SEAS Events

The U-M Science, Technology, and Society Program is excited to celebrate its 25th anniversary with a conference featuring distinguished graduate student alumni and former program directors in conversation with current faculty members. Join us to help inspire the next quarter century of U-M STS!
 

Thursday, March 13, Rackham Assembly Hall

5:30 pm: Keynote, Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University: “Inside-Out Earth”

New energy systems accumulate on top of old ones. So do their wastes. Today, massive increases in discarded matter remain invisible in scenarios outlining how "renewable” sources will “replace" fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the world currently consumes more fossil fuels—and generates more waste products—than ever before. Wood alone supplies more energy than nuclear power plants or than the combination of hydroelectric dams, and solar and wind power. 
How do communities live and breathe at the front lines of these dynamics in times of transition? What could it mean—what should it mean—to respond to our planetary crisis in ways that respect and incorporate local environmental justice priorities? This talk explores such questions, and the ongoing accumulation of wastes from energy, in three parts of the world: Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire; Mpumalanga province, South Africa; and Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Followed by catered dinner for guests who RSVP.
 

Friday, March 14, 1014 Tisch, 8:15-6 pm

8:30 am: Welcome

8:45-10:30 am: Orders of Extraction

We use the concept of "orders of extraction" to signal both the epistemological claims and material practices that enable different regimes of extraction to operate across time and space. Drawing on a variety of methodological approaches, including the creative arts, our papers center on questions of ecology, subjectivity, post-colonial political economies, and extra-human natures. We are interested in the unexpected convivialities—between environmental protection and mining in Senegal (d’Avignon), lead poisoning and divination in Morocco (Williford), debt and El Nino oscillations in Kenya (Park), and commodity-producing extractive labor and meaningful life in Madagascar (Klein)—composing historic and contemporary orders of extraction. How, we ask, do these histories and processes deepen our understanding of the uneven efflorescence of ecological crisis in the present?   

Robyn d'Avignon, New York University: "The Offset, A History: Mining as Conservation in West Africa" 

Daniel Williford, University of Wisconsin, Madison: "Protection, Exposure, Divination: ‘Making’ Lead Manifest in Morocco"

Emma Park, New School for Social Research: “Of Rinderpest, Famine, Smallpox, and Debt: The Railroad and the Structure of the Conjuncture in 19th Century Eastern Africa”

Brian Klein, UMich: "Enskilment Underground: Artisanal Mining, Meaningful Work, and Frontier Capitalism in Madagascar"

Chair: Yousif Hassan, UMich

10:45-12:00 pm: Centering the Marginalized in Medical STS

This panel explores how particular bodies are made legible, controllable, and classifiable, drawing together cases from ancient Rome to modern medical labs to incarceration camps. The authors investigate the production of the boundary dividing the normal from the pathological and center the experiences and labor of non-elite subjects. The panel reflects on the challenges and potential of centering the marginalized in STS scholarship.

Alex Stern, University of California, Los Angeles: “STS Research and Reparations for Eugenic Harms: Stories from the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab (SSJL)”

Megh Marathe, Michigan State University: “Expedient Classification: Making Seizure at Home and in the EEG Lab”

Anna Bonnell Freidin, UMich: “Foodwork and Reproductive Control in the Roman Empire”

Chair: Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, UMich

12:00-1:15 pm: Lunch

1:15-2:30 pm: Engaged STS and Environmental Crisis

In this session, we explore the multiple and situated meanings of being an engaged STS scholar. Using diverse research topics (wildlife-livestock interactions in African protected areas, urban public health and social justice activism, mining capitalism, and the history of acid rain and climate litigation) scholars will discuss how their work intersects with policy and the intricacies associated with advocating for policy outcomes that affect vulnerable people and communities. 

Nick Caverly, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: “Some Technopolitics of Whiteness as Property in Renewable Energy Transitions”

Rachel Rothschild, UMich: “A Historian of Environmental Science Goes to Court”

Bilal Butt, UMich: “When Animals Don’t Cooperate with Scientists: Dissecting People-Environment-Policy Relationships in Dryland East Africa”

Chair: Stuart Kirsch, UMich

2:45-4:30 pm: The Ambivalent Politics of Ambiguous Data

Data-making is a key means through which experts build their credibility, stake policy claims, and construct and contest political and social worlds. Examining data projects from sociogenomics, international conflict, and climate change, this panel reveals that the ways that experts produce, interact with, and dispute data create new political arrangements—for better and for worse. 

Paul Edwards, Stanford University: “Is Climate Change an Existential Risk?”

Dan Hirschman, Cornell: “The Costs of Climate Change”

Emily Merchant, University of California, Davis: “Reinscribing Race in the Human Genome

Joy Rohde, UMich: “The Promise and Limits of Experiential Political Data”

Chair: Elizabeth Popp Berman, UMich

4:45-6:00 pm: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of U-M STS: Concluding Roundtable 

After short opening provocations reflecting on how the day’s presentations represent “U-M STS” (if there is such a thing) and the state of the field today, the final session will open the floor for a synthetic discussion among all attendees.

Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University

Silvia Lindtner, University of Michigan

Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan

Perrin Selcer, University of Michigan

Chair: John Carson, University of Michigan