CfP STS Graz: Ageing Technofutures-in-the-Making
+++ apologies for cross-posting +++
Dear colleagues
Please see our call for papers for the STS Graz Conference and consider applying - the conference will take place May 5-7th in Graz, Austria.
Ageing Technofutures-in-the-Making
Futures have always been debated, planned and materialised. The turn towards the future in times of (social) crisis has a long history and traditionally focussed on developing scenario planning, forecasting and on producing predictions of the future. Anticipation Studies challenges this sense of certainty and stability in relation to futures by starting from the premise of the need to develop "an active and critically reflective interaction with futures that are unknowable" (Amsler & Facer 2017). It starts from a belief that, not only can we not know the future, but that futures are multiple, complex and uncertain (Miller 2018) and therefore could be "otherwise". So, whilst the future does not really exist in the present, anticipation certainly does.
In this session, we are interested in exploring how anticipations in relation to ageing technofutures play out in the present and impact on the ways in which different social actors engage in futures-making. As we age we are continually asked to anticipate and plan for our well (ill)-being, financial and social situation (Adams et al. 2009; Shimoni 2018). "Gerontechnologies" (Gallistl et al. 2023) are often imagined as solutions to the economic and social "problems" of population ageing (Cozza et al. 2019; Joyce 2021). They are promised to promote healthy lifestyles, "independent living" and "ageing in place", to support caregivers and ensure safety, whilst preventing social isolation, all key policy goals internationally. However, who is and can become an active agent in shaping the development of these technologies has long been reserved to an elite of experts.
Regimes of anticipation related to ageing technofutures determine and "prestructure which developments are considered relevant and urgent, possible or inevitable" (Konrad & Bhle 2019) through expressing a particular way of "thinking and living toward the future" in the present (Adams et al. 2009). They emerge around particular collectively shared ways of thinking, reasoning and imagining futures that are made to seem inevitable. They are articulated and materialised through anticipatory practices that affect the design of policies (e.g. legislation such as the EU AI Act or WHO-guidelines of age friendly cities), infrastructures, the allocation of resources, or transform practices of professional societies as well as individuals. They lead to what Annette Markham (2021) has described as "discursive closure". That is, that certain practices or technological designs are made to seem like processes that just exist or are inevitable. Neutralised in this way, ageing technofutures are imagined as "value-free routines or routine ways of thinking" (p.392). This risks removing a sense of agency, recognition of where sociotechnical anticipations originated and what values and norms they represent. It reinforces both a sense of the inevitability of certain uses of technologies and a sense of powerlessness.
We invite contributions that engage with questions around:
- Regimes of anticipation at the intersection of ageing & technologies
- What claims are being articulated?
- Who has a stake in stabilising these anticipations?
- Who enacts and responds to these anticipations (how/why) in the present?
- (Alternative) methods and approaches to futures-making
- (Re)-configurations of sociotechnical imaginaries of ageing
https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/call-for-abstracts/
Juliane Jarke, PhD (she/her) Professorin fr Digitale Gesellschaft | Professor of Digital Societies
BANDAS Center | BANDAS Center Institut fr Soziologie | Department of Sociology Universitt Graz | University of Graz
ReSoWi Section G, Floor IV Universittsstrae 15, 8010 Graz, Austria
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