Message posted on 03/03/2021

CfP "Scales, Norms, and Limit Values" annual meeting GTG & GWMT in Vienna 17.-19.9.2021

                Call for Papers | Call for panels:

The Society for the History of Technology (GTG) and the Society for the 
History of Science, Medicine and Technology (GWMT) announce the topic of 
their joint annual conference in Vienna:

*Scales, Norms, and Limit Values in Times of (Digital) Change*
Technical Museum Vienna | University of Vienna, 17.-19. September 2021
Deadline 7. April 2021

Scales, norms and limit values regulate procedures within production 
lines and transnational infrastructures; they pervade hospital wards and 
university lectures; they fill scientific journals and bureaucratic 
regulations. Scales occur in science, medicine and technology alike, and 
have become ubiquitous in everyday life. Scale readings help to control 
devices and machines. They are often the interface that users rely on. 
Norms, for the most part, are based on combined scales, for example 
technical measures and medical indicators. This is true regardless in 
which format a standard was defined (DIN, ISO, TGL or the ГОСТ-formats 
of the former USSR). Limit values are legal and technical 
specifications; they play an important role in long-term planning, but 
also in risk communication and the regulation of public life. Not least, 
the format of this planned conference depends crucially on the R-value 
in late summer. Limit values make it possible to read the environment in 
terms of infectiousness, toxicity or radiation exposure. But how are 
threshold values implemented? Does the »counter-knowledge« of citizens’ 
action committees or the citizen science movement contribute to their 
formulation?

Measurement and evaluation procedures pervade sciences and humanities 
alike. But a differentiated study of the scales employed in this process 
is still pending in the history of science, medicine and technology. And 
what is more, ratings, rankings and indicators draw criticism. 
Established scales hide possible alternatives and spaces for 
negotiation. In the data age, however, they are becoming more and more 
widespread, and are more and more freely available. It is easy to lose 
sight of how indeterminate many natural dimensions still were in the 
early modern era or the 18th century. An exact measurement scale of 
temperature, for example, was not available at that time.

It first had to be developed and demanded laborious intellectual and 
contractual negotiation. Many universal measurement units and standards 
arise from competitive situations, which are surprisingly national and 
spearheaded by industry. However, once established, the scale of 
temperature enabled new practices. In the 19th century, the clinical 
thermometer changed the view of the body and translated symptoms into 
data. It had ramifications as far as India, where Ayurvedic medicine and 
colonial medicine were newly conciliated through this instrument. The 
complex relationships that scales are able to mediate are brought to 
light when practices of scaling or data practices are investigated.

The joint annual conference of the GTG and the GWMT is therefore 
dedicated to the role of scales in science, medicine and technology, in 
particular with regard to the formation of technical norms, standards 
and limit values. Which are the intellectual and social negotiations 
necessary to produce scales of measurement? Conversely, how do they 
influence how we conceive of nature, the body, technology, social 
conditions and the individual? How did standardization and norm-setting 
processes take course in the Middle Ages or in data-based genetics? What 
role is ascribed to indicators in generating a semblance of objectivity? 
In what way and with which consequences do scales create coherence in 
visualized representation (graphs, diagrams, temperature curves, maps, 
timelines, etc.)? What does the layer of control expressed in scales, 
norms and limit values constitute, given that this regulation pervades 
our living environment and the assembled machines and apparatuses of the 
Technosphere? Which individual and collective practices can be observed 
in digital data regimes? What conclusions does the history of big data 
provide for science and administration? How and by whom were data 
generated in the history of statistics? How does the interaction of 
pragmatic warning levels with complex statistical scales work out in the 
current pandemic? How do we interact with scales and vice versa?

Three subject areas deserve special attention:

1)  Scales and the Indexing of Materiality in Environmentalism and Economics

Scales are involved in a variety of ways in the indexing, exploitation 
and management of materiality. This is true for the specific density of 
substances, for medical-diagnostic parameters, for the history of global 
resource balances, and for the trajectories of matter essential to war 
or the colonial extraction of raw materials. In dealing with 
environmental phenomena and climatic change, various scales, norms and 
standards were developed, discussed and rejected (e.g. the combination 
of small and large scales in dynamic climate modeling, climate 
vulnerability indicators, the theory of scales in statistics, 
energy-based units of ecological economics). Emission values, pollutant 
indicators and limit values measure, regulate and normalize human 
existence in the world. They shape the relationship between people and 
the environment. Supply chains and logistics play a central role in 
making material available. Yet, the scalability of supply chains is not 
unlimited, and the non-scalable residuals of a particular material flow 
have been pointed out recently.

Research on the history of technology from the field of environmental 
and energy history is of interest here, as are »alternative« and »green 
technologies«, research on security, criticality and the history of 
infrastructure, on risk and technology assessment. What role do both 
technical and social norms and benchmarks play in the development and 
evaluation of technology? How does the view of a technological system 
change due to new measurement regimes or the new availability of data? 
What triggers ruptures in the perception and employment of technical 
systems, and when is their legal framework affected by change?


