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.
