[STS-Africa] EASST 4S CfP: Materiality, Knowledges, Inequalities: Multiplicity and Sovereignty in a Post_Colonial World

[Uli Beisel]

We welcome submissions to our session entitled "Materiality, Knowledges, 
Inequalities: Multiplicity and Sovereignty in a Post_Colonial World" at 
the upcoming EASST/4S conference in Prague August 18-21 2020 and share 
with anyone potentially interested.

Deadline for abstract submission: 20 February 2020, please submit 
through the 4S/EASST conference website: 
https://www.easst4s2020prague.org/call-for-papers-and-panels/ Our 
session is Open Panel number 108.

Contact Uli Beisel (uli.beisel at uni-bayreuth.de) or Katharina Schramm 
(katharina.schramm at uni-bayreuth.de) if you have any questions.


        Materiality, Knowledges, Inequalities: Multiplicity and
        Sovereignty in a Post_Colonial World

The concept of multiplicity has gained traction in STS over the last 
decade. This has allowed for analyses of contingent relations rather 
than discrete objects. It has also brought topological inquiries of 
knowledge-making practices and infrastructures to the fore. The repeated 
emphasis on complexities beyond plurality has focused our analytical 
attention on multi-directional processes of relating, such as 
co-existence, ambivalence, but also rejection and failure. However, 
regulatory and epistemic practices are bound to institutions and 
infrastructures, i.e. they are materially grounded, highly contested and 
unequally distributed. Inequalities are not only spatially inscribed on 
a global scale, but also temporally layered through past injustice and 
lasting legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Recognizing this, the 
panel asks how we can conceptualize the tensions between multiplicity 
and sovereignty as they emerge in recent debates around scientific 
specimens and technological infrastructures. Instead of dissolving the 
tension, we seek to take it as a starting point for a critical analysis 
of global knowledge circulations. We are interested in papers that trace 
the historical and spatial circulation and political traction of 
epistemic and material objects - from colonial human remains to blood, 
tissue and DNA-samples; from global waste to ethnographic collections. 
What is at stake and how can we move from here?


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