Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Ali Kenner, Aalok Khandekar, Angela Okune, Grant Jun Otsuki, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York
Transnational dialogues in STS matter and are at the heart of ESTS, exemplified by this issue. Two Original Research Articles, the first by Lucía Céspedes (2023) and the second co-authored by Gonçalo Santos, Naubahar Sharif, and Jack Linzhou Xing (2023) respectively, consider what is lost in translation—in the practice of astronomy in Argentina, and the translation of ‘STS’ in China’s academic institutions. The thematic collection, TRANSnationalizing STS, will take the reader through STS in Kenya (Okune and Mutuku 2023), Turkey (Alkan, Kaşdoğan, and Erol 2023), Japan (Mohácsi, Otsuki, and St. Pierre 2023), and Ecuador (Albornoz 2023), showcasing new modes and models of doing STS. The thematic collection brings these spaces and places together in enlightening ways, from the way in which the collection first emerged in the exhibitions of STS Across Borders, and Innovating STS through to a reflective interview published on STS-Infrastructures (Khandekar, Fortun, Kaşdoğan, and Okune 2023), and delightful engagements from Michael Fischer (2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d, 2023e, 2023f) and Vivette García-Deister (2023). The latter two engagements provide the reader with insights into STS platforming and infrastructuring experiments. Venture into the STS-Infrastructures for another 73 pages of adjacent supplementary materials including archival writing, interviews, reflections and more. This issue also sees ESTS providing authors with multiple licensing options in our open access publishing model.
{"title":"Towards Transnational STS","authors":"Clément Dréano, Noela Invernizzi, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Ali Kenner, Aalok Khandekar, Angela Okune, Grant Jun Otsuki, Sujatha Raman, Tim Schütz, Federico Vasen, Amanda Windle, Emily York","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.2387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.2387","url":null,"abstract":"Transnational dialogues in STS matter and are at the heart of ESTS, exemplified by this issue. Two Original Research Articles, the first by Lucía Céspedes (2023) and the second co-authored by Gonçalo Santos, Naubahar Sharif, and Jack Linzhou Xing (2023) respectively, consider what is lost in translation—in the practice of astronomy in Argentina, and the translation of ‘STS’ in China’s academic institutions. The thematic collection, TRANSnationalizing STS, will take the reader through STS in Kenya (Okune and Mutuku 2023), Turkey (Alkan, Kaşdoğan, and Erol 2023), Japan (Mohácsi, Otsuki, and St. Pierre 2023), and Ecuador (Albornoz 2023), showcasing new modes and models of doing STS. The thematic collection brings these spaces and places together in enlightening ways, from the way in which the collection first emerged in the exhibitions of STS Across Borders, and Innovating STS through to a reflective interview published on STS-Infrastructures (Khandekar, Fortun, Kaşdoğan, and Okune 2023), and delightful engagements from Michael Fischer (2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d, 2023e, 2023f) and Vivette García-Deister (2023). The latter two engagements provide the reader with insights into STS platforming and infrastructuring experiments. Venture into the STS-Infrastructures for another 73 pages of adjacent supplementary materials including archival writing, interviews, reflections and more. This issue also sees ESTS providing authors with multiple licensing options in our open access publishing model.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135989822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Four STS (science, technology and society) collectives (from Kenya, Turkey, Japan, and Ecuador) presented their archives and accounts of their collective work at two meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) in Sydney 2018, and New Orleans 2019. These presentations are not only very interesting in themselves, but are housed on a digital platform (Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography or PECE) that poses the question—and attempts to build a solution—of how ethnographic materials can be digitalized and made available for productive further activity. This text is a guiding summary for a set of further engagements published on PECE entitled: “Kenya: Techpreneur, Transnational Node, Kibera” (2023a), “Turkey. Inside and Outside the University” (2023b), “‘Japan’/Japan On Line: NatureCulture” (2023c), and “Ecuador: Thirdspaces amidst Social Conflict” (2023d), and “Bibliography for Varieties of STS” (2023e). These engagements help to ask: do long texts such as these four parts create need to be fragmented, tagged, and curated, into perhaps GPT-4 chunks, to be useful on new digital platforms such as PECE? Will this be required for next generation literacy of humans and machines alike, or more-than-human readers, analysts, and synthesizers?
