Undone Science and Technological Innovation: The Case of Electronic Voting Machines in Postcolonial India

• In Event: 1245 - Designing for Social Justice? The Politics of Technology

Abstract

This paper builds on the sociological literature on the study of science, technology and advocacy by examining the case of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in postcolonial India. Specifically, we trace the effects of advocacy on scientific knowledge production by underscoring the role of activists and advocacy groups who conduct undone science. We suggest that activist-scientists highlight incomplete or ignored facts pertaining to legal arguments and the technical design of EVMs in order to suggest that the technology possesses severe vulnerabilities that jeopardize the holding of elections and thus democracy in India. We illustrate the oblique manners in which scientific knowledge can be produced through the interaction between discourses about the virtues and vulnerabilities of EVMs, which are articulated by actors striving to advance technological innovations, and continually countered as they are by detractors advancing critiques of such technology through the pursuit of undone science.

Authors

• Arafaat A. Valiani, University of Oregon

• Patrick Jones, University of Oregon