Cultures of Innovation: Anthropology of Science and Technology

Whether seen as boosting productivity and health, hazarding the destruction of social relations, or quietly constituting the most mundane contours of our lives; science and technology exert inordinate force in shaping the social and material worlds we inhabit and our intimate senses of ourselves. This course interrogates this state of affairs by tracking not only the social impacts of technoscientific interventions but the by demonstrating the social relations, imaginaries, and practices that constitute technoscience itself. Students will be introduced to anthropological and related approaches for studying the ways in which scientific knowledge is created, disseminated, and evaluated. How are unruly aspects of the world moulded in experimental practice? How do findings in laboratories become stable foundations for scientific truths? How might we approach these questions in our so-called post-truth present? We take up these general concerns through the investigation of different sites of technoscientific intervention such as bodies, environments, species, natures, technical artifacts among others. Across these we will develop frameworks for understanding how technoscience creates knowledge about, intervenes in and transforms our contemporary world.