Eurograd message

                Dear all,

We are pleased to inform you that the upcoming STS-CH conference 
“Holding things together? Change, continuity, critique“ will take place 
from Sept 10 – 12, 2025 in Zurich. The conference is organized within 
the framework of the STS-CH association and is a joint endeavour between 
the city’s three universities: University of Zurich (UZH), ETH and 
Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK).


More information are available also on our website: 
https://sts-ch.org/sts-ch-2025/  and 
below. Further details regarding the call for papers and panels and 
registration will follow in the coming months, but for now, we encourage 
you to save the date.


STS-CH Conference 2025

“Holding things together? Change, continuity, critique”

Date: Sept 10 - 12, 2025

Venue(s): University of Zurich, ETH, ZHdK



Best wishes,

Margo Boenig-Liptsin, Monika Dommann, Gabriel Dorthe, Kathrin Eitel, 
Karmen Franinovic, Leila Girschweiler, Nadja Kempter, Kiah Lian Rutz, 
Christopher Salter, Philippe Sormani, Bianca Vienni-Baptista (the 
conference committee)


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


  Holding things together?
  Change, continuity, critique

In response to multiple crises and uncertain futures, nostalgic factions 
of contemporary society sometimes lament lost togetherness and a lack of 
shared knowledge about what happens, what should be done, and how to 
make sense of it all. Political upheavals, economic inequalities, 
ecological devastations, and climate threats indeed do seem to call for 
restored unity and a renewed pact of knowledge in society governed by 
relevance. Desirable futures are then imagined through collective 
efforts and revived interdisciplinary perspectives, including science 
and technology studies (STS). Through collaborative programs, public 
engagement, action research, transdisciplinary ventures, and the idea 
that “things could be otherwise,” STS as a multifaceted research field 
indeed has come to be built around the hope for a more just and 
inclusive world.

As its title question indicates, the STS-CH 2025 conference opens up a 
space to reflect on the field’s normative commitments and empirical 
inquiries. Does the intellectual and political project of a patient 
constructivist analysis still fit with a state of the world in which 
justice and emancipation feel like vague dreams? And, if not, what else 
does STS have in store? Is there something like a “common good” that STS 
should advocate? Conversely, and 20 years after a resounding paper by 
Bruno Latour, in which he asked if “critique had run out of steam”, is 
STS able and willing to account for conflicting situations between 
irreconcilable worldviews? What is the status of critique in today’s 
world? How do different research cultures within STS deal with critique? 
What can we learn from STS rooted in North America or Asia?

The constitutive relationships between knowledge cultures, technical 
practices, and forms of collective life have always been essential to 
STS. Collaborative forms of action, including transdisciplinarity, 
collaboration and public participation, all of which reinforce 
connections and sustain cohesion in both epistemic and political 
pursuits, have been studied extensively and practically engaged in. This 
conference welcomes contributions that prolong these canonical endeavors 
or imagine new ventures, while inviting reflexive perspectives. Does the 
emphasis on how things and people “hold together” properly account for 
contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties? Does the 
indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating tumultuous 
times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how? Can the notion of 
a “common good” be dispensed with? If contemporary controversies are 
deemed to generate irreconcilable positions, what could be the 
contribution of STS to the deliberation and development of a collective 
journey toward a more cohesive and resilient world?

The STS-CH 2025 conference aims to *approach togetherness from different 
perspectives that inquire into processes and practices of change, 
continuity, critique and potentially also the deliberate destruction of 
existing structures, social or sociotechnical.* The goal is not to reach 
consensus on potential futures but to coproduce insights and support 
performative voices that imagine other liveable futures, connecting past 
and present experiences.

The conference will explore togetherness, transformation, inheritance 
and collectivity as means or devices, as well as discourses and 
practices, to navigate and recompose current societal worlds. We invite 
rethinking and reframing the following questions and lines of inquiry:

  * How does the emphasis on things and people “holding together” relate
    to contemporary conflicts, tensions, troubles, and uncertainties?
  * Does the indispensable role of togetherness and hope in navigating
    tumultuous times need to be reframed and revised? And if so, how?
  * If contemporary controversies are deemed to foster irreconcilable
    positions, what could be the contribution of STS to the deliberation
    and development of a collective journey toward a more resilient world?
  * What notion(s) of “common good” can or should STS contribute to
    articulate? What place do critical interventions have in the
    process? How might a renewed STS impetus - critical and constructive
    - look like?
  * How can STS be developed and used, if not repurposed, in “inventive
    ways” so that its critique will last? How do “care” and “craft” fit
    into the picture?
  * Did Latour overstate his case, conflating the public performance of
    polemic positions in mainstream media with the supposedly
    irreconcilable character of mutually exclusive worldviews per se?
  * “Normative commitments,” “empirical basis,” “sociotechnical
    historicity” - if these are key concerns in and across current STS,
    how do they relate to each other, in and as any actual case? And
    what might be next?

-- 

Dr. Kathrin Eitel (she/her)
Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies
University of Zurich
www.kathrineitel.com 

*** Follow my project "Radical Resilience" on urban floods 
@RadicalResilience_ on 
Instagram


*** New publications:

*OUT NOW! * Klimageschichten 
 (edition 
assemblage), vorgestellt vom Deutschlandfunk Nova 


___ with Laura Otto, Andreas Streinzer und Ruzana Liburkina .2024. 
Praktiken und Prozesse der Responsibilisierung. Verantwortung aus 
kultur- und sozialanthropologischer Perspektive am Beispiel von Abfall, 
Flucht und Klimawandel. 
 In: 
Catrin Heite, Veronika Magyar-Haas und Clarissa Schär. 
Responsibilisierung. VS Verlag.
2023. Resilience.  
In: The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
2023. Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia. Circularity, Waste, and 
Urban Life in Phnom Penh. 
London/New 
York: Routledge. (Introduction 
 
or listen to this 
 
podcast by NBN!)
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