session for AAA, call for proposals

[Elizabeth Keating]

Anyone interested in a session we are organizing to be submitted to the
American Anthropology Association meetings, November 16-20, 2011, Montreal,
please send us a proposal.

Anthropology and STS: intersections, dialogue, reconstructions
Session organizers:
Elizabeth Keating (Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin - USA)
Marko Monteiro (Science and Technology Policy, State University of Campinas
- Brazil) 

            Although recent decades have seen an enormous growth in interest
and investment in studies focusing on Science, Technology and Society (STS),
and a related growth in ethnographic explorations of themes relating to
practices in science and technology, there have been relatively few attempts
to explicitly discuss connections between anthropology and STS, including
possible experiments with new methods, new approaches and  the application
of theories about innovation and the local and global dynamics of culture.
             The goal of this session is to explore diverse points of
intersection between STS and Anthropology in a variety of field sites,
subjects and sub-disciplines, as STS and Anthropology continue to evolve,
and as innovations in science and technology become more pervasive and more
complex. Nature/culture, subject/object, expert/novice, global/local among
other dualities, are seen as both organizing our worldviews and as ways
through which we (mis)understand other worldviews and experiences. The focus
of discussion we feel is not solely about ethnographic data, but has become
also intensely methodological. 
            As researchers aligned with STS and related fields have added to
ongoing anthropological investigations of cultural practices of knowledge
and truth building, representational tools, and the technologies which we
use to reconstruct material realities, they reinvigorate a discussion about
ways of knowing, including the politics of mastery and power. There is much
to be gained from bringing STS and Anthropology even closer together: both
fields are currently engaged in discussing crucial aspects of how we conduct
social science and what that science can accomplish.
            We seek papers addressing both empirical findings and
methodological challenges at the intersection of anthropology and STS:
research on emerging practices related to science and technology;
methodological critiques (e.g. from Actor-Network Theory or the analysis of
interaction); rediscussions of ethnography; ethnographic findings related to
science and technology and other related topics.
 
Please send abstracts (250 words) to both session organizers
Elizabeth Keating (ekeating at mail.utexas.edu
<mailto:ekeating at mail.utexas.edu> )
Marko Monteiro (markosy at ige.unicamp.br <mailto:markosy at ige.unicamp.br

 

__________________________________

Elizabeth Keating
Professor, Department of Anthropology 
The University of Texas at Austin 
1 University Station C3200, Austin, TX 78712-0303 USA
phone: 512-471-8518; fax 512-471-6535
office: SAC Building, room 4.156

Keating home page:  <http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~ekeating/>
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~ekeating/