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)

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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?

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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.
2024. Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia. Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh. London/New York: Routledge. (Introduction

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