What is ‘(Un)making’ STS Ethnographies? Reflections (Not Exclusively) from Latin America

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

STS scholars have found in ethnography a means to produce situated knowledge about their own research problems. Likewise, STS has offered a set of discussions that has permeated ethnographic practice. Hence, STS-oriented ethnography consists of an interface or contact surface that continuously unmakes and remakes interpretations, ways of seeing, as well as objects, categories and descriptions. Still, ethnography is not exempt from this transformative process; ethnography is also reconfigured as a knowledge object. The latter aspect is of particular interest for this panel. Drawing on our own research in Latin America we believe that ethnography, while being unmade and remade, might deserve additional adjectives. Thus, we have speculated about the possibility of rethinking STS ethnographies as experimental (destabilizing the meaning of knowing), mestizas (hybridizing different objects), decomposing (accounting for creative processes in unconventional places), stacked (permitting the coexistence of different ontologies and arrangements in a single space), more-than-human (destabilizing the human/non-human distinction), and (in)sensible (questioning what seeing, feeling or experiencing through modern technoscience is about). We seek contributions from Latin América as well as from other similar localities around the world, that reflect about other possible adjectives, and ways of (un)making STS ethnographies. Far from establishing a taxonomy, we want to delve in reflections exploring (1) how STS ethnographies reconfigure other objects and/or (2) how STS ethnography is unmade and remade through its own use.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chairs

• Fredy Mora-Gámez, Linkoping University

• Santiago Martínez Medina, Universidad de los Andes

• Tania Pérez-Bustos, National University of Colombia

Individual Presentations

• Corpo-Real Ethnographies: Bodies, Dissection Planes, and (Non)Difference. Anatomies for the Violent Conflict in Colombia - Santiago Martínez Medina, Universidad de los Andes; Julia Morales Fontanilla, UC Davis

• Decolonizing/Indigenizing: Speculating on 'Ethnography as Healing' - Krisha J Hernandez, UC Santa Cruz

• How Embroidery Can (Un)Stitch Ethnography? - Tania Pérez-Bustos, National University of Colombia

• Labyrinth to Pinwheel: STS Ethnography in an Archive - Amy Cox Hall, Amherst College

• Mestizo Animals: Penguins and Huemules in Two Socio-Technical Controversies - Gloria Baigorrotegui, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados - Usach; Colombina Schaeffer, University of Sydney