{"title":"Varieties of STS: Luminosities, Creative Commons, and Open Curation","authors":"Michael Fischer","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.2273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.2273","url":null,"abstract":"Four STS (science, technology and society) collectives (from Kenya, Turkey, Japan, and Ecuador) presented their archives and accounts of their collective work at two meetings of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) in Sydney 2018, and New Orleans 2019. These presentations are not only very interesting in themselves, but are housed on a digital platform (Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography or PECE) that poses the question—and attempts to build a solution—of how ethnographic materials can be digitalized and made available for productive further activity. This text is a guiding summary for a set of further engagements published on PECE entitled: “Kenya: Techpreneur, Transnational Node, Kibera” (2023a), “Turkey. Inside and Outside the University” (2023b), “‘Japan’/Japan On Line: NatureCulture” (2023c), and “Ecuador: Thirdspaces amidst Social Conflict” (2023d), and “Bibliography for Varieties of STS” (2023e). These engagements help to ask: do long texts such as these four parts create need to be fragmented, tagged, and curated, into perhaps GPT-4 chunks, to be useful on new digital platforms such as PECE? Will this be required for next generation literacy of humans and machines alike, or more-than-human readers, analysts, and synthesizers?","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135420935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This commentary engages with the digital materials of STS in/through Turkey, Kenya, Japan, and Ecuador collected between 2018 and 2019, and with the collection of essays inspired by these materials. I use the notion of “splace” as an exploratory tool that challenges the division between space and place, and I also invite thinking about STS formations with geological formations I encountered on the Chilean Andes.
{"title":"Seabed in the Andes: Exploring “Splace” in Transnational STS","authors":"Vivette García-Deister","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.2181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.2181","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary engages with the digital materials of STS in/through Turkey, Kenya, Japan, and Ecuador collected between 2018 and 2019, and with the collection of essays inspired by these materials. I use the notion of “splace” as an exploratory tool that challenges the division between space and place, and I also invite thinking about STS formations with geological formations I encountered on the Chilean Andes.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136216064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Entrepreneurs in Kenya are heterogenous, with diverse backgrounds, career goals, and personal histories. However, during five years of working long hours at the iHub, Nairobi’s co-working space for technology entrepreneurs, we observed the emergence of the trope of the “Kenyan Techpreneur” that came to be latched onto by the state, development aid, and philanthropic sectors and gained its own circulatory power. Through an analysis of the figure of the Kenyan “Techpreneur” and its production in Nairobi, this paper reveals how imperial logics and structures continue to underpin apparently independent initiative, pointing to the limits of thinking in simple binary terms and to a need for inventive, cosmopolitan constructs of Kenyan entrepreneurism. In recent years, Kenyans figured as Techpreneurs have contested the narrow construction of its parameters, which ironically appear to disproportionately benefit non-Africans working in the Kenyan tech sector. Describing some of the quotidian ways that transnational geopolitics and capital continue to heavily shape what happens within the bounds of the nation-state and the “local” Kenyan tech scene, we seek to emphasize how the local is in fact heavily tied up with enduring imperial formations of neoliberal development. This is an important prompt for a global STS to bring new, more complex subjects into relief.
