Paper long abstract:

According to recent media reports, the autonomous, self-driving car is the technology of the future. Experts claim that autonomous cars could solve problems modern societies are facing, such as air pollution or fatal car accidents. Due to the impact their introduction might have, societal implications of this innovation should be taken into account - especially those that affect the highly gendered mobility culture of our time: The car is a strong symbol of hegemonic masculinity embodying aspects connoted as "male", such as power, control or independence. At the same time, it is treated and cared for like a (female) partner (Sheller 2004).

This paper explores the effects that the introduction of a self-driving car might have on the relationship to its driver. Whereas nowadays, the driver-machine relation is modeled as one of master and slave (Both/Weber 2014), it's reasonable to rethink this model due to the proposed autonomy of the car: Can we speak of a new kind of solidarity between human and machine or does the car "downgrade" the driver to a passenger? How do these changes affect gendered stereotypes that are connected to (auto)mobility?

To answer these questions, I analyze how the relationship between driver and autonomous car as well as related gender stereotypes are (re)constructed in the German media discourse on autonomous cars. A special focus will be put on often used analogies to science fiction since this genre deals with different imaginations of "future", including new forms of mobility and human-machine-relations.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the assumption that, as all other living systems, human bodies, cultural and social systems (etc.) can be considered energy converters in their metabolic interaction with the Environment, in our intervention we attempt to stress the inextricable links between the control of non-human energy and cultural dynamics (drawing from a wide anthropological, historical and sociological literature). In doing that, we chiefly consider long term dynamics, paying a pivotal attention to the shift toward more and more sophisticated forms of extra-human energy domestication, considered at the same time as the result of historic contingencies and as an essential variable in explaining changing patterns of power dissimmetries. An energy revolution (i.e. the domestication of fire), has strongly contributed to the emergency of biological conditions for the development of human culture and its symbols, including Energy itself. Another energy shift, the spread of electricity, has produced an anthropological revolution bringing us to live in a kind of "second nature", carachterized by an increasing expertification of governamentality and by a paradoxical naturalization of socio-technical systems and their increasing mimicry in laymen daily life experience.

Paper long abstract:

In an advertisement in the Norwegian veterinary journal from the 1980s we meet Leocillin, an antibiotic targeting mastitis, a disease well known to lactating animals. The ad stated that "Leocillin knows no boundaries" and claimed that the drug had "special abilities to penetrate" both udder and global pharmaceutical markets. A picture of a cow's udder with a world map drawn upon it completed this message. At the same time, the journal contained critical articles spelling out how the use of antibiotics in relation to animals and food production might affect both humans and the wider environment. As such, the ad's message had a certain irony at a time when antibiotics and its ability to penetrate beyond intended use(r)s caught the attention of food safety and health authorities. If antibiotics could be transferred from animals to humans and environments, how were the relations between these entities to be conceptualized? And how did such concerns feed into debates about food safety? This paper will investigate how relationships between animals, environments and human eaters were reassembled in Norway in what might be called the age of antibiotics. I will utilize written sources such as articles from veterinary and medical journals as well as archival materials from Norwegian food safety and health authorities.