Paper short abstract:

This paper compares different structures of network collaboration for innovation production where collective thinking, sponsors, mentors, investors, promoters embed original and creative projects. Ambiguous relations take place building unprecedented bridges as well as reinforcing old barriers.

Paper long abstract:

In the 21st century innovation production and management has taken place in a de-territorialized process mediated by information technologies and social media. This has diversified and encouraged multiple disaggregated processes of knowledge production, fragmentation and dispersion, shaping a dynamic and fluid structure that connects multiple social actors in an organic way. This paper will compare different organizational structures of networks where collective thinking, sponsors, mentors, investors and promoters embed original and creative projects. Scientific knowledge mix with local experiences, and as new financial instruments become available, regulations and value appropriation are challenged. Informational technologies are more than enablers: they have transformed into an action field. This new structure seems to be very open and horizontal, but while ambiguous relations create unprecedented bridges allowing innovative ideas to flow through the process of knowledge production, at the same time many barriers persist and reinforce asymmetries and power relations. No doubt, virtual communication and collaboration has given birth to a new civilizatory process that has redefined interactivity, access to information and opportunities, but it is confronting new governance issues in the virtual space.

Paper short abstract:

"Race" has been techno-scientifically transformed through circulations in time and space across the globe. Through a perspective of postcolonial science studies, I analyze Indian anthropologist Irawati Karvé's racialized knowledge production praxis (1927-1970) in and between Germany and India.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at how this knowledge about "race" has been techno-scientifically (trans)formed, with special focus on technologies used in anthropological race research.

I analyze the work of anthropologist Irawati Karvé (1905-1970), shedding light not only on her techno-scientific praxis in Germany and India, but also on (the trajectory of) her research objects and technology. In the late 1920s, Karvé researched at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin, where she developed a research on "racial difference". By then, she developed a set of methods based on statistics and anthropometric measurements and researched on 150 human skulls, most of which were obtained in colonial settings. From 1931 to 1970, Karvé played a key role in the adaption of racialized knowledge and race research technologies about to different settings in India, becoming notably known for her anthropometric studies of subcastes and "tribes" in India.

Thus, through the perspective of postcolonial science studies, I analyze Karvé's research praxis and its situatedness, focusing on her trajectory, the trajectory of her first research objects (the human skulls) and the technologies used in her praxis. I bring to the foreground the political and social entanglements of such scientific praxis, with special attention to the role of such scientific technology in its articulation to racialized knowledge and racial discourses. Hence, the paper contributes to a critical understanding of role of technology in the global circulation and transformation of racialized knowledge on human diversity and difference.

Paper short abstract:

Based on extensive fieldwork in the Egyptian film industry, this paper examines the relationship between technology and the future in search of a productive path out of the classical opposition between technological determinism and technological possibilism (Ingold, 1997).

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between technology and the future in search of another productive path out of the classical opposition between technological determinism and technological possibilism (Ingold, 1997). The opposition, briefly, is between a perspective on Technology as an asocial force that drives Society 'forward' and a perspective where technology matters little given the indefinite plasticity of cultural forms. Both positions have long been criticized by the anthropology of technology (see Lemonnier, 1992; Ingold, 1997) and STS (see Latour, 1988; Akrich, 1993), with the outcome that the cultural and the technical are no longer seen as divided realms but as two co-evolving aspects in complex socio-technical processes. What has been overlooked in this discussion is the anticipatory quality of technology, not just with respect to remote futures bordering on science-fiction (see Collins, 2008), but also in incoming futures envisaged by social actors engaged in situated socio-technical processes. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Egyptian film industry, this paper examines how filmmakers use technology to execute their daily tasks and, in so doing, to anticipate certain problems in the near-future of the film production process. This anticipation is common both to creative crew members seeking to anticipate what the film product will look like and the executive workers seeking to anticipate the logistics of film production. Since it cannot be predicted in deterministic fashion or indefinitely manipulated by social actors, the incoming future provides an interesting case to explore the use of technology beyond determinism and possibilism.

Paper short abstract:

Technologies for data acquisition, such as mass-spectrometry, challenge scientific cultural practices for the creation of knowledge about proteins. Are these scientists on 'fishing expeditions'? Or just fishing in a new way?

Paper long abstract:

