<div dir="ltr">Hi STS-Africa folk,<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thanks!</div><div>Lisa<br><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Digital technology, transparency, and everyday forms of political engagement</span></b></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">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.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">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." </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">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?</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Possible topics for discussion include:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">- the production and circulation of new visual media and the creation of new digital publics</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">- citizen engagement with open data projects</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">- the social production, circulation, and use of crowdsourcing software (esp open source)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">- the construction, management, and operation of data holding structures</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">- the labor of laying fibre optic cables or transporting lithium, etc.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">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.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">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 <a href="mailto:poggiali@stanford.edu" target="_blank">poggiali@stanford.edu</a> and <a href="mailto:dmahoney1@usf.edu" target="_blank">dmahoney1@usf.edu</a>.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Thanks,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">Dillon Mahoney, University of South Florida, and Lisa Poggiali, Stanford University</span></p>
<div class="" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><div id=":2rt" class="" tabindex="0"><img class="" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif"></div></div><div><br></div>-- <br>
Lisa Poggiali, Ph.D Candidate<br>Department of Anthropology<br>Main Quad, Building 50<br>450 Serra Mall<br>Stanford University<br>Stanford, CA 94305-2034<div>tel (Kenya): +254 727 543 880<br>tel (U.S.): 917-699-3302<br>e-mail: <a href="mailto:poggiali@stanford.edu" target="_blank">poggiali@stanford.edu</a></div>
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