#Tag
📝 Defunding Science, Stifling Dissent: Lessons from Aotearoa
There is an opportunity here, not to preserve a system that has long been deeply flawed, but to change it for the better: to build a model of research and higher education that is accountable to the people and places from which it comes.
Science for the People.
📝 Defunding Science, Stifling Dissent: Lessons from Aotearoa
There is an opportunity here, not to preserve a system that has long been deeply flawed, but to change it for the better: to build a model of research and higher education that is accountable to the people and places from which it comes.
Science for the People.
Ah, this is one of those articles that shows the power of using STS methods in questions of geography and sustainability science. The politics show up clearly, but they're clear, material, empirical, explicit, and limited, rather than speculative and ephemeral.
I really appreciate this approach
Article is open access.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486251388555
Hi AoIRistas, after having to sit @AoIR conferences out for many years (😥), I am reeeaaallllllly planning on attending #AoIR2026 🤗🤞 Papers are already in preparation, but I'm also happy to plan/join roundtables, fishbowls, and pre-conferences. Feel free to reach out, notably re:
#STS #GenAIuse #AIgovernance #AIpolicy #criticalAIstudies
Hi AoIRistas, after having to sit @AoIR conferences out for many years (😥), I am reeeaaallllllly planning on attending #AoIR2026 🤗🤞 Papers are already in preparation, but I'm also happy to plan/join roundtables, fishbowls, and pre-conferences. Feel free to reach out, notably re:
#STS #GenAIuse #AIgovernance #AIpolicy #criticalAIstudies
still collecting decaying (or not decaying) covid infrastructure. Reply with your finds to:
looking for pictures of decaying corona-infrastructure: Signage, unfilled desinfectant dispensers, floor markings, unremoved notices with old regulations…
still collecting decaying (or not decaying) covid infrastructure. Reply with your finds to:
looking for pictures of decaying corona-infrastructure: Signage, unfilled desinfectant dispensers, floor markings, unremoved notices with old regulations…
Creating certainty where there is none: Artificial intelligence as political concept
Cristóbal Garibay-Petersen Marta Lorimer, and Bayar Menzat
(Big Data & Society)
"Recent developments in research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) have prompted a growing politicisation of AI. In this paper, we critically analyse how AI is being construed in public discourse and with what political implications. Approaching AI as a mobilising political concept, and focusing on the public pronouncements made by influential tech commentators, we identify and subject to technical and critical scrutiny four key themes in contemporary discourses on AI. First, we show how AI discourses endorse anthropological commitments that create false equivalences between human and artificial intelligence, and suggest that all are equally affected by AI. Second, we demonstrate that AI discourses unproblematically indulge in agential constructs, which ascribe agency to AI while obfuscating the role of humans in its development. Third, we explain how the economic assumptions made by these discourses support specific political interests. Finally, we show that discourses on AI endorse a set of temporal assumptions that reduce the space for democratic intervention. We conclude that AI is becoming more than what its ‘technical’ specifications would warrant; however, this is happening in a way that limits the space for democratic engagement with, and control of, the technology itself."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517251396079
What do you wish for Mastodon to come true in 2026?
@mellifluousbox I wish more people from academia will migrate to Mastodon, specially from the #STS field
Can we teach #STS whilst questioning its canonisation and disciplining? @sts
Using @stsing, and supported by @KAEEGoetheUni, I seek to infrastructure a conversation on these concerns.
Creating certainty where there is none: Artificial intelligence as political concept
Cristóbal Garibay-Petersen Marta Lorimer, and Bayar Menzat
(Big Data & Society)
"Recent developments in research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) have prompted a growing politicisation of AI. In this paper, we critically analyse how AI is being construed in public discourse and with what political implications. Approaching AI as a mobilising political concept, and focusing on the public pronouncements made by influential tech commentators, we identify and subject to technical and critical scrutiny four key themes in contemporary discourses on AI. First, we show how AI discourses endorse anthropological commitments that create false equivalences between human and artificial intelligence, and suggest that all are equally affected by AI. Second, we demonstrate that AI discourses unproblematically indulge in agential constructs, which ascribe agency to AI while obfuscating the role of humans in its development. Third, we explain how the economic assumptions made by these discourses support specific political interests. Finally, we show that discourses on AI endorse a set of temporal assumptions that reduce the space for democratic intervention. We conclude that AI is becoming more than what its ‘technical’ specifications would warrant; however, this is happening in a way that limits the space for democratic engagement with, and control of, the technology itself."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517251396079
Can we teach #STS whilst questioning its canonisation and disciplining? @sts
Using @stsing, and supported by @KAEEGoetheUni, I seek to infrastructure a conversation on these concerns.
