CfP for Society for the Social Studies of Science (4s) conference, Boston (August 30
- Sept. 2, 2017):
Panel 79: Island Imaginaries:
from repositories to experimental labs
Organized by Mascha Gugganig, Technical University Munich; Maximilian Mayer, Tongji University
Particularly
in western thought, islands have borne a fascination for “exceptional“
ecologies or “remote” human societies and
political systems. As repositories conducive not only to evolutionary
theories but for theorizing the social, their potential for intervention
has equally been an allure. Colonial empires, military logistics, and
also philanthropists have turned islands into
experimental labs of the natural, technical, and the social. Examples
range from nuclear tests to developing genetically engineered crops or
testing electrical grid systems in more contemporary times. Bringing
together these two island imaginaries – repository
and experimental lab – allows exploring how islands and their oceanic
environments, in the gaze of outsiders, emerge as sociotechnical
imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim 2015) that constitute both the
exceptional Other to be preserved (biodiversity, culture), and
synecdoches of the world.
This
panel examines island imaginaries by inviting research in STS and other
disciplines, such as international relations, geography,
indigenous studies, anthropology, and history. The papers aim to query
the normative virtue of “original,” “remote”, “untouched” (social and
natural) states, as well as the experimental intervention as normalized,
unquestioned undertakings of modernity in
the distance. We pose how islands are made sense-able through diverse
modes of knowledge-making. How do experienced realities of island
inhabitants (see Hau'ofa 1993) challenge established accounts of
islands? How to account for the heterogeneity that emerges
from conflicting imaginaries and experiences? Building on recent STS
scholarship, the panel seeks conceptual and ethnographic accounts of
historical and contemporary cases of islands as technoscientific test
beds.
Discussant:
Rebecca Lemov, Harvard University
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2017
