In this editorial essay, Abby Kinchy, Shobita Parthasarathy, and Jason Delborne look back at the editorial and publishing practices of the first five years of the journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS), the open access journal of The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). As three members of the inaugural ESTS Editorial Board, Kinchy, Parthasarathy, and Delborne reflect on what they value in academic practice, including publishing, and consider some of the highlights and accomplishments of ESTS ’s first five years (2015-2020).
{"title":"A Five-Year Engagement","authors":"Abby Kinchy, S. Parthasarathy, J. Delborne","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.749","url":null,"abstract":"In this editorial essay, Abby Kinchy, Shobita Parthasarathy, and Jason Delborne look back at the editorial and publishing practices of the first five years of the journal Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS), the open access journal of The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). As three members of the inaugural ESTS Editorial Board, Kinchy, Parthasarathy, and Delborne reflect on what they value in academic practice, including publishing, and consider some of the highlights and accomplishments of ESTS ’s first five years (2015-2020).","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46421091","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 is a discussion of the role of the experimental methods and the dissemination practices of behavioral economists in capturing public imagination. The paper is framed by auto biographical accounts of two episodes in my own exploration of behavioral economics as a topic of study: participating in a MOOC on the basics of behavioral economics and sharing my work in progress to a group of staff and students in Singapore. Drawing on Shapin and Shaffer’s notion of “virtual witnesses” (Shapin and Shaffer 1985) I develop the argument that a consequence of the dissemination practices of the Heuristics and Biases Program is the creation of both “virtual subjects” and “virtual experimenters.” I then give an account of Thaler’s use of rationality and Kuhnian paradigm shifts as a rhetorical device to persuade mainstream economists and policy makers of the value of behavioral economics and to establish the narrative of behavioral economics as critics of neo-classical economics. I argue that the reflexive approach adds to accounts of the success of behavioral economics as a story of persuasive techniques of behavioral economists embedded in their practices of experimentation and dissemination.
{"title":"What I Learnt About How I Learnt About Behavioral Economists","authors":"Zara Thokozani Kamwendo","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.343","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a discussion of the role of the experimental methods and the dissemination practices of behavioral economists in capturing public imagination. The paper is framed by auto biographical accounts of two episodes in my own exploration of behavioral economics as a topic of study: participating in a MOOC on the basics of behavioral economics and sharing my work in progress to a group of staff and students in Singapore. Drawing on Shapin and Shaffer’s notion of “virtual witnesses” (Shapin and Shaffer 1985) I develop the argument that a consequence of the dissemination practices of the Heuristics and Biases Program is the creation of both “virtual subjects” and “virtual experimenters.” I then give an account of Thaler’s use of rationality and Kuhnian paradigm shifts as a rhetorical device to persuade mainstream economists and policy makers of the value of behavioral economics and to establish the narrative of behavioral economics as critics of neo-classical economics. I argue that the reflexive approach adds to accounts of the success of behavioral economics as a story of persuasive techniques of behavioral economists embedded in their practices of experimentation and dissemination.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47848138","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}
Post-truth politics has led to a number of prominent reflections on the extent to which the basic tenets of STS (social construction, the symmetry thesis, etc.) must be amended (Briggle 2016; Latour 2004; Sismondo 2017a). Alternatively, others have argued that the basic principles of STS should be maintained and the similarities of STS with post-truth should be embraced (Fuller 2016b; Woolgar 2017). After first critiquing other scholars read on post-truth politics, I argue that one of the central drawbacks of STS is the absence of epistemic grounds to identify people who are plainly bullshitters (Frankfurt 1986). I contend that the lesson that post-truth politics has to offer STS is that a minimal standard of an epistemological system is that it must have the intellectual resources to endorse the claim “Trump is full of shit.” Yet it is not clear how one could go about reconciling central STS tenets with the clear and present need to oppose dangerous trends in contemporary politics. Despite arguing that STS should change, I contend that it should not do so at the expense of what is distinctive and valuable about STS. After considering Steve Woolgar’s (2017) list of the strengths of STS scholarship I propose that with slight modification they can be preserved. As an example of an epistemology which does so, I introduce Helen Longino's critical contextual empiricism and then use it to analyze a case study of the recent FDA approval of flibanserin for hypoactive sexual desire disorder. I conclude by arguing that social epistemology, as developed in philosophy of science, is reconcilable with opposing post-truth politics and retains many of the primary virtues of STS.