I've asked a version of this question before, maybe, but here goes: favorite work that either discusses interpretive orientation as method/orientation, or is e.g. of interpretive scholarship that also reflects on interpretive aspect? Article or chapter length preferred. Thanks!
@julsraemy @acka47 apologies, I didn't mean to stick an unwanted label on you. I worked in a DH lab for 8 years while doing my research, and came out the other side considering myself to be an #sts practitioner more than anything else, so I am projecting 😄 But yes, it is hard to get more #sts than Actor Network Theory!
@acka47 nice! I am definitely down to hear about what linkeddata looks like from the perspective of #sts and learn how that can inform the use of bibframe.
I think many people reject bibframe out of hand because, despite years of good work, not enough effort has been made to make it accessible to people who are working with data on the web.
@ink I like it. It might trigger some people to explore JSON-LD/Linked Open Usable Data with regard to #Bibframe where LOUD does not have much traction yet. Also, you can follow up nicely on @julsraemy's Tuesday talk "Linked Open Usable Data for Cultural Heritage: Community Building and Semantic Interoperability in Practice": https://forum.swib.org/t/linked-open-usable-data-for-cultural-heritage-community-building-and-semantic-interoperability-in-practice/1443 #swib25
@acka47 nice! I am definitely down to hear about what linkeddata looks like from the perspective of #sts and learn how that can inform the use of bibframe.
I think many people reject bibframe out of hand because, despite years of good work, not enough effort has been made to make it accessible to people who are working with data on the web.
GLOBALIZING WILDLIFE is now available for pre-order with UNC Press! and what a cover!
My contribution is a chapter about otter conservation, juxtaposing the free movement of consumer goods and fossil fuel with otter containment in coastal California
Pre-orders save 30% with code 01SOCIAL30
https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469694757/globalizing-wildlife/
#AnimalStudies #EnvHist #STS #conservation #bookstodon #shipping #oil #California #histodons
GLOBALIZING WILDLIFE is now available for pre-order with UNC Press! and what a cover!
My contribution is a chapter about otter conservation, juxtaposing the free movement of consumer goods and fossil fuel with otter containment in coastal California
Pre-orders save 30% with code 01SOCIAL30
https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469694757/globalizing-wildlife/
#AnimalStudies #EnvHist #STS #conservation #bookstodon #shipping #oil #California #histodons
I’m looking for some accounts on certain subjects, who/what would you recommend?
- #sociology (macro, urban, digital, antiracist criminology, cultural, transformative)
- #PublicInterestTech (inequality, advocacy, ethical/responsible tech)
- #sts (sociology, technology, race, policy)
- #police (technology, surveillance, segregation in the US)
- advocacy groups in the US that focus on any of the above
- other things you think I might like!
@Ashedryden the #sts hashtag can be good for discovering people, but you already knew that!
I’m looking for some accounts on certain subjects, who/what would you recommend?
- #sociology (macro, urban, digital, antiracist criminology, cultural, transformative)
- #PublicInterestTech (inequality, advocacy, ethical/responsible tech)
- #sts (sociology, technology, race, policy)
- #police (technology, surveillance, segregation in the US)
- advocacy groups in the US that focus on any of the above
- other things you think I might like!
![The mounting social, ecological and animal welfare issues associated with animal agriculture have inspired research and development on novel protein technologies that promise pathways towards less harmful futures. Protein transitions advocates envision significant changes to food production, including the potential removal of millions of animals from food production systems. This future is not at all guaranteed and dependent upon the complex and uncertain processes through which alternatives emerge and come to negotiate place-based socio-technical regimes. In this paper we extend the multi-level perspective used within the sustainability transitions literature by integrating it with Bruno Latour’s concept of propositions as a way of analysing how places shape and are shaped by emerging niche industries, in this case the plant-based meat industry in Australia. Through interviews, workshops and desk-based analysis we focus on six key elements shaping the plant-based meat proposition: matters of concern, networks, practices, ontologies, recalcitrance, and omissions. The analysis reveals a plant-based meat infrastructure emerging in the shadow of the animal meat industry and a realm of innovative strategies oriented at boosting acceptance, such as hosting conferences, writing reports, and infiltrating animal meat aisles in supermarkets. [alt text trimmed for length]](https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/132/772/822/280/650/original/86eee5ffbfe79160.png)
