Sharing Fragile Future feminist technoscience in contexts of implication Lena Trojer This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/sharingfragilefuture-feministtechnoscienceincontextsofimplication This version was published on 2017-10-30 ISBN 978-91-639-3574-9 This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do. © Makerere University Press, Lena Trojer In memory of my mother Ing-Britt and my father Uno Contents Abstract ............................................... 1 Introduction ............................................ 2 My story ............................................ 2 Introduction continued .................................... 4 Part I ................................................ 8 Fundaments for Societal Relevance and Trust ........................ 8 Chapter 1 .............................................. 9 Clean and Unclean Facts - Diffractions in Knowledge Production ............. 9 Chapter 2 .............................................. 18 Authority in Transformation ................................. 18 Chapter 3 .............................................. 28 From Interdisciplinarity to Transdisciplinarity ........................ 28 Chapter 4 .............................................. 41 Interventions in Epistemological Infrastructures ....................... 41 Part II ................................................ 48 Feminist TechnoScience – trying a position ......................... 48 Chapter 5 .............................................. 49 Feminist Research ....................................... 49 Chapter 6 .............................................. 58 Feminist TechnoScience .................................... 58 Part III ............................................... 63 Research Politics ........................................ 63 Chapter 7 .............................................. 64 Diffractions in Research Political Tendencies ......................... 64 CONTENTS Chapter 8 .............................................. 77 When Gender is on the Agenda ................................ 77 Chapter 9 .............................................. 88 Integrating Processes in a Research Political Opportunity . 88 Chapter 10 ............................................. 92 Re-thinking Excellence; getting smart between the no longer and the not yet - comments on the convergence of knowledge and politics .................... 92 Part IV ............................................... 103 Contexts of Implication ....................................103 Chapter 11 ............................................. 104 When Society Speaks Back – the relevance issue . 104 Chapter 12 ............................................. 113 ICT and ITS Emerging Innovation System in Tanzania . 113 Chapter 13 ............................................. 127 Postcolonial ICT - feminist technoscience and technopolitics intertwined . 127 Chapter 14 ............................................. 134 From e-learning to university development in rural Uganda - co-evolution in triple helix processes ........................................134 Chapter 15 ............................................. 142 Innovative Clusters Closing the Gap between University and Society in East Africa: a living proof of Mode 2 excellence? . 142 Epilogue .............................................. 152 References ............................................. 156 Abstract Like a winding string passing tryings at risk, this book is my endeavour to make explicit the situatedness and responsibility of research and researchers in the trouble, let it be in the ‘grand challenges’ of our time or in the very local challenges of survival. Efforts to promote more complex and integrated understandings of ‘society in science’ or science as a political arena is urgent when facing the incalculabilities in our late modern spheres of society. There is no doubt technologies co-evolve out of interactions in specific contexts. This implies the responsibility to be a collective one for where and how technologies travel and with what use. No innocent position exists. The demand on us as knowledge and technology producers is focused on the direct reality producing consequences of our research and thus put us right into the context of implication. The frames of understanding are developed within feminist technoscience linked to practitioners and writers of mode 2 knowledge production. How can feminist research as well as other research disciplines taking a critical view of science be able to mobilize the transformatory potential needed? Part I presents insights into needed relocations in (onto)epistemological infrastructures and Part II a positioning in the fields of feminist research and feminist technoscience. Part III includes experiences and discussions about two political dimensions – research political initiatives to support feminist research followed by reflections on the convergence of science and politics. Part IV offers examples of research in contexts of not only application but implication. Introduction My story When Donna Haraway (Haraway, 2014) is urging us to consider that “it matters what stories tell stories. It matters what thoughts think thoughts”, I get words for the core mission of this essay collection It matters what epistemological frameworks we understand and act in the world with This essay collection is a piece of academic work converging into a story of distributed knowledge productions within a time frame from the middle of the 80s until present times. I take Haraway’s urging seriously and start with my own story as a lens to see how and why I ended up in devoting my academic tryings the way I did. I want my voice to be heard throughout, as the words of my voice are lived through. I am writing experiences from within and not from an innocent, hidden shelf. However, I seldom work alone, which means in some of the chapters there is a sympoietic1 voice. These other voices so essential for me comes mainly but not solely from my appreciated colleges Elisabeth Gulbrandsen, Birgitta Rydhagen and Peter Okidi Lating. In a deep and silent forest in Finland I met a well known feminist philosopher in person for the first time. This was at a Nordic doctoral course in 19892. She told us in attendance at least to pronounce the word epistemology. Her name is Sandra Harding. Being a scientist raised in Swedish faculties of natural science and technology my trying key to a constructive and future oriented feminist research within my mother disciplines became at this occasion confirmed. But something happened before this occasion in Finland. Four snapshots will illustrate the context, where I began my academic life; I. I entered my university life in a time window characterized by the aftermath of the student revolution in 1968, Vietnam war, junta in Greece and Chile, reinforced women’s movement and an environmental movement focusing the national referendum of nuclear power. II. I started to study mathematics at Lund University, Sweden. My father wanted to give me an electrical calculator. At that time (1970) the cost of this calculator with only the four basic functions of plus, minus, times and division was 1 000 SEK (about 7 600 SEK 2016 and nowadays worth almost nothing). My farther couldn’t afford it. No problem, I used my head and a slide rule in plastic. 1collectively produced and linked with 2Nordic Research Course in Gender Research specifically focusing interdisciplinary methodology and theory, Littokoti, Veikkola, September 1 – 12, 1989. Introduction 3 III. We, the students in mathematics, learned programming (like Fortran and Algol) by punching hole cards and deliver the paper program cards over desk to the computer hall staff to be executed. No personal computers or internet existed yet. IV. During my PhD studies there was a professor in organic chemistry, Eberson, with an interest in theory of science. I attended one of his lectures, when he presented Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. He demanded us PhD student to stay close to the falsification method of Popper, which of course made me more curious about Feyerabend. The lecture became for me the first obvious flaw on the positivist upbringing in my scientific training. During the last years of my PhD studies I found an environment at Lund University open enough for questions and challenges of knowledge production to be thought upon and discussed. The Swedish government had started to support (with very little but important money) academic environments for female researchers and gender research in the end of the 70s. First out to establish such a Forum was Lund University in 1978 (Trojer 2002 p.17). We were very few PhD students from natural science and engineering, but eager to take part in developing gender research perspectives in our own disciplines, which later for me became feminist technoscience3 . What I as a scientist started to do, was to unlearn my epistemological position as a positivist4 . These attempts of unlearning are not an end in itself. It is a necessity, as this knowledge view, which I was raised in, proved too non-functional and limited in the contexts I have placed myself - like natural science and engineering in general, information and communication technology, media technology, environmental