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- Convenors:
-
Boyd Ruamcharoen
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Hina Walajahi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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- Chair:
-
Liliana Gil
(Ohio State University)
- Discussant:
-
Boyd Ruamcharoen
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
- Location:
- Agora 2, main building
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
Our panel moves towards “tropical materialities”—matters that inflect, and are inflected by, the “tropical”—to elicit renewed inquiry into our inherited interpretations of the “tropics,” asking how we might “tropicalize” STS by transforming global and universal narratives from the tropics.
Long Abstract:
The tropics, Hi'ilei Julia Hobart writes, are “a racial imaginary as much as a physical place” that at once lies outside the “modern West” and harbors its origins (2022:4). Foundational postcolonial scholarship (e.g. Stepan 2001, Arnold 2005) has thus far treated the tropics as a geographical zone of alterity—of racialized desire, imperial conquest, abundant extraction—on the fringes of temperate metropoles. Deep ambivalence often marks portrayals of the tropics, which mix natural abundance and unbridled leisure, on the one hand, with strange illnesses and untold dangers, on the other. Here, however, we invite papers that move towards “tropical materialities” as a strategy to disrupt, disaggregate, and disorient epistemologies and ontologies of place, matter, and flesh naturalized by imperialist imaginaries.
Through tropical materialities, we attune to the tactile, sensuous, and physical matters that inflect, and are inflected by, the “tropical” in order to elicit renewed inquiry into our inherited interpretations of what, where, and when the “tropics” are. How do the specificity of tropical matters and attendant modes of mobility suggest alternative geographies, temporalities, and intimacies? How does it elucidate flows and arrests of knowledge, matter, and bodies that might not be clear otherwise? We propose, in turn, to use materially-oriented tropicalities to reconfigure global, universal, and planetary narratives, such as climate change and capitalism. In light of the call for Southern theory (Connell 2007), what might we gain by theorizing from the tropics and by “tropicalizing” science and technology studies?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper I explore the affective and political potentiality of palm oil as a tropical commodity that disorients dominant epistemologies of capitalism from inside of the supply chain. I discuss how knowing "the market" and "the plantation" produce ambivalent affects with political potential
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I explore the affective and political potentiality of palm oil as a tropical commodity that disorients dominant epistemologies of capitalism from inside of the supply chain. Drawing from feminist and postcolonial STS scholars and anthropologies of capitalism, I analyze the `tropical materialities' of palm oil from the perspectives and practices of sustainability workers in the palm oil supply chain in Mexico. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss two moments of knowledge production where palm oil becomes disorienting: 1) knowing “the market". I discuss the accounting and report practices for constructing "industry data '' and how the materialities of palm oil, as well as its material semiotic dimensions as a tropical and south-to-south commodity produces confusion and contradiction about the feasibility of sustainable palm oil. 2) knowing "the plantation". I describe field visits from agronomists, and corporate workers to the plantations with smallholders as moments that either reinforce or question the legitimization of the project of corporate intervention in agricultural production. I argue that these moments of knowledge production inside the supply chain produce ambivalent affects about sustainable palm oil as a project with market potential yet haunted by the excess of capitalism.
Paper short abstract:
The workers that build, operate, and conduct research about data centres in Singapore often come from neighbouring countries, all of which are well-versed in the materialities of the tropical. How do tropical specificities intersect with the innovations in internet infrastructures?
Paper long abstract:
The problem of heat in data centres have gained increasing media and public scrutiny in recent years. As a tropical country, Singapore’s climate presents a natural barrier to the use of free cooling, thus resulting in the data centres’ higher energy consumptions. In response to the environmental impact of data centres, the Singapore government imposed a moratorium from 2019 to 2022, and upon its lifting, requires new data centres to be greener. Much of the ‘green turn’ across data centres involves the use of liquid cooling, which has been touted as more energy efficient than the air cooling methods traditionally used in the industry. However, the need for tropical standards remain debated. With ‘universal’ standards set by global organisations such as ASHRAE and OCP, what is the value of ‘local’ or ‘regional’ standards for an ’objective’ measurement of temperature?
Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with data centre liquid cooling experts based in Singapore, I try to understand how they perceive and learn about ‘universality’. Data centres are very much transnational entities – the workers that build, operate, and conduct research about data centres in Singapore often come from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, India, and China, all of which are well-versed in the materialities of the tropical. How do tropical specificities intersect with the innovations in internet infrastructures, which knowledge is predominantly based in the fields of engineering? I hope that preliminary answers to these questions can contribute to the discussion of tropical materialities in STS.