4S/EASST Barcelona 2016
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
4S/EASST Barcelona 2016 Science & technology by other means: Exploring collectives, spaces and futures August 31-September 3, CCIB #4sEASST2016 EASST / 4S 2016 Presidents’ Message Us donem la benvinguda a Barcelona! ¡Os damos la bienvenida a Barcelona! It is our great pleasure to open the program for the EASST/4S 2016 conference, exploring the multiple places and possibilities for enacting ‘Science + technology by other means’. Every four years, beginning in 1984 in Ghent, Belgium, the European Association for Science and Technology Studies (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) have held joint conferences. We see the relationship between EASST and 4S as that of complementary sister societies, and welcome the opportunity to deepen and expand that relationship through these confluences of our membership. This year, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of a collective of colleagues within the Spanish STS network, we come together in Barcelona to enjoy both intellectual and cultural replenishment at the EASST/4S Conference BCN 2016. We are particularly grateful to the sts2016bcn organizing and scientific committees, who have worked with tremendous commitment and care to accommodate as many STS scholars as possible within the limits of even the spacious Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona. As interest in STS continues to grow, this conference saw an overwhelming response to the call, with over 2500 abstracts submitted. While this is a good problem to have, it is a real one as it implies that not all of those who wish to participate can be included, however creatively the organizers approach the challenge of expanding space and time. Thanks to the organizers’ commitment to maximize inclusion, the program for the next four days reflects the depth and range of scholarship and activism within the multiple fields that comprise STS. There will be little here of business as usual in terms of the discourses and practices of science and technology, and much in the way of critical and inventive heterodoxy. Organized under the banner of ‘collectives, spaces, and futures,’ the conference aims to expand the range of associations, locations and possibilities that comprise STS, as well as its modes of engagement. The conference closes on Saturday with the Presidential Awards Plenary (Saturday September 3 from 18:00 – 19:30), in which our two societies have the opportunity to recognize those colleagues who have made significant contributions to the field of STS. As the number of our joint awards is large, we have worked to develop a format for the plenary that is both celebratory and substantive and that invites the recipients not only to enjoy the community’s recognition of their own outstanding work, but also to engage with each other in conversation. This session will also provide us all with an opportunity to express our gratitude to those whose labours have brought this conference into being. The result is what we are confident will be a lively and inspiring session, reminding us of the reasons that participation in the field of science and technology studies matters to us so much. Fred Steward, President, EASST and Lucy Suchman, President, 4S EASST / 4S 2016 Welcome by the Organizing Committee The local committee welcomes you to the joint 2016 4S/EASST conference. We are very happy to see you all in Barcelona. It has been a long and hard path since we decided to accept the kind invitation from 4S and EASST to organize their 2016 joint conference. We knew it was going to be daring, and we would be lying if we said we were not worried about the work that it could imply.Thus, we accepted the invitation as a challenge: to organize the most inclusive big conference possible in the South of Europe in a period of austerity, precarity, and limited institutional support. All the decisions we have made have sought to achieve this aim. First, the very motto of the conference is a desire to be inclusive. We wish to explore collectively the ways in which science and technology are increasingly performed ‘by other means’, in a variety of exploratory activities that include the articulation of collectives that do not fit with the traditional actors in science and technology, or in ways that problematize the established value systems involved in the production of knowledge and technologies. During these days we invite you to meet people producing knowledge outside the mainstream institutions, people doing research in very precarious ways or even having to leave their countries in order to keep their engagement with science and technology. We have tried to make this conference as porous in its boundaries as possible: including invited speakers from other fields and contexts and working to generate workshops and encounters with activists, artists and other scholars beyond the walls of the conference venue. In addition, we implemented all possible measures to accept as many papers as possible from the more than 2500 proposals received. After a long and complex process, with the inestimable work of convenors, we have been able to allocate 1746 papers (much more than those initially foreseen) in 109 open tracks and 90 closed sessions (plus sessions off conference, prizes and several presentations). With almost 2000 registered participants, this is the largest EASST/4S joint conference ever. Finally, we have tried to be loyal to an ethics of care in our relation with each and every one of those who have expressed interest in taking part in this conference: from encouraging a caring evaluation of papers to a careful attention to all of the practicalities and requests. We cannot finish this welcome without expressing our warmest thanks for the support received from both the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Their help has made our work much easier. We hope you will engage in listening to amazing presentations, sharing your research and ideas, creating fruitful networks and, of course, enjoying the city! Organizing Local Committee: Nerea Calvillo, Miquel Domènech, Daniel López, Vincenzo Pavone, Israel Rodríguez‐Giralt, Carmen Romero‐Bachiller, Tomás Sánchez Criado, Francisco Tirado. EASST / 4S 2016 Conference Secretary: Miriam Arenas, Rocío Thovar Scientific Committee: Eduard Aibar, Attila Bruni, Daniel Breslau, Ana Delgado, Ana Delicado, Adolfo Estalella, Pierre‐Benoit Joly, Francesca Musiani, Tani Pérez Bustos, Eulalia Pérez Sedeño, Carmen Romero‐Bachiller, Estrid Sorensen, Lucy Suchman, Francisco Tirado, Manuel Tironi. Science & Technology by other Means: Collectives, Spaces and Futures Some decades ago STS scholars proposed that science and technology could be considered as ‘politics by other means’. Many years have gone by, and STS researchers are turning their attention towards proposals and experiences where science and technology are increasingly performed ‘by other means’ in a variety of exploratory activities. These include the articulation of collectives that do not fit with the traditional actors in science and technology, or who work in ways that problematize the established value systems involved in the production of knowledge and technologies, e.g. fostering the creation of open science, DIY design and commons‐based p2p projects, citizen science and maker communities, feminist and environmentalist technoscience projects, and many other platforms seeking to create alternatives to public/private technoscientific arrangements. Emerging science and technology practices show how public and private actors are being re‐assembled along routes that do not follow once established divides: science and technology are increasingly produced by private not‐for‐profit actors, such as CSOs, patient organizations and new citizens’ collectives. At the same time, traditional public institutions once entrusted with the mission of ‘producing’ science and technology for the common good, like universities and research centers, are being transformed into for‐ profit organizations subjected to productivity bonuses, austerity measures and new public management accounting principles. These emerging and consolidating phenomena destabilise and re‐signify existing public and private spaces, whilst generating new ones. In turn, new technoscientific communities and unexpected political mobilizations are continually opening up, engendering other contested options, as well as forging routes to explore more democratic and hospitable futures in times of care, housing, food, financial and environmental crisis. The joint 2016 4S/EASST conference in Barcelona is an opportunity to share reflections, ideas, findings and projects on a variety of aspects characterizing these alternative ways to do science and technology: (a) such as the fact that all of these transformations usually take place in blurred everyday spaces and not in those enclosed established spaces for science and technology development, such as laboratories or industrial R&D departments; (b) or, in a similar way, the fact that research and innovation processes are EASST / 4S 2016 increasingly organised in networked, horizontal assemblages where the traditional hierarchies in science are put into question and where science and technology are being co‐produced by different actors in different, sometimes antagonistic, ways; (c) and, finally, the fact that traditional boundaries between the public and the private are no longer confined to state and for‐profit actors, care practices taking a preeminent presence in most of these everyday situations. We