2)     Human Scales and Human Proportions

The measurement of the human body and its capabilities is closely linked 
to discourses on norms, »race«, heredity, and gender, as well as 
concepts of normality and deviance. On the one hand, there are 
quantifying approaches in anthropometry, intelligence testing, 
psychological characterology, and the clinical scores of personalized 
and evidence-based medicine, which are supposed to make people 
measurable and comparable. On the other hand, the human body has been 
providing the basic measure or the just proportion, which shaped the 
encounter with the world throughout architecture, art and design. This 
proportionality of the body is only fractured, when techniques of 
magnifying, metricizing, imaging and datafying begin to be applied. In 
Antiquity, the »doctrine of the critical days« of Hippocratic medicine 
sought to periodize the disease. In the Middle Ages, it was the 
harmonies of music which, with their ascending scales, seemed accessible 
to a mathematical order and which served as models for measurement. The 
intervals of musical scales turned out to be culture-specific, which 
lead to the development of ethnomusicology. From the color scales of 
early modern uroscopy to the display of false colors in modern imaging 
processes, scales, classifications and categorizations play a central 
role in experimental cultures. In the 20th century, the abandonment of 
Fordist concepts and automation efforts was often seen as the 
»humanization« of production. However, mixtures and conflicts of human 
versus technical units and dimensions, are still prevalent. Technical 
standards alike produce inclusions and exclusions of human and animal 
kinds, regarding their gender, race and disability. Norms and types are 
deeply inscribed in historical data collection and statistical 
categorizations. But how does a self-learning, artificial neural network 
unlearn the bias towards racist classification and the stigmatization of 
deviance?

In medicine, not only has the materiality of the patient’s body been 
metrically developed since the 19th century and thus made supposedly 
objectifiable, but also immaterial things such as pain, psychological 
complaints or the need for therapy are quantified by scores, and 
treatments are statistically evaluated by EBM. This leads to an 
abundance of scales that have either been static for decades, as in the 
case of blood values, or are in a constant flow of negotiation 
processes. What is the history of scales in medical research and 
practice? How are these instruments developed, read, misinterpreted and 
willfully ignored? How do measured values, scales and scores create 
material reality and thus shape the practical world structure between 
doctors, patients and science?


3) Global and Planetary Scales

Within the range of subdisciplines present at the joint annual 
conference, there is a trend towards large scale research perspectives: 
historical pandemic research reconstructs transcontinental epidemics of 
the last millennia. Infrastructures cross national borders and are 
strategically expanded by Europe in the colonial era. The objects of 
research themselves can be of considerable dimensions. The history of 
astronomy and geology have inevitably dealt with deep time and vast 
spatial dimensions. As of late, geologists have begun defining the new 
geological epoch of the Anthropocene based on stratigraphic markers. 
Global histories of science, medicine and technology question familiar 
narratives and supposedly »universal« explanations. However, does the 
investigation of non-European knowledge lead to new universalisms? How 
is it possible nevertheless for non-European technologies and forms of 
knowledge to be appreciated beyond colonial perspectives? Which 
conceptions of time do different scientific disciplines employ?

Another focus of the conference, which runs through all three subject 
areas, is the linking of scales with the material heritage. This strong 
nexus is documented in the extensive collections of the Technical Museum 
Vienna, and other scientific and medical history museums. A day of 
collections and archives will be offered in the run-up to the joint GTG 
and GWMT conference (16.9.2021, please refer to the conference website). 
There are also excursions and object lessons on the program (17.9.21). 
Separate calls for topics are circulating for the Forum History of the 
Life Sciences and the meeting of the Driburger Kreis, which this year is 
being held together with the GTG’s young scholars conference.


Deadline, abstracts, and the question of presence

Submissions of individual papers (30 minutes per paper including 
discussion) or panels (for four papers of 30 minutes each including 
discussion, three papers usually with commentary) are welcome. 
Suggestions for innovative formats will be examined with interest.

If the quality is the same, preference is given to panels that span 
academic generations and reflect diversity. Interdisciplinary papers are 
expressly invited. Contributions beyond the conference topic are 
possible to a limited extent. The two societies invite the presentation 
of newly approved research projects relating to the history of science, 
medicine and technology. A reimbursement of travel expenses will not be 
possible. The conference fee is reduced for members of one of the two 
organizing societies.

If the overall epidemic situation will not allow face-to-face meetings 
in autumn, contributors will be informed after submission about the 
possible change to a full online format. We understand submitted 
contributions as binding offers for the two possible formats online or 
personal attendance. For proposals for individual papers, an abstract 
and a short biography are required (max. 1 page); in the case of panels, 
the abstracts of the individual contributions are supplemented by a 
general abstract and include a title for the whole panel.

Contributions must be submitted by 7th April 2021, via the conference 
website.

English submissions via:
URL: https://www.technischesmuseum.at/scales_conference
German submissions via:
https://www.technischesmuseum.at/skalentagung

Contact email: gtg_gwmt_uni_wien@tmw.at


_________________________________________________

Anna Echterhölter

Professor of History of Science

University of Vienna

Department of History

Universitätsring 1

1010 Vienna

Austria


T + 43-1-4277-40 865

https://fsp-wissenschaftsgeschichte.univie.ac.at/upcoming-events/ 

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