gender and Tech in India: From Numbers to Gender Equality

 Rachel Fleming  June 29, 2016

In the US, technology companies and the press alike regularly frame the debate about gender and technology in terms of a supply problem, arguing that there are too few women in STEM fields. In a previous CASTAC blog post, Samantha Breslin suggested that focusing on the number of women in tech hides the political aspects of the technology sector that oppress marginalized groups more generally. In India, much higher numbers of women enter STEM fields from an early age as compared to the US. For example, in 2008 in the US, women earned only 18% of computer and information science undergraduate degrees, while in 2011 in India women made up 42% of undergraduate students in computer science and engineering. In both technological companies in Silicon Valley and in India women make up roughly 30% of the overall workforce (NASSCOM 2015b; Vara 2015), but in India women now make up over half of entry-level hires, compared to 37% in the US. In one recent article, Raina Kumra, founder of a startup based in Bangalore and Silicon Valley, argues that in the US people think that “coding and programming is a man’s job,” but in India “women feel at home in engineering.” On the face of it, it seems that the tech industry in India is outperforming US in terms of gender equality. (read more...)

Remembering David Hakken

 Patricia G. Lange  May 6, 2016

This week, the CASTAC community received the sad news that Professor David Hakken had passed away. Hakken was Director of the Social Informatics Program at The University of Indiana. Trained as an anthropologist, Hakken conducted research at the intersection of ethnography and cyberspace. He was concerned about how digital technologies and culture are continually co-constructive. His prolific career included publication of a recent book co-authored with Maurizio Teli and Barbara Andrews entitled, Beyond Capital: Values, Commons, Computing, and the Search for a Viable Future (Routledge, 2015). Hakken presciently focused on critical areas emerging at the intersection of digital anthropology and science and technology studies. The outpouring on social media from his colleagues and former students has been truly touching and shows the depth of his impact on the community. Hakken was a principal founding member of CASTAC. As a pioneer in anthropological studies of computing in the early 1990s, Hakken initiated action on creating a committee devoted to particular concerns of anthropologists in science and technology studies. He was also a friend to the CASTAC Blog. He helped lend our fledgling endeavor gravitas by writing posts and graciously being interviewed. Please join me in honoring his life and work by enjoying this gem from the Platypus vault, which originally appeared on the blog in January 2013. I was honored to have the opportunity to interview him and hear more about his big ideas on big data. I first met David at a CASTAC summer conference (remember those?) nearly twenty years ago. Over the years, I personally benefited from his wise mentoring and vibrant disposition. I was deeply saddened to hear of his passing. He will be greatly missed. Colleagues who would like to share public remembrances about David for a longer tribute post should contact the editor, Jordan Kraemer. Patricia G. Lange May 6, 2016 (read more...)

Sinkholes without Borders: Geology, Hydrology, and Conflict Around the Dead Sea

 Simone Popperl  February 24, 2016

In a heavily air-conditioned room in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, Israeli, I spent two days drinking instant coffee and taking notes at a “transboundary” water conference on the Jordan River Watershed. Israeli, American, and Western European scholars and development consultants had come together to seek solutions for a variety of environmental crises plaguing the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, sinkholes chief among them. A single Jordanian policymaker attended, opening the event with an introductory speech, but heading immediately for the door when he finished his presentation. In the hours that followed, workshop participants argued about the trustworthiness of Palestinian water consumers (none of whom were present), the merits of international river commissions, and game theory-based water conservation strategies. One common perspective prevailed: as an American hydrologist put it, “we water people think at the level of the watershed, not the nation.” But what happens when contested national borders create barriers to the production of scientific knowledge about hydrologic and geologic phenomena? In the context of ongoing struggles for self-determination and national recognition, the Dead Sea sinkhole problem—and the different approaches to it—highlight fraught political complexities of the conflict over land in Palestine and Israel. (read more...)

Silicon Valley as Ally or Foe? Reflections on the Politics of Income Inequality

 Shreeharsh Kelkar  February 19, 2016

The meteoric rise of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries—and the Occupy movement before that—have officially put income inequality on the political radar in the U.S., after years of slow wage growth and a near-catastrophic financial crash. In keeping with the times, Silicon Valley too has begun thinking about inequality. Resident philosopher Paul Graham, venture capitalist and founder of the famous YCombinator startup incubator, wrote an essay on inequality that caused a bit of a ruckus (in Silicon Valley and without). The short version: Graham is not happy with the current rhetorical war on inequality that politicians are waging. He thinks inequality is a natural product of a culture that values startups and innovation, and that a full-scale political fight against inequality is inadvisable. YCombinator recently put out a “Request for Research” to sponsor social science research on Basic Income guarantee schemes. Such a scheme—Silicon Valley’s go-to solution for the rise of inequality and artificial intelligence—would mean every citizen receives a basic income that insulates them from the rise of automation and the progress of technology. (You can apply for the job here.) In this post, I want to reflect on Silicon Valley’s political leanings, which allows me to bring in the fascinating political surveys of start-up founders that journalist Greg Ferenstein has conducted. There are some obvious (and important!) things to say about Graham’s essay and the Basic Income advertisement: that these writings take technology as an autonomous force that shapes society rather than seeing technological change as an outcome of negotiations between interest groups. They are articulations of very Silicon Valley notions of progress. What I really want to talk about, however, is good old-fashioned electoral politics. In the kinds of political alliances and interest groups that will come to define the United States over the next few decades—perhaps as inequality takes an even bigger role in political discourse—could it be possible that Silicon Valley might be an ally for progressive causes rather than a foe (as it often emerges in critical theory analyses)? (read more...)

2015 Year in Review: Deflating Footballs, Twins in Space, Women (not) in Tech, and More

 Jordan Kraemer  February 5, 2016

Last year on the CASTAC Blog began with anthropological ruminations on what the “Deflategate” football scandal has to do with questions of expertise, and closed with discussions of citizen science, earthquake warning systems, the (anti-)politics of women in tech, and deeply personal engagement with experiencing crisis or catastrophe—in this case, terror attacks in Paris—over social media. One of the great perks of editing this blog lies in reading the array of topics, perspectives, and modes of analyses from our contributors. This year, I’m taken by the variety in tone, from the (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek (the aforementioned Deflategate post; the anthropology of rigged games), to the deeply affecting (again, Charlotte Cabasse-Mazel “Looking at the Pain of Others ”), from the boundary-pushing (Abou Farman’s call to envision radical alternative futures) to the experimental (a Twitter fieldwork experiment from Rice’s Ethnography Studio). Beyond timely, weekly engagement with climate change, artificial intelligence, changing media ecologies, infrastructure, design, energy, and more, the blog is becoming a repository cataloging—and pushing forward—the driving concerns of social scientific and humanistic inquiry in these areas. In this review post, I consider four central conceptual questions animating this year’s coverage on how science, technology, computing and more are shaping (and shaped by) diverse lives, worlds, and experiences. These include: the mutual production or constitution of conceptual categories; questions of knowledge production and expertise; concerns with the future and futurity; and key political dimensions of science, technology, and computing. Although these themes unfold differently across intellectual projects and modes of inquiry, they elucidate the value of critical, reflexive, and empirical approaches to scientific and technological worlds. (read more...)