Science has its own particular cultural practices for the creation of acceptable knowledge, yet increasingly from the days of natural history, technology of one type or another is crucial to the mediation of those cultural practices. Using the example of proteomic science and recent mass-spectrometer technology use in Canada and Australia, this paper explores how changing technologies for data acquisition for scientists challenge what is considered to be acceptable scientific practice as this technology travels around the globe. The use of mass-spectrometry technology in proteomics is an example of a big data technology in science. The proponents of this new technology, with its ability to categorize thousands of proteins, are often criticized as going on 'fishing expeditions' or creating 'data cemeteries' that have limited use for scientific inquiry because they are not sufficiently targeted. In response, proponents suggest that the technologies offer new ways of interacting with data. Scientists, they argue, are always going fishing for knowledge, mass-spectrometry simply offers the potential for trolling, instead of hook and line fishing.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the expansion and fragmentation of the Yucatan foodscape, including the introduction of technologies, leading to changes in the relationship to regional cuisine and transformed the emotional and cultural attachment to food, unsettling its relationship to regional identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores and discusses different ways in which the introduction of new and foreign cooking technologies has transformed local people's attachment to Yucatecan food, and consequently its relationship to a strong sense of regional cultural identity. Yucatecan food developed into a gastronomic code during the last seventy years. During this process, the ties between Yucatecan gastronomy and regional identity were instrumental in opposing the locally perceived homogenizing Mexican national cuisine and identity advanced from the Mexican central highlands. Every day, Yucatecans ate regional food, experienced as different from Mexican cuisine and more akin to Caribbean, European and Middle Eastern cooking practices. Yucatecan people developed strong attachments to recipes, ingredients, and the taste of local food, and this affection was understood as an emotional and political connection to the land, its people and its ethos. This paper discusses how, since the 1970s, the Yucatan foodscape began to expand and then fragment, as growing numbers of immigrants from other Mexican regions and abroad arrived and settled into the state, unsettling long-established regional attachments. Simultaneously, the global market for edible and culinary commodities expanded and transformed regional cooking in Yucatan, partly on account of the introduction of new culinary technologies and ingredients. Consequently, this paper argues that these technologies have allowed local people to experience and experiment with imported culinary codes and created the possibility for superficial and temporary attachments to different food aesthetics and values, relativizing the meaning of Yucatecan food.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the co-construction of transport infrastructures and practices of social connectivity by orienting attention to the first e-tram of Latin America. The affective power of single techno-material elements shape movements and spatio-temporal constellations beyond the local.

Paper long abstract:

During its over 120 years of existence, the Bonde ("tramway") of Rio de Janeiro has acquired a meaning that goes well beyond providing physical access to the city. The construction of the tramway-technology has since its beginnings in the early twentieth century shaped local modes of social connectivity. Drawing from archival- and fieldwork between 2014-16 I show how the very techno-material design of the tramway has transformed the way people relate to each other - and to the space-times they inhabit. I suggest that everyday practices in urban public space are influenced by single elements of the Bonde to such extend that a footboard serves as "prolongation of the sidewalk". Focusing on local protests for a tram come-back during its suspension between 2011-15, I show how the possible introduction of features such as an electronic breaking system, GPS-tracking, or new ways of ticketing have brought together not only bourgeois and favela inhabitants of/with one specific neighborhood. By attending to the affective forces that transport technologies give rise to, my overall aim here is to open up a conceptual space to imagine the entanglements of local cultures with global policies, and how they play out in specific movements and socio-spatial constellations.

Paper short abstract:

Which is the contribution of the concept of "ambulatory knowledge" (Ingold 2000) to the study of the specific differences presented by Chemistry and Physics specialists with regard to the development of the spatial visualization skill? That is the objective we propose to develop in the paper.

Paper long abstract:

In The perception of the environment (2000), Tim Ingold reflects upon a way of knowledge acquisition, which the author conceptualizes as "ambulatory knowing".

The objective of the paper is to reflect upon the contribution of said concept to the study of the specific differences presented by Chemistry and Physics specialists with regard to the development of the spatial visualization skill, and to add elements of analysis which allow to go deep into the multiple aspects that the "ambulatory knowing" conceptual formulation entails.

Deepening on the disciplinary distinctions regarding the spatial visualization skill is complemented with the reflection upon the differences between experts and novices, with emphasis on the aspects to be developed in novices and on the importance of practice, with respect to learning and the increase of such skill.

The focus of the study on the skill of spatial visualization of phenomena and processes which, because of belonging to the world of matter at the nanoscale (one millionth of a millimeter), are inaccessible at a glance, is particularly important - as we argue - in the design of nanomaterials.

Examined in the case of scientists of the disciplines considered, the increase in the spatial visualization skill is explored with respect to a concept of mobility (Ingold 2000) which, without separating knowledge and its transfer of an experience located in an environment, contributes to the emergence and development of a framework of relationships among nodes, the study and research practices of which allow to refine such skills.

Paper short abstract:

Travel communications have transported and medical technologies have traced the chikungunya virus and infection. This paper looks at technology and the music surrounding the chikungunya epidemic in the 21st century.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the chikungunya virus and infection by looking at the technology that has made it possible for it to be diagnosed and traced, the travel facilities that have helped it travel, and the music that has accompanied it from Europe to the Caribbean and then across the American continent. Symptoms of chikungunya fever include fever and pain in the joints. It is caused by the chikungunya virus, which in turn is transmitted from one human to another by mosquitoes. The virus seems to have originated in Tanzania in the 1950s or before. From there it spread to many countries in Africa and Asia during the second half of the twentieth century, and as of 2000 the epidemic expanded first through Europe and then through much of the world. The medical establishment has developed a global strategy to deal with this health problem. Along with the spread of the epidemic there has been a surge of music around chikungunya that includes music motifs and lyrics about the virus, its transmission, its symptoms, and the possible ways to avoid catching it. As a result, the chikungunya virus has left not only a stream of pain, but also a stream of music, in many languages and in different rhythms and styles.