{"title":"Becoming an African Techpreneur: Geopolitics of Investments in “Local” Kenyan Entrepreneurship","authors":"Angela Okune, Leonida Mutuku","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.1095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1095","url":null,"abstract":"Entrepreneurs in Kenya are heterogenous, with diverse backgrounds, career goals, and personal histories. However, during five years of working long hours at the iHub, Nairobi’s co-working space for technology entrepreneurs, we observed the emergence of the trope of the “Kenyan Techpreneur” that came to be latched onto by the state, development aid, and philanthropic sectors and gained its own circulatory power. Through an analysis of the figure of the Kenyan “Techpreneur” and its production in Nairobi, this paper reveals how imperial logics and structures continue to underpin apparently independent initiative, pointing to the limits of thinking in simple binary terms and to a need for inventive, cosmopolitan constructs of Kenyan entrepreneurism. In recent years, Kenyans figured as Techpreneurs have contested the narrow construction of its parameters, which ironically appear to disproportionately benefit non-Africans working in the Kenyan tech sector. Describing some of the quotidian ways that transnational geopolitics and capital continue to heavily shape what happens within the bounds of the nation-state and the “local” Kenyan tech scene, we seek to emphasize how the local is in fact heavily tied up with enduring imperial formations of neoliberal development. This is an important prompt for a global STS to bring new, more complex subjects into relief.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135478768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gergely Mohacsi, Grant Jun Otsuki, Émile St. Pierre
Building upon two collaborative exhibits created for the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) meetings in 2018 and 2019, this essay aims to question established modes of locating matters in STS and related fields. As these exhibits showed, Japan has been an active venue for anthropologists and STS scholars working with a diverse range of approaches and topics that may help us to rethink place and space beyond a humanist spatial politics of globalization. At the same time, science and technology in Japan has been a highly fruitful area for scholars located to understand the co-constitution of knowledges and worlds by tracing their multiple trajectories partly outside of English language research agendas. Using the online journal NatureCulture as a springboard for these explorations, we hope to contribute to the ongoing debates around situated methodological approaches. The journal is intended to be a medium that on the one hand brings young Japanese researchers into closer contact with related debates elsewhere, and on the other hand exhibits novel and challenging results of Japanese anthropology and science studies to a non-Japanese audience. A handful of themes (multiplicities, cosmopolitics, experimentation) from the journal will be reviewed here in order to further explore their potential in locating matters across, as well as beyond, physical and geographic boundaries.
本文以2018年和2019年为科学社会研究学会(Society for Social Studies of Science)会议创建的两个合作展览为基础，旨在质疑在STS和相关领域定位问题的既定模式。正如这些展览所显示的，日本一直是人类学家和STS学者的活跃场所，他们研究各种各样的方法和主题，这些方法和主题可以帮助我们在全球化的人文主义空间政治之外重新思考地点和空间。与此同时，日本的科学技术一直是一个成果丰硕的领域，学者们通过追踪知识和世界的多重轨迹，部分地在英语研究议程之外，来理解知识和世界的共同构成。利用在线期刊《自然文化》作为这些探索的跳板，我们希望对正在进行的关于定位方法方法的辩论有所贡献。该杂志旨在成为一种媒介，一方面使年轻的日本研究人员更密切地接触其他地方的相关辩论，另一方面向非日本读者展示日本人类学和科学研究的新颖和具有挑战性的结果。本文将对期刊中的一些主题(多样性、世界政治、实验)进行回顾，以进一步探索它们在跨越物理和地理边界以及超越物理和地理边界定位问题方面的潜力。
{"title":"Locating Naturecultures","authors":"Gergely Mohacsi, Grant Jun Otsuki, Émile St. Pierre","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.1085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1085","url":null,"abstract":"Building upon two collaborative exhibits created for the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) meetings in 2018 and 2019, this essay aims to question established modes of locating matters in STS and related fields. As these exhibits showed, Japan has been an active venue for anthropologists and STS scholars working with a diverse range of approaches and topics that may help us to rethink place and space beyond a humanist spatial politics of globalization. At the same time, science and technology in Japan has been a highly fruitful area for scholars located to understand the co-constitution of knowledges and worlds by tracing their multiple trajectories partly outside of English language research agendas. Using the online journal NatureCulture as a springboard for these explorations, we hope to contribute to the ongoing debates around situated methodological approaches. The journal is intended to be a medium that on the one hand brings young Japanese researchers into closer contact with related debates elsewhere, and on the other hand exhibits novel and challenging results of Japanese anthropology and science studies to a non-Japanese audience. A handful of themes (multiplicities, cosmopolitics, experimentation) from the journal will be reviewed here in order to further explore their potential in locating matters across, as well as beyond, physical and geographic boundaries.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135479434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why and how does it matter to undertake an STS praxis in a country where the field lacks adequate institutional recognition and capacity? This article investigates this question by tracing multiple, fragmented and contingent stories of placing STS in and through Turkey. At first sight, discontinuous stories of STS programs established in universities and unrecognized nature of STS as a discipline by the Council of Higher Education draw attention to the “underdeveloped” nature of the field in this country. This article counters such a perspective by rendering visible the works that support STS ethos as well as loose institutions within which STS is expected to flourish. By following people and artifacts in institutional and more-than institutional places of STS, this article acknowledges the efforts both to translate STS into the particular places of Turkey and to use STS as an intellectual space through which technoscientific knowledge can be questioned and translated into the local contexts of the country. The analysis of these translation efforts reveals that STS can be thought of as a space that enables one to be attuned to the sensibilities and realities of the country and search for ways to democratize the processes of technoscientific knowledge production whether it be in the universities or in public spaces.
