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Paper long abstract:

The aim of the lecture is to show asymmetries and dependencies within science and technology. I would like to achieve this by merging a world-system theory, social studies of science and metrology. The ambition of such proposition is to show how economic dependency is transformed into more subtle forms of dependency and structural violence. I will demonstrate how the accumulation of capital (Wallerstein) is connected in result with the founding of centres of calculation. The latter - according to Latour - are necessary for practicing science and technology (technoscience). We see clearly how the success of modern societies, it's position within modern world-system (global center - periphery relations) is linked with technoscientific success. Capital accumulation is coupled with the accumulation of knowledge and with possibility of creation of stabile and long metrological networks of control. Peripheral and semi-peripheral countries are not only economically depended, but also are unable to create, and stabilize their own metrological networks. The question of economic sovereignty must therefore be complemented by the question of the metrological sovereignty. This task, on the other hand, is in the tension with universal, intellectual and moral solidarity. Due to the fact that metrology, capital and knowledge are intertwined universality is ambiguous:

In lecture I would like to consider the answer to the following questions:

1. Is intellectual and moral solidarity and metrological sovereignty possible?

2. How to be technoscientifically effective and metrologically independent?

3. How to disconnect manufacture of knowledge and capital accumulation and its asymmetries