[STS-Africa] AAAs CFP: Digital technology, transparency, and everyday forms of political engagement

[lisa poggiali]

Hi STS-Africa folk,

A colleague and I are putting together a panel for this December's American
Anthropological Association meeting and thought some of you would be
interested, and might want to submit a paper.  We would also appreciate it
if you could circulate this to others who you think might be interested.

Thanks!
Lisa

*Digital technology, transparency, and everyday forms of political
engagement*



Do digital media enable us to see more clearly or accurately than other
forms of media? What forms of knowledge, meaning, and/or matter do they
make more transparent, and for whom?  In which cases do they increase trust
and intimacy and in which do they obscure the dynamics of social
relationships? What do digital media obscure and how?  These are some of
the questions we hope to ponder in this panel on digital technology,
transparency, and everyday forms of political engagement.



In the global South, in particular, government administrations and civic
and community organizations have formed to promote the idea that "going
digital" will lead to greater political clarity - i.e., transparency -
and eliminate both graft and mundane human error. Capitalizing on the
post-Cold War global euphoria for greater openness, and governance built on
sharing "information," digital technology and "transparency" have become
indelibly linked, as the former is expected to bring about the latter,
itself described as both a desired end of and means to achieve "good
governance."



In this panel we hope to consider the "thingness" or materiality of digital
technology in concert with its dialectical opposite: the "seen through."
 What are the social, cultural, and technical operations and arguments
through which digital technology, on purpose or by oversight, enables us to
see...or not? What are the effects of this (non)seeing?



Possible topics for discussion include:

- the production and circulation of new visual media and the creation of
new digital publics

- citizen engagement with open data projects

- the social production, circulation, and use of crowdsourcing software
(esp open source)

- the construction, management, and operation of data holding structures

- the labor of laying fibre optic cables or transporting lithium, etc.



We call on panelists to consider how the representational and the material,
the transparent and the opaque, the seen and the unseen are entangled in
historically specific moments and culturally specific locales.  At the same
time, we urge panelists to consider how particular digital transparency
claims and/or projects resonate with those formed in other times and
places, and collectively contribute to broad transnational political
visions, projects, and movements.  We thus welcome proposals from all
geographical areas.



If you are interested in being on our panel please send an abstract of 250
words or less with your name and institutional affiliation by April 5 to
poggiali at stanford.edu and dmahoney1 at usf.edu.



Thanks,



Dillon Mahoney, University of South Florida, and Lisa Poggiali, Stanford
University

-- 
Lisa Poggiali, Ph.D Candidate
Department of Anthropology
Main Quad, Building 50
450 Serra Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-2034
tel (Kenya): +254 727 543 880
tel (U.S.): 917-699-3302
e-mail: poggiali at stanford.edu
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