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Dear colleagues and friends,

We are delighted to invite you to submit an abstract to our open panel on "What does STS have to say about ‘Eastern Germany’? Or: Où atterrir dans la politique allemande?" at next year’s STS-Hub in Berlin (March 11-14, 2025). Details for the panel can be found below. Our panel is the very last at the bottom of the website 🙂

The deadline for submissions is Oct 31, 2024. Feel free to shoot us an email, if you have any questions.

Best, Sebastian & Alex

What does STS have to say about ‘Eastern Germany’? Or: Où atterrir dans la politique allemande?

Convenors: Sebastian Pfotenhauer (TUM STS), Alexander Wentland (TUM STS)

Abstract:

This panel uses the coincidence of the STS-Hub deadline and the panic-stricken spectacle of state elections in three Eastern German states as an occasion to ask: What does STS have to say about ‘Eastern Germany’? And are we actually saying it?

‘The East’ has become a contested epistemic object in German and European politics, subject to diverse forms of medicalization and othering, as well as a corollary set of promissory strategies to save the dying patient (and, with it, the project of liberal-democratic capitalism). Many of these strategies are centered on technology and innovation as harbingers of prosperity, social transformation, and sustainability (e.g. Green New Deal investments, Silicon Saxony, the transformation of coal regions etc.). At the same time, the diagnoses of demise themselves are built on the back of powerful technologies – from indicators revealing inequality or pockets of innovativeness, to the role of mainstream or social media, all the way to the (lack of) provision of basic infrastructures.

For the purposes of this panel, we understand ‘Eastern Germany’ both as a concrete set of discourses, spaces, people, and things currently troubling German politics, and more broadly as an invitation to think critically about all kinds of collective otherings and performative problematizations in Germany and beyond. The conveners of this session do not have any specific topics or conceptual or methodological approaches in mind. However, we are animated by a shared sense that the rifts currently coming to a head in ‘Eastern Germany’ (and in many other places) are something that a field centrally concerned with unequal promises and consequences of ‘progress’ should be able to speak to. The following questions might provide some inspiration:

• What does it mean for regions like ‘The East’ to have a future? What illnesses and remedies are being diagnosed, by whom, and through which forms of authorization?

• How can or should we understand ‘The East’ as a space of innovation and experimentation? How is it being configured as one by policy-makers, business, civil society?

• What does STS have to offer for post-industrial / post-communist / declining / peripheral regions today? Which role do promises of science, technology, and innovation play in these regions?

• How should we think about / with / for regions, for example as critical observers or as part of revitalization strategies? Is ‘region’ a tenable unit of analysis in STS?

• How responsive is STS in such ‘constitutional moments’ like the observed state elections in ‘Eastern Germany’? Is the required repertoire of response-ability for ‘Eastern Germany’ different from other socio-technical crises?

• What kind of questions do moments like the Eastern German elections raise, for example concerning vulnerability, justice, expertise, or democracy?

In the context of this conference, it is befitting that Bruno Latour’s Why has critique run out of steam? arguably marked a (stylized) turning point for both Latour’s own oeuvre and parts of STS that provided an opening for recentering attention to some of the political macro-categories like statehood, identity politics, social movements, election politics, inequality, and “grand challenges” – concerns that had previously become increasingly decentered, fractalized, and multiplied in STS research, thus losing some of their critical heft. By leaving us hanging with a provocative juxtaposition of facts and nationalism1, Critique prefigured both the tone and the way in which one of Latour’s latest works, Oú atterir?, picks up its analysis from seeming contradictions of the 2016 Trump election.

1. “The stubbornness of matters of fact in the usual scenography [..] —“It is there whether you like it or not”—is much like the stubbornness of political demonstrators: “the U.S., love it or leave it,” that is, a very poor substitute for any sort of vibrant, articulate, sturdy, decent, long-term existence.”

Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer Carl von Linde Associate Professor of Innovation Research

Department Head, Department of Science, Technology and Society (STS) TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology

Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship TUM School of Management

Technical University of Munich Augustenstr. 46, Room #456 80333 München, Germany

phone: +49 89.289.29222 email: sebastian.pfotenhauer@tum.de

Twitter | LinkedIn | ResearchGate | Google Schoolar

Coordinator, BMBF Future Cluster MCube Program Director, M.A. “Responsibility in Science, Engineering, and Technology" (RESET)

Recently published:

· Sardo S., Pfotenhauer S.M. "Diesel, sustainability, and the politics of delay: Rethinking technological discontinuation as a continuous process" Research Policy (fortchoming)

· Irwin, A., Pfotenhauer, S. "Innovation", in: Felt, U., Irwin, A. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Studies (forthcoming 2024)

· Pfotenhauer S.M.“From 'more innovation' to 'better innovation‘?“ Engaging Science, Technology and Society (2023)

· Cuevas C., Pepponi F., Pfotenhauer S.M.“Maintaining Innovation: How to make sewer robots and innovation policy work in Barcelona." Social Studies of Science (2023)

· Pfotenhauer S.M., Wentland A., Ruge L.“Understanding regional innovation cultures: Narratives, directionality, and conservative innovation in Bavaria.” Research Policy (2023)

· Knopf S., Frahm N., Pfotenhauer S.M.“How neurotech startups envision ethical futures: demarcation, deferral, delegation" Science and Engineering Ethics (2023)

· Rueß A., Müller R., Pfotenhauer S. “Opportunity or Responsibility? Tracing Co-creation in the European Policy Discourse." Science and Public Policy (2023)

· Buocz T., Eisenberger I., Pfotenhauer S.M. “Regulatory sandboxes in the AI Act: reconciling innovation and safety?" Law, Innovation and Technology (2023)

· Pfotenhauer S.M., Laurent B., Papageorgiou K., Stilgoe J. "The politics of scaling." Social Studies of Science (2022)

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