Science and Activism: STS and the Environment

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

Science and activism have multifaceted, challenging and often controversial interactions. Within scientific disciplines, activism may play out in cultural upheavals, destabilized conditions of knowledge production, contested funding regimes, and democratization of processes or outcomes. Alternative narratives, diverse methodologies, and public debates may underpin struggles for increased transparency in science and preservation of a meaningful, critical role for science institutions. Interventions from outside the discipline may include critique, dissent, protest, threats or total disruption. By opening up the politics of representation, sense making and engagement in relation to science, activism potentially plays a catalytic role in the STS quest for justice and social transformation. The aim of this panel is to examine the intersections of science and activism, to offer new perspectives on science agendas, interests, policies and practices, and to foster mutual knowledge exchanges. The following questions are suggested as possible avenues for exploration: How do science and activism intersect, challenge, transgress and dismantle particular valuing systems to engender social change? What kinds of trans-disciplinary STS justice perspectives advance our understanding of the politics of science? How can the politics of scientific representation be reconfigured – in other words, how are authority, expertise, interests, and media implicated in public controversies and transformations? In what ways do scientific and activist popularization strategies open up and close down opportunities for interventions, mutual exchange, and engagement? Contributions that explore trans-disciplinary possibilities for new modes of thinking and action are particularly welcome but not the sole focus of the panel.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Science and Activism: Trans-Disciplinary STS Approaches

Individual Presentations

• For the love of coal. Post-truth politics and climate change in Australia - Vanessa Bowden, University of Newcastle

• Activism and engagement in the science of politics: Political Science as a site of STS analysis - Elizabeth A Lowham, California Polytechnic State University; Jane L Lehr, California Polytechnic State University; Elissa Feld, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

• Citizen-led digital infrastructures as an alternative to political ineffectiveness: the 2017 Mexico City earthquake - Luis Ignacio Reyes-Galindo, State University of Campinas - UNICAMP; Aline Guevara Villegas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); Isabel Flores López, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); Jorge Sosa, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

• Scientific Activism - A Challenge for STS Researchers - Ullica Christina Segerstrale, Illinois Institute Of Technology

Session Organizer

• Judy Motion, UNSW