Long Abstract:

STS has sometimes been accused of 'presentism': a tendency to study configurations, assemblages, arrangements, sets of material practices that take place here and now, in the present. How would our key concepts, methods, analytical strategies change if we blurred the boundary between the past and the present, the here and the there, and sensitised ourselves to half-presences? This subplenary aims to address this abstract question by initiating a discussion about the postsocialist condition. We aim to explore remembered and forgotten narratives of modernism, sources of enthusiasm and scepticism towards technoscientific promises, and various configurations of the public and the private in sociotechnical innovations in order to discuss how the concept of postsocialism might contribute to ongoing debates in STS, and vice-versa, how insights from STS might help us better understand the postsocialist condition.

The panel will include: Susanne Bauer, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt; Ivan Tchalakov, Associate Professor, Department of Institutional and Applied Sociology, University of Plovdiv; Marija Brajdic Vukovic,Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, University of Zagreb