{"title":"Placing STS in and through Turkey","authors":"Aybike Alkan, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Maral Erol","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.1091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1091","url":null,"abstract":"Why and how does it matter to undertake an STS praxis in a country where the field lacks adequate institutional recognition and capacity? This article investigates this question by tracing multiple, fragmented and contingent stories of placing STS in and through Turkey. At first sight, discontinuous stories of STS programs established in universities and unrecognized nature of STS as a discipline by the Council of Higher Education draw attention to the “underdeveloped” nature of the field in this country. This article counters such a perspective by rendering visible the works that support STS ethos as well as loose institutions within which STS is expected to flourish. By following people and artifacts in institutional and more-than institutional places of STS, this article acknowledges the efforts both to translate STS into the particular places of Turkey and to use STS as an intellectual space through which technoscientific knowledge can be questioned and translated into the local contexts of the country. The analysis of these translation efforts reveals that STS can be thought of as a space that enables one to be attuned to the sensibilities and realities of the country and search for ways to democratize the processes of technoscientific knowledge production whether it be in the universities or in public spaces.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135479433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gonçalo D. Santos, Naubahar Sharif, Jack Linzhou Xing
This article analyzes a debate in Mainland China over how to designate and integrate the international field of STS (science and technology studies) in Chinese academia. Emerged at the turn of the millennium, this debate confirmed the increasing hold of STS in China, but it also revealed significant tensions regarding the general orientation and the place of the field in Chinese academia. These tensions reflect not only larger contradictions found in other globalized local instantiations of STS but also Chinese specificities. To understand both dimensions, this article approaches the rise of STS in China as a creative process of translation mediated by context-specific globalized struggles and negotiations. This approach builds on Asia-focused postcolonial discussions of translational practices to capture some of the distinctive features of the field of STS in China, including the strong influence of the Marxist tradition, the continuing hold of modernist-positivist approaches, and the strong control exercised by the party-state on academia. We use the Chinese example to highlight the translational diversity of the global STS project and to raise general questions about the future of STS across borders in the twenty-first century.
{"title":"Translating STS in China. Disciplinary Struggles and Future Prospects","authors":"Gonçalo D. Santos, Naubahar Sharif, Jack Linzhou Xing","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.805","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes a debate in Mainland China over how to designate and integrate the international field of STS (science and technology studies) in Chinese academia. Emerged at the turn of the millennium, this debate confirmed the increasing hold of STS in China, but it also revealed significant tensions regarding the general orientation and the place of the field in Chinese academia. These tensions reflect not only larger contradictions found in other globalized local instantiations of STS but also Chinese specificities. To understand both dimensions, this article approaches the rise of STS in China as a creative process of translation mediated by context-specific globalized struggles and negotiations. This approach builds on Asia-focused postcolonial discussions of translational practices to capture some of the distinctive features of the field of STS in China, including the strong influence of the Marxist tradition, the continuing hold of modernist-positivist approaches, and the strong control exercised by the party-state on academia. We use the Chinese example to highlight the translational diversity of the global STS project and to raise general questions about the future of STS across borders in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136041974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines the sociolinguistic practices of a particular scientific and discourse community. To that end, I analyze seminars delivered by PhD students of astronomy at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Astronomy (located in Córdoba, Argentina, and associated with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, and the National University of Córdoba). The main assumption guiding this research is that these seminars constitute relevant instances in the incorporation of a specific scientific and linguistic habitus during the process of academic socialization of doctorates. From a sociolinguistic perspective, I outline two main traits from within the discourse of these early career astronomers: the paper-like structure of their oral presentations (an indicator of the prevalence of writing as the dominant mode of scientific communication, as shown by the transfer of written stylistic conventions into spoken language), and the naturalization of the presence and use of the English language through creative translingual practices.
