Imaginary magnitude

This CFP just in through a mailinglist. Have a look at it. Or ignore it.

Call for Papers

Patrick Suppes Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and
Technology, Stanford University

“Agnotology:  The Cultural Production of Ignorance”
  
Professors Londa Schiebinger and Robert Proctor seek papers for the
preparation of a volume introducing a new theoretical perspective and
methodology - agnotology, the cultural production of ignorance-into
interdisciplinary science studies. Papers should explore how ignorance is
produced or maintained in diverse settings, through (for example)
deliberate or inadvertent neglect, secrecy and suppression, document
destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical
selectivity and forgetfulness. The point is to develop a taxonomy of
understandings and uses of ignorance, but also tools for understanding how
and why diverse forms of knowledge do not or did not “come to be” or are
delayed or neglected at different points in history. Examples include the
ignorance of cancer hazards caused by the “doubt” peddled by trade
associations (Brown and Williamson’s “doubt is our product”), the
non-transfer of birth control technologies from colonial outposts to
imperial centers (by virtue of successive chains of disinterest and
suppression), the non-development of certain technologies by virtue of
structural apathies or disinterest, impacts of disciplinarity on
agnotogenesis, etc.  The proposed volume is exploratory and open-ended,
with the purpose of coming to grips with how ignorance has been
understood, created, and ignored, linking this also to allied creations of
secrecy, uncertainty, confusion, silence, forgetfulness, etc - especially
as these pertain to scientific inquiries and outcomes. The idea is that a
great deal of attention has been given to epistemology (the study of how
we know), when “how or why we don’t know” is often at least as
interesting-and remarkably undertheorized by comparison.

While the volume will focus on science, the general approach will also be
taken up in other disciplines, including cultural studies, history,
literary studies, anthropology, and sociology.
Paper proposals should include a working title plus a 300 word abstract.
Please send to Londa Schiebinger at schiebinger@stanford.edu by August 30,
2005.

Anne Galloway is also commenting on Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s post on the present state of STS (related post here). Among other things, she argues about studying emerging tech, rather than other technology that “the primary advantage of studying emerging tech is to identity points of intervention before products are built and sold”. While that may be so, I think the critique about a pre-occupation with emergin technologies has something to it.

Presently, I am engaged in a study of the food industry sector from 1940 until today. In some ways, it is an emerging tech sector: irradiation, deep freeze, microwaves ovens, longer chains of transport, nutrition science entered the scene or became more useful. On the other hand, it is - at least in Sweden since the 1960’s - a quite stable sector. And I think it is important to analyze these things, even thought they are already made and sold (and how ’stable’ is a product, even after it has been designed and sold, that’s what I would like to know).

Even though the products - a package of sausages - are “built and sold”, the surrounding policy landscape can change, and in some cases such as the food sector it also ought to change, and perhaps faster than what is the case. Non-change plays into the hands of the big companies in this sector. Non-study of this “non-emerging tech” sector by STS people is not a very good thing. I do have the feeling that the STS heard that run off to the next new technology every once in a while is a bit too large.