Call for Papers, 4S Boston 2017 | CfPs in Panel "102. Dissemination, Disembodiment, Diversity: Science and Technology in a Post-Truth World"

Call for Papers, Panels, and Making and Doing Presentations The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) invites submissions for individual papers, traditional panels, and "Making and Doing" presentations at its Annual Meeting in Boston, August 30 – September 2, 2017. Conference theme:  STS (In)Sensibilities If sensibility is the ability to grasp and to respond, how might we articulate the (in)sensibilities of contemporary technoscience?  How, similarly, can we reflect on the extent and limits of our own sensibilities as STS scholars, teachers, and activists?  The conference theme invites an open reading and exploration of how the world is made differently sense-able through multiple discourses and practices of knowledge-making, as well as that which evades the sensoria of technoscience and STS.  Our aim is that the sense of 'sense' be read broadly, from mediating technologies of perception and apprehension to the discursive and material practices that render worlds familiar and strange, real and imagined, actual and possible, politically (in)sensitive and ethically sensible.  Start Here Deadline for Submissions is March 1. We suggest you begin at the 4S Meeting Home Page to ·         read Open Panel abstracts ·         read about the return of the Making and Doing session ·         learn about the new login regime for the submission site ·         learn about program policies About 4S The Society for Social Studies of Science is an international, nonprofit scholarly society founded in 1975. 4S fosters interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine (a field often referred to as STS). Membership in the society is open to anyone interested in understanding developments in science, technology, or medicine in relation to their social contexts.   Society for Social Studies of Science 4sonline.org | 4smembers.org webmaster@4sonline.org

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102. Dissemination, Disembodiment, Diversity: Science and Technology in a Post-Truth World

http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_101_129

Organized by: Ravi Shukla, Jamia, New Delhi, ravishu@gmail.com

In normative STS understanding, state as well as corporate actors draw upon the supposedly objective, impersonal nature of science to make their decisions appear impartial and free from bias. Put differently, the scientific claim to truth — where mathematical and abstract rationalities prevail over sensory evidence — has traditionally formed the basis of public credibility. In a social media driven, "post-truth" world, where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion, are the nature and mechanisms of state/corporate influence changing? Digital information technologies, in the form of the internet and mobile devices, have played a significant role in this shift. As Katherine Hayles and others have suggested, these technologies tend to assume a disembodied view of the world, one in which the information about an object is seen as distinct from the object itself. How does the traditional debate between social shaping of technologies and technology as an autonomous force change in a scenario wherein the nature and extent of social influence is shaped by the selfsame technologies? Is it possible to have a more embodied approach without abandoning the idea of an objective truth? This panel suggests that post-truth is not a sudden, epochal phenomenon but a more gradual shift that has been in the making. Since the shift to a post-truth world appears to be global, the panel invites both empirically oriented as well as conceptual papers that engage with the tension between a more embodied approach and the need for objective truth.

I had proposed Panel 102 here is the link (http://www.4sonline.org/meeting/open_panel_topics_101_129) 

Many Thanks,

Ravi Shukla, ravishu@gmail.com