{"title":"Sociolinguistic and Translingual Practices in the Discourse of Astronomers in Argentina","authors":"Lucía Céspedes","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.1391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1391","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the sociolinguistic practices of a particular scientific and discourse community. To that end, I analyze seminars delivered by PhD students of astronomy at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Astronomy (located in Córdoba, Argentina, and associated with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, and the National University of Córdoba). The main assumption guiding this research is that these seminars constitute relevant instances in the incorporation of a specific scientific and linguistic habitus during the process of academic socialization of doctorates. From a sociolinguistic perspective, I outline two main traits from within the discourse of these early career astronomers: the paper-like structure of their oral presentations (an indicator of the prevalence of writing as the dominant mode of scientific communication, as shown by the transfer of written stylistic conventions into spoken language), and the naturalization of the presence and use of the English language through creative translingual practices.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136042074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ecuadorian STS studies connects to earlier Latin American scholars’ concerns over science and technology. Like many other academic communities, Ecuadorian STS emerged from the collision of scholarly interest, the building of new research centers, and opportunities for collaboration among undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Primarily rooted in the need to develop social technologies these studies form part of a regional movement aimed at questioning: technological dependence, the role of science in peripheral contexts, and public policies of science, technology, and innovation. The ways in which an STS academic community forms around Ecuadorian STS—is in this case, less about a network than—a matter concerning Henri LeFebvre’s “trialectics of spatiality” ([1974] 1991). In particular, Homi Bhabba (1994) and Edward Soja’s (1996) contributions to the decolonial development of a “thirdspace” is understood as a “particular way of thinking about and interpreting socially produced space” (ibid.). This essay offers a reflection on identity (re-)formation in the making of community. Developing a thirdspace as a transformative process draws inspiration from the Chakana, an Andean symbol of wisdom. A specifically decolonial thirdspace unfolds through the three ascending–descending steps of the Chakana that represent both the expansion and the sustaining of the community: 1. as an Andean referencing point (evoking the bridging-staircase symbol); 2. which allows for the co-creation of situated knowledge from different transnational STS genealogies located in Latin America; 3. and as an obligatory point of passage for STS community creation through identity building. Conceptualizing Ecuadorian STS as a thirdspace, helps to socially comprehend community formation as a social process that is also a critique of symbolic space for membership and knowledge production. By discussing why place is fundamental in community institutionalization, this essay creates possibilities to comprehend—dimensions of STS in the Global South—socially, politically, and cognitively.
