Our next session on the 19th November will be centred around a classical text: Niklas Luhmann’s ‘The future cannot begin’. (Thanks to Michael Guggenheim for the recommendation!) The discussion will help us closely engage with such central concepts in STS as progress, planning, and technological innovation.
The meeting will take place at 18.00 at the sociology kitchen area (PEG 3.G 204).
In the winter term our kitchen sessions will be focusing on different temporalities and the ways in which they relate to each other. Our first meeting will take place on the 29th October; with the help of our special guest, Kristin Asdal from TIK in Oslo, we’ll discuss the importance of timing in processes of commodification. Kristin’s paper titled ‘Enacting values from the sea: On innovation devices, value practices, and the co-modifications of markets and bodies in aquaculture’ (published as a contribution to this book) is available as a PDF – just ask Endre for a copy.
The meeting, as usual, will take place at the Sociology kitchen area (PEG 3G 204) between 18.00 and 20.00 – looking forward to seeing you there!
In the discussion with Stefan Ouma the idea came up to read some recent works by Anna Tsing and her colleagues in Aarhus, where they keep themselves busy with a fascinating project on the anthropocene. One possible reading would be a chapter of Anna’s in an edited volume titled Experiments in Holism, along with her web project with Elaine Gan called ‘A fungal clock: experiments in representing time’.
The meeting will take place at the usual place & time on the 9th July – this will be the last session of this term.
Our next kitchen meeting will take place on the 25th June, between 18.00 and 20.00, in the soc kitchen area (PEG 3G 204). This time our special guest will be Rachel Douglas-Jones from the IT University in Copenhagen. Drawing on John Law and Wen-yuan Lin’s paper on Chinese medical practice (a version of which John had presented at the 100 years of critical sociology conference), she’d like to use this session to discuss her own fieldwork in Beijing.
Those of you who can’t wait until next week to discuss postcolonialism and related concepts should go to Vijay Mishra’s lecture on Thursday the 18th June, starting at 18.00 in in IG 4.201
Our next kitchen STS meeting will be organised jointly with the AK Politische Ethnographie: it will be the launch event of an edited book titled ‘Architecture, Materiality and Society: Connecting Sociology of Architecture with Science and Technology Studies’ . The meeting will take place in the sociology kitchen area (PEG 3G 204) at 18.00 on the 11th June, where the editors, Anna-Lisa Müller and Werner Reichmann, will present the book, and Endre Dányi will briefly talk about the relationship between architecture and politics through his contribution to the book.
In Brita Brenna’s paper ‘the market’ was analysed as an important context for the development of a particular understanding of ‘nature’. But the relation can be easily reversed: the market does not only help make sense of nature, it also contributes to its ongoing production. How this happens will be discussed with the help of Stefan Ouma and his new book titled Assembling Export Markets: The Making and Unmaking of Global Food Connections in West Africa. (We will discuss the Introduction and Chapter 6 – ask Endre for the PDF.)
The meeting will be held at 18.00 in the STS Kitchen (PEG 3G 204) on the 28th May.
What does ‘context’ stand for, when we talk about a postcolonial context? How do contexts work, and how can history contribute to a better understanding of that work? These are some of the questions we will discuss with Linda Madsen, who has recently finished her PhD at TiK in Oslo, and her reading of Brita Brenna’s paper on Norwegian natural history and its contexts. The meeting will take place at the usual time and place on the 7th May.
Our first meeting in the summer term will be held at the usual place (PEG building, 3G 204) and the usual time (18.00-20.00) on the 23rd April. Drawing on some of the discussions we had last time on statebuilding and electricity infrastructures, we’ll start the term with the first chapter of Timothy Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt – do let me (Endre) know if you need a PDF copy of the text.
The summer term is still miles away, but we’re already thinking of organising our upcoming discussions around postcolonialism. A nice segue into this theme will be Nida Alahmad’s Kitchen STS talk on the 9th March, at 18.00 in PEG 1.G 165. Nida’s talk will be based on a draft paper titled ‘Illuminating the State: Statebuilding and Electricity in Iraq’ – please send me (Endre) an email for a copy.
The last Kitchen STS meeting of this term will take place on the 6th February, at 10.30 in Café Albatros. Our special guest this time will be Noortje Marres, senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, and director of the exciting interdisciplinary research centre CSISP. She’ll help us bring our discussion about the methodological implications of monadology to a conclusion by discussing a paper she has co-authored with Carolin Gerlitz on ‘interface methods’.
