AMAA on Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World

Cal Biruk

Tag: Science & Technology Studies (STS)

AMAA on Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World

Post author Cal Biruk
Post date December 8, 2021

This article is part of the following series: Ask-Me-Almost-Anything (AMAA): Centering Student Engagement with Ethnographic Monographs

Questions developed by the members of CU Denver’s ANTH4600/5600, S2021: Kaylynn Aiona, Delilah Chavarria, Darcy Copeland, Keaton Green, Ari Jones, Caitlin Konchan, Chris Kuelling, Kuba Kwiecinski, Rosa Lawrence, Destinee Murray, Alexa Powell, Benin Rahma, George Sanchez, Emma Vittetoe, Renee Watson, and Abby Welch

Instructor’s note: In our era of “alternative facts,” and given the critical roles that data collection and …

Tags Africa, Demography, Knowledge Production, Malawi, Positionality, Science & Technology Studies (STS)

Lectures

Understated, not overlooked

Post author Anthony Stavrianakis
Post date November 16, 2021

A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments

Talia Dan-Cohen

Cornell University Press, 2021. 174 pages.

First, take a self-consciously self-aggrandizing area of bioengineering, “synthetic biology,” which was said to aim at nothing less than “the design and construction of novel life-forms” (Dan-Cohen, p.12), an apparently clear claim made by those with a platform from which to make it, one that is in …

Tags Experiment, Science & Technology Studies (STS), Scientific Research, Synthetic biology

Features Lectures

Book forum: Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life

Post author Martha Lincoln
Post date November 9, 2020

This article is part of the following series: Book forum

Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life (Duke University Press, 2017) received the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) at the 2019 conference in New Orleans. Murphy’s book, recognized for its novelty, scholarly excellence, and contribution to science and technology studies, was also the subject of a panel of feminist thinkers who offered commentary …

Tags feminist STS, Population, Science & Technology Studies (STS)

Books

Lords of the Flies

Post author Banu Subramaniam
Post date November 9, 2020

The Economization of Life (EoL) begins with its cover – a series of Drosophilain jars. Drosophila melanogaster – the common fruit fly – may be the model organism par excellence. Seeing the book cover, I was transported back to my graduate school days and the sweet smell of the yeasty food that filled the fly room. During one of …

Tags India, Population, reproductive justice, Science & Technology Studies (STS)

Lectures

Staying (at Home) with Brain Fog: “Un-witting” Patient Activism

Post author Emily Lim Rogers
Post date October 5, 2020
1 Comment on Staying (at Home) with Brain Fog: “Un-witting” Patient Activism

This article is part of the following series: Reworking the Cognitive Bias

Scene 1: It’s Sunday afternoon, around one o’clock, and a group of a dozen or so people log onto a video call from their apartments. Occasionally someone’s cat will walk into the frame, obscuring the camera, or a deliveryman will ring the buzzer, interrupting the flow of conversation. But mostly, what we see of each other are scenes of domestic …

Tags Activism, Biosociality, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic illness, COVID-19, Medical Anthropology, myalgic encephalomyelitis, Patient Empowerment, quarantine, Science & Technology Studies (STS), United States