Message posted on 11/01/2022

EASST panel 006: Science and technology studies at the airport

                Dear colleagues,

Apparently, it is important to advertise that our open panel at EASST 
invites submissions so here we go:

If you are using STS perspectives to make sense of the airport as a 
place and space in any way, please consider submitting to a panel that I 
co-organize with Sylvia Kühne and Bettina Paul.

Best wishes, also on behalf of Sylvia and Bettina
Torsten


_Abstract_
**Panel 006: Science and technology studies at the airport**

Airports have long been a topic of inquiry for social scientists and 
scholars of science and technology in society. They are an interesting 
and valuable topic of research because they allow to address manifold 
questions in a relatively well-defined space. Airports are often testing 
grounds and early adopters of new technologies, specifically for 
managing the flow of large amounts of people, immigration management, 
and security. This makes them exemplary places of automation work, where 
the logic, conditions and consequences of the design of the 
human-machine division of functions can be explored. They are also 
highly paradoxical places where border management and consumer culture 
overlap and where anonymity of the crowd exists parallel to a control 
and identification practice that people have to pass in order to get 
access.

Airports are also relevant for scholars who are interested in 
multispecies studies for example “encounters of animals and technology 
in airport operations” (Bauer et al. 2019). Most recently, they have 
become a relevant field of enquiry for questions regarding environmental 
factors, sustainability and waste management. So far, those 
investigations are largely isolated and often do not relate to one 
another e.g. questions of security and human animal encounters are 
rarely discussed together despite the fact that there is significant 
overlap.

This panel aims to bring together scholars who use the airport as a 
space of inquiry with the goal to explore the value of STS perspectives 
in this context. We invite contributions from scholars who are 
interested in or work on the movement of people, goods, and animals, 
borders and migration, surveillance and security, questions of 
sustainability, as well as other topics as they relate to STS at the 
airport. We welcome theoretical and conceptual research as well as 
empirical analysis at the airport that utilize or further develop an STS 
perspective.
            
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