{"title":"Chakana and Thirdspace: Engaging Ecuadorian STS in Places of Knowledge Co-Production","authors":"María Belén Albornoz","doi":"10.17351/ests2021.1239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2021.1239","url":null,"abstract":"Ecuadorian STS studies connects to earlier Latin American scholars’ concerns over science and technology. Like many other academic communities, Ecuadorian STS emerged from the collision of scholarly interest, the building of new research centers, and opportunities for collaboration among undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Primarily rooted in the need to develop social technologies these studies form part of a regional movement aimed at questioning: technological dependence, the role of science in peripheral contexts, and public policies of science, technology, and innovation. The ways in which an STS academic community forms around Ecuadorian STS—is in this case, less about a network than—a matter concerning Henri LeFebvre’s “trialectics of spatiality” ([1974] 1991). In particular, Homi Bhabba (1994) and Edward Soja’s (1996) contributions to the decolonial development of a “thirdspace” is understood as a “particular way of thinking about and interpreting socially produced space” (ibid.). This essay offers a reflection on identity (re-)formation in the making of community. Developing a thirdspace as a transformative process draws inspiration from the Chakana, an Andean symbol of wisdom. A specifically decolonial thirdspace unfolds through the three ascending–descending steps of the Chakana that represent both the expansion and the sustaining of the community: 1. as an Andean referencing point (evoking the bridging-staircase symbol); 2. which allows for the co-creation of situated knowledge from different transnational STS genealogies located in Latin America; 3. and as an obligatory point of passage for STS community creation through identity building. Conceptualizing Ecuadorian STS as a thirdspace, helps to socially comprehend community formation as a social process that is also a critique of symbolic space for membership and knowledge production. By discussing why place is fundamental in community institutionalization, this essay creates possibilities to comprehend—dimensions of STS in the Global South—socially, politically, and cognitively.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136195896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why, how, and for whom does it matter to walk through, attend and attune to plural and complex STS places/spaces? By building on the STS Across Borders and Innovating STS exhibits held at 4S 2018 and 2019 meetings, this thematic collection unpacks this question and explores the potentials of TRANSnational STS as a methodological orientation in these uncertain times, in a world where technoscientific knowledges and practices are constantly instrumentalized, reproducing colonial, imperialist, racist, nationalist and toxic relationships. The landscape of analysis in curating this thematic collection begins with the places of STS; this can be either a place where an STS meeting is held, an institution where STS scholars do research and teaching, or a formation that brings people together for social studies of science and technology. We invite readers to slowly walk through such a landscape, observing in detail particular places of STS. The contributors to this thematic collection highlight the importance of thinking and theorizing by starting with lived experiences, investigating each phenomenon within its own reality, and creating and conserving spaces for plurality with responsibility and care. Recognizing that reality is multi-layered, and thus needs a plurality of perspectives, the invitation to think about STS theories and practices through the analytic of place is about opening and holding collaborative spaces for ongoing discussions over the politics of STS without reproducing a form of methodological nationalism. This introductory essay presents what we have learned over the last four years navigating in and through TRANSnational STS places/spaces and constitutes one stop in our journey to slow down, reflect on, and share what it means to TRANSnationalize STS. With this collection, we hope to open a public space in ESTS to continue thinking collectively about potential new pathways for the future of the field.
{"title":"TRANSnationalizing STS: Places, Spaces, and Politics","authors":"Duygu Kaşdoğan, Angela Okune","doi":"10.17351/ests2023.1577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1577","url":null,"abstract":"Why, how, and for whom does it matter to walk through, attend and attune to plural and complex STS places/spaces? By building on the STS Across Borders and Innovating STS exhibits held at 4S 2018 and 2019 meetings, this thematic collection unpacks this question and explores the potentials of TRANSnational STS as a methodological orientation in these uncertain times, in a world where technoscientific knowledges and practices are constantly instrumentalized, reproducing colonial, imperialist, racist, nationalist and toxic relationships. The landscape of analysis in curating this thematic collection begins with the places of STS; this can be either a place where an STS meeting is held, an institution where STS scholars do research and teaching, or a formation that brings people together for social studies of science and technology. We invite readers to slowly walk through such a landscape, observing in detail particular places of STS. The contributors to this thematic collection highlight the importance of thinking and theorizing by starting with lived experiences, investigating each phenomenon within its own reality, and creating and conserving spaces for plurality with responsibility and care. Recognizing that reality is multi-layered, and thus needs a plurality of perspectives, the invitation to think about STS theories and practices through the analytic of place is about opening and holding collaborative spaces for ongoing discussions over the politics of STS without reproducing a form of methodological nationalism. This introductory essay presents what we have learned over the last four years navigating in and through TRANSnational STS places/spaces and constitutes one stop in our journey to slow down, reflect on, and share what it means to TRANSnationalize STS. With this collection, we hope to open a public space in ESTS to continue thinking collectively about potential new pathways for the future of the field.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136195746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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