Laurie WallerGoing to attempt live tooting of the big hitter round table in 'Politicizing' at #easst4s
First time live tooting. Hold tight!
Organisers Wijsman and Gruendel introduction centres Foucault
Politicization was long a demand from the Left that had no “internal principle of limitation” (Foucault 1994).
First up Chris Kelty.
Emphasises urgency, large-scale issues and the administrative state. Foregrounding US supreme court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (I think... fast talking)
Kelty. Did this case shift power back to judiciary from the administrative state?
In STS we have a stake in how we theorise these shifts because science plays a role in these legitimating.
Kelty. In STS we have a particular constructivist approach. Unlike right wing appropriation of constructivist moves, STS does not believe in "pure power"
Kelty. What is the supreme court doing when it tries to limit the administrative state?
Formation of admin state founded on notion that justices don't have a public but the administrative state does. This is changing. Supreme justices now seem to have a public.
Kelty. What is it in the administrative state that far right want to do away with?
On politicization: Is ambiguity in the law best addressed by legal expertise or scientific expertise? STS has a stake in this question
Next up. Wijsman and Gruendel.
Focus on smart city lab in Potsdam and tensions in rise of far right in east Germany.
Wijsman and Gruendel. These labs are now feature of global cities and technology for creating certain kinds of public space.
Poses question about relation between 'design thinking' and the rise of the far right.
Wijsman and Gruendel. Current critiques of design thinking fail to account for the politicizing effects of design practices
Next Farias. Focus on project about "big things" (e.g smart city, climate change) but approached from a lateral strand point of anti-5G movements in Europe.
Farias. Controversy is a language poorly suited to task of studying anti-5G because they are not an agonistic mode of politicization. They do not recognise a legitimate adversary.
Farias. Government institutions are also engaging in an antagonistic (i.e. not agonistic) mode. This is more like asymmetric trench war. People who self-diagnose as "electro-hyposensitive" cannot exist in this situation.
Farias. Contestation of science may be part of this situation but less important than minor modes of care and solidarity that attempt to confront bodily differences and make worlds habitable.
Barry. Importance of focusing on political situation today. STS once formed one element of a wider movement to take politicization beyond politics. STS scholarship was a means of politicization.
Barry. At the same time political practices also have a technicity. These are increasingly a focus of STS scholarship. The normal stuff of politics that conventional political analysis has not addressed.
Barry. All efforts at politicization involve an attempt to contain the political. STS is against easy forms of politicization that move too rapidly. Latour's focus on empiricism of politics was misleading in not attending to different political currents that coincide (e.g. importance of capitalism, imperial history, geopolitics in current politics). Invokes Stuart Hall's focus on conjuncture- are conjunctures explosive or other kinds of reactions. This is what politicization is about.
Marres. Starts with Kuhn "we live in a different world". Is this the distinctive chord in STS? Focus on ontological shift not only as conceptual proposition but something that is happening in STS.
Marres. Intervention in the world through science and technology is no longer the dominant mode of politics. In NL right wing and technocracy are now aligned. Technocracy and populism seem both political and anti-political at the same time, scrambling the STS project.
Marres. [Zoom breaks down on that cliff hanger]. In UK the state is now open about creating infrastructures that make social life a resource for innovation. There is a programme of the instrumentalisation of science for innovation (via 'science for society). Something enabled by the state and covered over by a solutionist discourse.
Marres. Finishes with Karl Mannheim arguing that politics of knowledge developed in a distinctly dangerous time. Kuhn got his world from Mannheim. Technocracy and populism both present ideologies and deny that we live in a broken world. Showing that is now task for STS
Discussion. Kelty picks up on Marres argument about pluralism of worlds (I missed that part above). Participation affords occassion to think about their (knowing Kuhnian term) incommensurability.
Discussion. [Ongoing... I run for a train]Q. about pluralism: what about global south and indigenous scholars- are we also in a broken STS? Q. about Mannheim and utopia, more of a comment. Q. acknowledging the other [shouts!], what do we do about worldings that harm other worldings?