Science, Technology, Society, and the State

In the past ten years, the study of science and technology has emerged as a significant and provocative new interdisciplinary effort. With novel approaches to the constitution of techno-scientific knowledge both inside and outside of traditional research settings, science and technology studies have fruitfully challenged the anthropologies, sociologies, and histories of knowledge once dominant in the academy. As the name suggests, this interdisciplinary workshop aims to explore the complex forms of association and discourse that link the pursuit of techno-scientific knowledge to the nation-state project and its institutional practices, broadly understood.

 

This year’s workshop will explore the theme of “Science, Security, and Society,” asking not just about the social life of security but about the security of social life.

 

SPRING 2008

 

This Quarter the STSS workshop is happy to sponsor the conference:

 

                   

April 25- 27, 2008

Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency

 

A Conference at the University of Chicago

 

Department of Anthropology

 

For conference schedule and information, please visit

http://anthroandwar.uchicago.edu/index.html

 

WINTER 2008

 

Tuesday, March 4th  4:30 HASKELL MEZZANINE (2nd floor)
Paul Poenicke (Philosophy of Science, Virginia Tech)

Answering Needham’s Problem: Kuhn and Longino, Social Modeling, and the Late Imperial Civil Service System

Discussant: Christopher Walker (Anthropology)

 

Tuesday, February 19th 4:30 HASKELL MEZZANINE (2nd floor)
Greg Beckett (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

Stormy Weather: Global Disaster and the Normalization of Emergency [in Haiti]

Discussant: Alison Feser (Anthropology)

 

*Thursday, February 7th   4:30 PICK 105

Rocío Magaña (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

Desolation Bound: The Spatial Entanglement of Border Crossing and Enforcement Along the Arizona-Mexico Desert Region

Discussant: Susan Gzesh (Director of the Human Rights Program, University of Chicago)

*Event co-sponsored with the Global Environment Workshop

 

Tuesday, January 29th   4:30 HASKELL 315
Christopher McIntosh and Ian Storey (Political Science, University of Chicago)

Between Acquisition and Use: Examining the Improbability of Nuclear Terrorism

 

*An unofficial item of interest for STSSers:

Roger Myerson (Nobel Laureate; Economics, University of Chicago)

Foundations of the State in Theory and Practice: Reading Bremer and the Counterinsurgency Field Manual

Comparative Politics Workshop

Wednesday, January 16th   6-8 pm Wilder House

This is not a session of STSS

 

 

Autumn 2007

 

*Monday, November 26th   7-9 pm HASKELL 315

Special Session of STSS:

Military Ethnographers? A Roundtable and Open Discussion

With Marshall Sahlins, John Kelly, Bea Juaregui, and Sean Mitchell

 

Tuesday, November 20th

Dan Slater (Political Science, University of Chicago)

Altering Authoritarianism: Dynamics of Infrastructural and Despotic Institutions in Indonesia

Discussant: Kurt Jacobsen (Political Science)

 

Tuesday, November 6th
Alexander Mawyer (Sociology and Anthropology, Lake Forest College)

‘Psychopolitics’ and Nuclear State Fallout in the Gambier Islands

Discussant: Marston Morgan (Anthropology)

 

Tuesday, October 23rd
Trevor Goldsmith (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

Private Interests and Public Goods: The Institutions of Spanish Urbanism from Falangism to Technocracy

Discussant: Bea Jauregui (Anthropology)

 

 

 

 

Faculty Sponsors


John Kelly (johnkelly@uchicago.edu)
 

Jim Hevia (jhevia@uchicago.edu)

Joseph Masco (jmasco@uchicago.edu)  

 

Student Coordinator

 

Stephen K. Scott (skscott@uchicago.edu)  

 

 

 

 

Meetings
Alternate Tuesday, 4:30-6:30pm

Note that our location varies this quarter!
(Apologies!)

Papers
available for download here one week before their sessions, or by email from Stephen K. Scott

Assistance
please contact
Stephen K. Scott