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<br>
<br>
<br>*Call for Papers*
<br>
<br>
<br>*The Changing Political Economy of Research & Innovation (CPERI)*
<br>
<br>*6th Annual International **Workshop, Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th July
<br>2018 [Please note change of date]*
<br>
<br>*Institute for Social Futures, Lancaster University, UK*
<br>
<br>We cordially invite submissions to the 6th CPERI workshop, following
<br>previous events at Lancaster (2012), Toronto (2013), San Diego (2015),
<br>Liège (2016) and Boston (2017).  CPERI is a unique global forum for the
<br>exploration of scholarship regarding the *political economy of research &
<br>innovation* (R&I), and hence at the intersection of STS, political economy
<br>and multiple other cognate disciplines, including geography,  sociology,
<br>politics, law, education, medicine, engineering, computing & philosophy.  The
<br>workshop series is dedicated to cultivating a growing community of
<br>committed and engaged international scholars of the political economy of
<br>R&I who will continue to build on their CPERI connections at subsequent
<br>workshops and conferences, and through collaboration on research.  We aim
<br>to bring this crucial but neglected issue more centrally to major
<br>conferences in adjacent fields, where it remains overlooked.  With these
<br>goals in mind, and to assist attendance from as diverse a group as
<br>possible, the workshop is also being held *directly before the EASST
<br>Conference 2018, also in Lancaster*. Attendance is free.
<br>
<br>Our theme for 2018 is:
<br>
<br>*Making & Doing Technoscientific Futures Better*
<br>
<br>*Keynote speakers: *
<br>
<br>*Professor Susan Robertson*
<br>* (Cambridge) on “the
<br>University in an age of platform capitalism”*
<br>
<br>*Dr Mark Carrigan* * (Cambridge) on “Securing
<br>public knowledge amidst the epistemic chaos of platform capitalism?”*
<br>
<br>[*Further keynote speakers for the event will be confirmed shortly.*]
<br>
<br>There is no shortage of scholarship identifying the profound challenges of
<br>contemporary techno-scientific lifeworlds, whether regarding the
<br>Anthropocene (Hamilton 2017, Bonneuil & Fressoz 2016), emergence of post-
<br>(or even trans-) human ‘digital disruptive innovation’ (Harari 2016,
<br>Lanier
<br>2017), or their conjunction in the emergent ‘technosphere’ (e.g. Haff
<br>2016,
<br>Szerszynski 2017).  Meanwhile, and not unrelated, public spheres (viz.
<br>CPERI 2016, Liège) continue to be upended and turbulently transformed as
<br>digital social media, and potentially their deepening percolation into
<br>material life, unleashes social division, economic inequality and ‘culture
<br>wars’ polarization.  Indeed, 2017 was the year in which a new
<br>‘reasonable’
<br>or ‘respectable’ declinism regarding ‘civilization’ (often identified
<br>with
<br>Western and/or liberal democracy) went mainstream (Luce 2017, Reich 2017,
<br>King 2017, Cf Mishra 2017).
<br>
<br>Techno-science, and thereby the research and innovation (R&I) from which it
<br>hails, plays a crucial role in all these narratives, whether optimistic and
<br>utopian or pessimistic and dystopian.  Indeed, the zeitgeist of doom and
<br>incipient barbarism raises with renewed urgency long-standing but
<br>fundamental, ‘big’ questions about the crucial role of science and
<br>technology and innovation – and, crucially, education – in the evolution
<br>and formation of ‘civilizations’ and stable, thriving societies (e.g.
<br>Mumford 2010, Mauss 2006, Beinhocker 2007).  With digital social media,
<br>built on privately-owned and deliberately addictive platforms, parsing up
<br>the public sphere, are there even socio-technical grounds any longer for a
<br>single, shared (if not ‘objective’) body of knowledge that both binds a
<br>society together and is itself collaboratively developed and disseminated
<br>by its R&I and educational institutions?
<br>
<br>There is a grave danger that this new Western declinism simply serves to
<br>enact and perform its bleakest premonitions, even as it may aim to
<br>forestall them.  For which socio-political forces benefit most from
<br>deepening the public sense of things ‘falling apart’? Indeed, this
<br>challenge resonates particularly strongly with the contemporary situation
<br>of STS more generally.  On the one hand, the situated co-production of
<br>(materialized) knowledges with worlds and selves is increasingly accepted
<br>not only across academia, but is now also spilling over into public
<br>common-sense.  But, on the other, today STS finds itself in a predicament
<br>arising from neglect of many of its traditional presuppositions, which now
<br>appear in radical flux.  Many core insights are being (ab)used in ways that
<br>undermine the sociopolitical causes that STS has traditionally supported,
<br>and instead taken to legitimate practices of ‘post-truth’ and nihilist
<br>rejection of expertise (see CPERI 2017, Boston); while *post hoc* critiques
<br>of specific technological trajectories and technocratic programmes of
<br>anticipatory forecasting only serve to deepen political paralysis vis-à-vis
<br>a daunting future.
