In the making, On the move: Global Perspectives on Technology Appropriation I

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

Stories about technology are often narrated from the myth of the hero: genius men who, in specific moments of lucidity that reflect the feeling of an era, rescue an invention, an innovation, for the professions. Different models have been proposed to overcome this hero narrative: e.g., changing the point of observation of history, or focusing on controversies, trajectories or agencies that explain the momentum, impact or evolution of an artifact or system. This panel proposes that stories of artefacts and systems are (re)sensitized through the study of technological appropriation, a process that allows us to observe these trajectories from an antiheroic perspective, with an emphasis on the global diversity of user groups, sites, contexts, platforms, infrastructures involved in their access, learning, incorporation and transformation of technologies in use. The rewriting and restructuring of a given technology can be seen from a paradigm of mobilities (Urry et al.), which allows us to open our accounts to heterodox approaches in the histories of technologies (postcolonial, collectivist, feminist, among others). This panel hopes to be a space for dialogue and debate about stories of technological appropriation. We're looking for comparative works, explicitly global, either on dynamics or extended cases on the cultural processes of a technology in a particular community — e.g., Capable Share Studies on the appropriation in multiple locations that represent the different stages of the evolution of a certain technology.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Martin Andrés Perez Comisso, SFIS - Arizona State University

Individual Presentations

• Is Technology Appropriation a Central Concept in STS? - Martin Andrés Perez Comisso, SFIS - Arizona State University

• Appropriating Mobile Phones for Livestock Production and Marketing: The Case of the Maasai and Wasukuma Pastoralists in Tanzania - Luis Lourenço Soares, ISSTI, University of Edinburgh

• Maintaining the Medium: Notes from the Television Repair Shops of Andhra Pradesh - Padma Chirumamilla, University of Michigan

• Making French Metro Run in Taipei: The Imported Large Technological System and Local Infrastructural Network - Kuo-Hui Chang, National Taiwan University

• Technology Reconfiguration and Emergence of New Practices: A Case of India Against Corruption - Nikhil Agarwal, University of Edinburgh; James Stewart, University of Edinburgh; Robin Williams, The University of Edinburgh