{"title":"STS, Post-truth, and the Rediscovery of Bullshit","authors":"B. Holman","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.265","url":null,"abstract":"Post-truth politics has led to a number of prominent reflections on the extent to which the basic tenets of STS (social construction, the symmetry thesis, etc.) must be amended (Briggle 2016; Latour 2004; Sismondo 2017a). Alternatively, others have argued that the basic principles of STS should be maintained and the similarities of STS with post-truth should be embraced (Fuller 2016b; Woolgar 2017). After first critiquing other scholars read on post-truth politics, I argue that one of the central drawbacks of STS is the absence of epistemic grounds to identify people who are plainly bullshitters (Frankfurt 1986). I contend that the lesson that post-truth politics has to offer STS is that a minimal standard of an epistemological system is that it must have the intellectual resources to endorse the claim “Trump is full of shit.” Yet it is not clear how one could go about reconciling central STS tenets with the clear and present need to oppose dangerous trends in contemporary politics. Despite arguing that STS should change, I contend that it should not do so at the expense of what is distinctive and valuable about STS. After considering Steve Woolgar’s (2017) list of the strengths of STS scholarship I propose that with slight modification they can be preserved. As an example of an epistemology which does so, I introduce Helen Longino's critical contextual empiricism and then use it to analyze a case study of the recent FDA approval of flibanserin for hypoactive sexual desire disorder. I conclude by arguing that social epistemology, as developed in philosophy of science, is reconcilable with opposing post-truth politics and retains many of the primary virtues of STS.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48451925","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}
The “highway to nowhere” is a 1.32 mile fragment of an arterial expressway located in Baltimore, Maryland. This segment was designed to contribute to a proposed limited access highway system that was never constructed after years of activism, debate, and lawsuits. This article examines the history of the construction of this highway segment to suggest that conflicts over the design, sitting, and construction of infrastructure are fundamentally struggles over the definition and production of space. This analysis utilizes Henri Lefebvre’s triad of spatial production as an analytical framework to identify distinct spatial forms that surface during the process of infrastructure building. Utilizing this analytical framework may enrich the STS-based infrastructure inquiries by bringing to the surface the multiple forms of spatial production that structure system-building activities. In conclusion, I suggest that utilizing Lefebvre’s triad within studies of infrastructure surfaces important, and potentially transformative, local claims to space. Such claims are of renewed importance as cities across the US confront the segregationist histories of the built environment.
{"title":"Producing the “Highway to Nowhere”: Social Understandings of Space in Baltimore, 1944-1974","authors":"Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas","doi":"10.17351/ESTS2020.327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ESTS2020.327","url":null,"abstract":"The “highway to nowhere” is a 1.32 mile fragment of an arterial expressway located in Baltimore, Maryland. This segment was designed to contribute to a proposed limited access highway system that was never constructed after years of activism, debate, and lawsuits. This article examines the history of the construction of this highway segment to suggest that conflicts over the design, sitting, and construction of infrastructure are fundamentally struggles over the definition and production of space. This analysis utilizes Henri Lefebvre’s triad of spatial production as an analytical framework to identify distinct spatial forms that surface during the process of infrastructure building. Utilizing this analytical framework may enrich the STS-based infrastructure inquiries by bringing to the surface the multiple forms of spatial production that structure system-building activities. In conclusion, I suggest that utilizing Lefebvre’s triad within studies of infrastructure surfaces important, and potentially transformative, local claims to space. Such claims are of renewed importance as cities across the US confront the segregationist histories of the built environment.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46973932","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}
In recent years, progress in the field of lie detection has been linked to technological advances from classic polygraphs to neuroscientific brain imaging. In our empirical investigation, however, we found different notions of progress that do not comply with the popular understanding of progress as technological innovation. We follow the users of lie detection procedures in Germany in order to discern how they embrace seemingly old technologies and frame them in terms of novelty and improvement. We identify two notions of progress: one view of the polygraph in the juridical field as an instrument for procedural justice, and another view in which the device functions as a symbol of openness to improvements in the judicial system. These insights complement contemporary scholarship on lie detection by shining a critical light on the rhetoric of progress in relation to the promises of brain-based lie detection procedures. When analyzing the way polygraph tests are seen as progress, it becomes clear that the promises and hopes that are linked to this technology are of more relevance for its appraisal than its placement in time.
