Eurograd message

                Dear all,
<br>
<br>I am circulating a CfP for the Meeting of the Society for the History of 
<br>Technology that will take place in Milan, 24-27 October. The deadline 
<br>for submitting individual proposals to any open session as this one is 
<br>March 20. You can find the proposal here: 
<br>https://www.historyoftechnology.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SHOT2019_open-session_Dicenta.pdf
<br>
<br>Engineering Modernity, Nationalism, and Colonialism
<br>
<br>Mara Dicenta
<br>Science and Technology Studies
<br>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy (NY)
<br>dicenm@rpi.edu
<br>
<br>The institutionalization of science came together with the 
<br>solidification of the modern State as
<br>legitimate actors for organizing knowledge and governance throughout the 
<br>19th century
<br>(Foucault, 2003, 2009). Along with an imperialist drive, States aimed to 
<br>reach every realm of life
<br>within and across borders to expand and secure its own interests. 
<br>Knowing populations,
<br>organisms, and geographies became the path for success and stability 
<br>while structuring an
<br>archaeology of knowledge that enabled governments to unfold regulations 
<br>to, ultimately,
<br>optimize its populations and territories. Since then, rights´ struggles 
<br>became inseparable from the
<br>scientific knowledges of the human as a biological, psychological, or 
<br>ecological domain. At that
<br>time, the process of civilizing justified a mode of doing colonial 
<br>science, one that was validated
<br>through the inferiorization of Others (peoples, lands, epistemologies). 
<br>At that time, scientists
<br>involved in exploring, taxonomizing, and doing cartographies, 
<br>participated in mapping and
<br>uncovering the world (Giucci, 2014). Classifying came along with 
<br>drawings and other
<br>representation techniques that enacted ideals, hierarchies, and 
<br>politics. How did these forms of
<br>ordering the world were accompanied by aesthetic values that helped 
<br>reconfigure societies,
<br>natures, landscapes, and modes of coexistence? What were the tastes of 
<br>scientific colonialism?
<br>Which symbolic species, lands, or humans composed the narratives and 
<br>devices (coins, flags) of
<br>expansionism?
<br>
<br>An intensification of State planning through science marked the 
<br>beginning of the 20th
<br>century. The Second Industrial Revolution and the World Wars motivated 
<br>narrower ties between
<br>Science, Industry, and the State in a period when economics was 
<br>dominated by the import-export
<br>paradigm. From right to left nationalist ideologies, Nations at that 
<br>time centered science as a way
<br>to actively engineer its societies, landscapes, and productivity (Scott, 
<br>1998: 5). From Argentina
<br>to the URSS, Germany and the US, engineers and dams became figures of 
<br>modernity. At the
<br>same time, introduction and experimentation of species became normalized 
<br>as a vehicle for
<br>engineering nature and society and plants, seeds, and animals 
<br>participated in nationalist projects
<br>as agents of modernity. However, those state-planned utopian engineering 
<br>projects were also
<br>accompanied by failures due to the combination of administrative 
<br>management of nature and
<br>society, a high modernist ideology, utopic technological optimism, 
<br>authoritarian methods, and
<br>disavowal of local histories (Scott, 1998). Besides, failures took 
<br>particular forms in Southernized
<br>regions, where biopolitics is not a story of heroes and successes but 
<br>rather one of failures and
<br>dependency (Vessuri, 2007). The back and forth between high modernist 
<br>optimism and the
<br>narrative of failure, in Latin American countries, has provoked distrust 
<br>towards science and the
<br>State, suspect of responding to foreign interests (Barandiarán, 2018; 
<br>Kreimer, 2011) and of
<br>justifying authoritarianism in the name of modernity (Vessuri, 2007). 
<br>Which were the icons of
<br>the industrial modernity of the time and how were they utilized for 
<br>national projects? Which
<br>visions did this technologies, animals, humans, and representations 
<br>portrayed and how did they
<br>intervene sociomaterial worlds? How are they today reconfigured through 
<br>power structures in the
<br>form of memory, revival, or ruination?
<br>
<br>In this panel, we explore the intersections between nationalism, 
<br>colonialism, science, aesthetics,
<br>and social and natural engineering. How do imported landscapes get 
<br>translated in other regions?
<br>How do these designs respond to production, aesthetic, colonial, 
<br>historical, modern drives? How
<br>do they survive and changes? How can we trace nature transitions from 
<br>agroindustry towards
<br>visions of apocalypse, collapse, and devastation? Which are the 
<br>aesthetic values and tastes
<br>involved in those unifying visions? And what colonial practices do they 
<br>convey, if we
<br>understood colonialism as the making of Others inferior to validate the 
<br>Self?
<br>We seek contributions that examine different regions, methods, and time 
<br>periods while
<br>considering the updating of Reaganist-Thatcherist-Pinochetist´s politics 
<br>across the world.
<br>The US-Mexico Wall or the Microsoft Submarine Data Centre are symbols of 
<br>contemporary
<br>politics: a form of liberalism which is ‘nationalist, authoritarian, and 
<br>racist’ (Therborn 2018).
<br>How are past and present dreamscapes of modernity (Jasanoff and 
<br>Sang-Hyun Kim, 2015)
<br>represented, aestheticized, and technologized and for which political 
<br>projects? And how have
<br>they mediated, transformed, and reconfigured more-than-human worlds?
<br>
<br>References:
<br>Barandiarán J (2018) Science and the environment in Chile. The politics 
<br>of Expert advice in a
<br>neoliberal democracy. MIT Press.
<br>Foucault M (2003) Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the College de 
<br>France 1975-76.
<br>Bertani M and Fontana A (eds). Picador.
<br>Foucault M (2009) Security, Territory, Population. Palgrave Macmillan.
<br>Giucci G (2014) Tierra del Fuego: La creación del Fin del Mundo. Buenos 
<br>Aires: Fondo de
<br>Cultura Económica.
<br>Jasanoff S and Sang-Hyun Kim (2015) Dreamscapes of Modernity: 
<br>Sociotechnical Imaginaries
<br>and the Fabrication of Power. The University of Chicago Press.
<br>Kreimer P (2011) Ciencia y periferia. Nacimiento, muerte y resurrección 
<br>de la biología
<br>molecular en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
<br>Scott JC (1998) Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the 
<br>human condition have
<br>failed. Yale University Press.
<br>Vessuri H (2007) “O inventamos, o erramos”. La ciencia como ideafuerza 
<br>en América Latina.
<br>Universidad Nacional de Quilmes.
<br>
<br>Best Regards,
<br>
<br>Mara Dicenta
<br>_______________________________________________
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