<br>
<br>To counter this downward dynamic meaningfully, however, demands not just
<br>the voluntaristic politico-cultural formulation of new ‘narratives’ or
<br>‘myths’ for society, even as these are undoubtedly both powerful and
<br>crucial.  It also calls for new forms of active engagement with R&I that
<br>both underpin such new narratives with demonstrable practical experiment,
<br>and thereby bring a hands-on, in-depth and appreciative understanding of
<br>current R&I frontiers that can possibly direct these from within, not just
<br>criticize or critique from without.
<br>
<br>Such future-oriented and engaged research must also go beyond simple
<br>activism by actively interrogating and illuminating the political economic
<br>and ‘structural’ conditions of any such particular techno-scientific
<br>initiative as these are changing in parallel.  Amidst the Anthropocene,
<br>post-human innovation and cosmopolitized globalism, we see transformations
<br>underway in (global) political economy, political ecology and human
<br>self-definition, driven by the US-dominated, neoliberal conditions in which
<br>STS has largely developed to date – and has not only taken for granted but
<br>sometimes refused to examine.  STS must thus engage more concertedly with
<br>these changing but presupposed aspects of its research, and vice versa.
<br>
<br>In short, what remains urgently needed is *(re-)constructive* research that
<br>engages with *changing* and *shaping* emergent techno-scientific futures in
<br>‘better’ directions.  This encompasses not only positive agendas and
<br>initiatives – e.g. ‘responsible research & innovation’ – across the
<br>systems
<br>of socio-technical life – e.g. health & medicine, environment, mobility,
<br>energy, cities & construction, production & consumption etc… – but also
<br>regarding the institutions and practices of knowledge production.
<br>
<br>This workshop invites papers at the boundaries of STS and political economy
<br>and/or political ecology, across the spectrum of positions (including
<br>(trans-) feminist, post-human(ist) and non-Western scholarship),
<br>investigating new perspectives on key global challenges in ways that offer
<br>promising approaches to future-oriented action.
<br>
<br>Papers are invited (for 20 minute presentations) on any theme of
<br>contemporary R&I or higher education, insofar as they engage with making
<br>and/or doing technoscientific futures better, for instance:
<br>
<br>·         The Precarity and Politics of the Expert / The Fact
<br>·         New/Emerging Forms of Value & Valuation in Science, Technology &
<br>Medicine
<br>·         Futures of Knowledge & Education Institutions amidst Changing
<br>Knowledge Cultures
<br>·         Austerity and the Economics of Innovation
<br>·         Challenges to Responsible Research & Innovation
<br>·         The Geography of (Alternative) Knowledges
<br>·         Diverse Knowers and Knowing
<br>·         Commercial Imperatives in Research and Innovation
<br>·         Scientific Ambiguity and Environmental Science
<br>·         Complexity and Scientific Decision-making
<br>·         Technologically-driven Social/Political Change
<br>·         Ontological / Epistemic Politics of Emerging Technoscientific
<br>Fields
<br>
<br>*We especially encourage contributions from scholars from Eastern and
<br>Southern Europe and beyond, areas which are not well-represented within our
<br>network, and with whom we would like to foster opportunities for future
<br>collaboration, particularly at the early-to-mid career stage.*
<br>
<br>*Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and should include the
<br>author’s name, institutional affiliation, and contact information.
<br>Questions and abstracts should be sent via email to *
<br>CPERIWorkshop2018@gmail.com * by 30 March. *
<br>
<br>We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lancaster’s *Institute for Social
<br>Futures* in hosting this event.
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Organizers:
<br>
<br>David Tyfield (Lancaster University)
<br>
<br>Stevie de Saille (Sheffield University)
<br>
<br>Janja Komljenovic (Lancaster University)
<br>
<br>
<br>--
<br>Stevienna de Saille, PhD
<br>Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of the Human (iHuman)
<br>Department of Sociological Studies / Faculty of Social Sciences
<br>University of Sheffield
<br>c/o ICOSS, 219 Portobello
<br>Sheffield S1 4DP
<br>s.desaille@sheffield.ac.uk
<br>
<br>@ihumansheff
<br>http://ihuman.group.shef.ac.uk
<br>
<br>New book!: Knowledge as Resistance: The Feminist International Network of
<br>Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering --
<br>http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137527264
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