{"title":"Anachronistic Progress? User Notions of Lie Detection in the Juridical Field","authors":"Bettina Paul, Larissa Fischer, Torsten H. Voigt","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.433","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, progress in the field of lie detection has been linked to technological advances from classic polygraphs to neuroscientific brain imaging. In our empirical investigation, however, we found different notions of progress that do not comply with the popular understanding of progress as technological innovation. We follow the users of lie detection procedures in Germany in order to discern how they embrace seemingly old technologies and frame them in terms of novelty and improvement. We identify two notions of progress: one view of the polygraph in the juridical field as an instrument for procedural justice, and another view in which the device functions as a symbol of openness to improvements in the judicial system. These insights complement contemporary scholarship on lie detection by shining a critical light on the rhetoric of progress in relation to the promises of brain-based lie detection procedures. When analyzing the way polygraph tests are seen as progress, it becomes clear that the promises and hopes that are linked to this technology are of more relevance for its appraisal than its placement in time.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45662290","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 revisits the term “unintended consequences,” drawing upon an illustrative vignette to show how it is used to dismiss vital ethical and political concerns. Tracing the term to its original introduction by Robert Merton and building on feminist technoscience analyses, we uncover and rethink its widespread usage in popular and scholarly discourses and practices of technology design.
{"title":"Unintended by Design: On the Political Uses of “Unintended Consequences”","authors":"Nassim Parvin, A. Pollock","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.497","url":null,"abstract":"This paper revisits the term “unintended consequences,” drawing upon an illustrative vignette to show how it is used to dismiss vital ethical and political concerns. Tracing the term to its original introduction by Robert Merton and building on feminist technoscience analyses, we uncover and rethink its widespread usage in popular and scholarly discourses and practices of technology design.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45225146","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}
The meteoric ascent and equally dramatic fall of Theranos has been covered prolifically in the media. Presented as an ambitious inventor gone rogue, the discursive construction of the Theranos scandal in popular media and in the biomedical community reifies tired narratives of the role of ethics in science and engineering fields more generally: narratives that emphasizes individual integrity and common sense rather than the structures and norms that leave scientists and engineers vulnerable to ethical quandaries. In this short critical engagement, I argue that the ways Theranos has been captured obscures important conversations about ethics in bioscience and biotechnology, both in the private sector and in university spaces. I call for STS scholars to engage with scientists and engineers to imagine ways to structurally embed ethics and justice in future technoscientific endeavors.
{"title":"Lessons from Theranos: Changing Narratives of Individual Ethics in Science and Engineering","authors":"M. Jeske","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.411","url":null,"abstract":"The meteoric ascent and equally dramatic fall of Theranos has been covered prolifically in the media. Presented as an ambitious inventor gone rogue, the discursive construction of the Theranos scandal in popular media and in the biomedical community reifies tired narratives of the role of ethics in science and engineering fields more generally: narratives that emphasizes individual integrity and common sense rather than the structures and norms that leave scientists and engineers vulnerable to ethical quandaries. In this short critical engagement, I argue that the ways Theranos has been captured obscures important conversations about ethics in bioscience and biotechnology, both in the private sector and in university spaces. I call for STS scholars to engage with scientists and engineers to imagine ways to structurally embed ethics and justice in future technoscientific endeavors.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44478643","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}
R. Shelby, Sarah Barnes, Nassim Parvin, M. Mcdonald
This essay examines the Super Bowl and the smart city as conjoined spectacles. A focused case study on Super Bowl LIII and its staging in Atlanta, Georgia in 2019 allows us to investigate how the use of cutting-edge smart technologies, including cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, image recognition, and data collection techniques to secure Mercedes Benz stadium naturalizes a broader anticipatory logic of state and corporate intervention, often evoked in the name of public safety and terrorism-prevention. Together the spectacles of sport and smart technologies gloss over systemic inequality and legitimize security infrastructures as well as related ideas that social problems such as a lack of affordable housing, police brutality, and environmental degradation are best addressed through technological solutions. Foregrounding the conjoined spectacles of the smart city and Super Bowl problematizes seemingly necessary security processes and social relations among people, events, technologies, and cities, inviting further research and discussions necessary for strengthening critical interventions and theorizing in these areas.
{"title":"The Conjoined Spectacles of the “Smart Super Bowl”","authors":"R. Shelby, Sarah Barnes, Nassim Parvin, M. Mcdonald","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.295","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the Super Bowl and the smart city as conjoined spectacles. A focused case study on Super Bowl LIII and its staging in Atlanta, Georgia in 2019 allows us to investigate how the use of cutting-edge smart technologies, including cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, image recognition, and data collection techniques to secure Mercedes Benz stadium naturalizes a broader anticipatory logic of state and corporate intervention, often evoked in the name of public safety and terrorism-prevention. Together the spectacles of sport and smart technologies gloss over systemic inequality and legitimize security infrastructures as well as related ideas that social problems such as a lack of affordable housing, police brutality, and environmental degradation are best addressed through technological solutions. Foregrounding the conjoined spectacles of the smart city and Super Bowl problematizes seemingly necessary security processes and social relations among people, events, technologies, and cities, inviting further research and discussions necessary for strengthening critical interventions and theorizing in these areas.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46703937","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}
The Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology and Society (TWISTS) is a unique public engagement project. Theoretically, TWISTS seeks to activate publics around contemporary science and technology issues by producing agonistic cultural spaces in which participants are confronted with and engaged by multiple perspectives. It thus seeks to enact a model of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (PEST) that is oriented toward neither individualized educational models nor policy deliberation and consensus. Its engaged STS performance model instead merges expanded notions of expertise with challenges and techniques derived from critical performance theory, such as recentering participants, rethinking purpose and evaluation, and reworking narrative structure. Practically, TWISTS’ four existing performance cycles have been sites for both extending and challenging the theory. Using a unique system of expert interviews, writing, and theater games, these performances were collaboratively derived by a range of participants. The “Living Darwin” performance serves as a case study for exploring the tensions of this collaboration. Negotiating a set of different perspectives over the place of Darwin in contemporary life, and the proper way to represent him and his influence, was challenging, but proved productive in developing a performance that raised these issues for the audience within an agonistic space.
{"title":"Engaging Theatre, Activating Publics: Theory and Practice of a Performance on Darwin","authors":"Saul Halfon, Cora Olson, Ann Kilkelly, Jane Lehr","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.403","url":null,"abstract":"The Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology and Society (TWISTS) is a unique public engagement project. Theoretically, TWISTS seeks to activate publics around contemporary science and technology issues by producing agonistic cultural spaces in which participants are confronted with and engaged by multiple perspectives. It thus seeks to enact a model of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (PEST) that is oriented toward neither individualized educational models nor policy deliberation and consensus. Its engaged STS performance model instead merges expanded notions of expertise with challenges and techniques derived from critical performance theory, such as recentering participants, rethinking purpose and evaluation, and reworking narrative structure. Practically, TWISTS’ four existing performance cycles have been sites for both extending and challenging the theory. Using a unique system of expert interviews, writing, and theater games, these performances were collaboratively derived by a range of participants. The “Living Darwin” performance serves as a case study for exploring the tensions of this collaboration. Negotiating a set of different perspectives over the place of Darwin in contemporary life, and the proper way to represent him and his influence, was challenging, but proved productive in developing a performance that raised these issues for the audience within an agonistic space.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41904539","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}
In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat mostly unused, an empty and dusty piece of high desert land dotted with sagebrush and juniper trees. I describe the preparatory efforts that laid the groundwork for the data center as effecting a “half-built assemblage.” Through such anticipatory reconfigurations, local leaders recognized the limits of regional government to overcome the challenges of their peripherality. In the controversy surrounding such data center deals, critics have often cast rural leaders as naive or as pandering to voters. However, I argue that the alliance with Facebook was one of the few courses of action available to local leaders that had any chance of realizing regional economic development goals. In seeking to understand the data center deal from a local perspective, I contribute an alternative notion of temporality to materialist theorizing by looking across much longer durations of time in relation to the political economy, the natural world, and other elements as a way to temper exaggerations of anthropocentric agency and the narrow attribution of blame.
{"title":"On Half-Built Assemblages: Waiting for a Data Center in Prineville, Oregon","authors":"J. Burrell","doi":"10.17351/ests2020.447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.447","url":null,"abstract":"In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat mostly unused, an empty and dusty piece of high desert land dotted with sagebrush and juniper trees. I describe the preparatory efforts that laid the groundwork for the data center as effecting a “half-built assemblage.” Through such anticipatory reconfigurations, local leaders recognized the limits of regional government to overcome the challenges of their peripherality. In the controversy surrounding such data center deals, critics have often cast rural leaders as naive or as pandering to voters. However, I argue that the alliance with Facebook was one of the few courses of action available to local leaders that had any chance of realizing regional economic development goals. In seeking to understand the data center deal from a local perspective, I contribute an alternative notion of temporality to materialist theorizing by looking across much longer durations of time in relation to the political economy, the natural world, and other elements as a way to temper exaggerations of anthropocentric agency and the narrow attribution of blame.","PeriodicalId":44976,"journal":{"name":"Engaging Science Technology and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49194053","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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