Open SHOT Session "Re-inventing the human scale: Science, Technology and Global Crisis"
Dear Colleagues,
We invite contributors to an open session for the
SHOT Annual Meeting, 22-26 June 2016 in Singapore. To propose a paper
for the panel below, please send an abstract and CV (according to SHOT’s
submission requirements) to matthias.heymann@css.au.dk
For more information on the upcoming SHOT meeting see: http://www.
Best wishes
Matthias
Re-inventing the human scale: Science, Technology and Global Crisis
Organizer: Matthias Heymann, Dania Achermann, Centre for Science Studies, Aarhus University
Many crisis phenomena, such as global technological risks or economic threats, global environmental
and climate change, global competition
about resources etc., have shaped political and scientific discourse in
the postwar era. But although they have challenged
local life these global crisis phenomena did not easily translate into
local response and action. Rather, tensions have risen between an
increasingly integrated and globalized world on the one hand and the
human scale of activity and experience on the other.
This session aims at investigating the role of science and technology
in the rise of these tensions.
Sophisticated science, complex technologies, accelerated
technological change and transboundary movement of products,
information, ideas and people have not only produced increased wealth in
parts of the world, but also colonized the world and
put pressures on local culture, life-worlds and experiences. Science
and technology contributed to an increasing loss of a human dimension
and scale in technology, knowledge and globalized culture. This loss of a
human scale remained often hidden and invisible
and, at other times, came to the fore, giving rise to uncertainty,
discomfort and fear. As a consequence, rising tensions have emerged
between an integrated and globalized world and the human scale of
activity and experience.
We are interested in local stories about these tensions that
emerged between global crisis and local life worlds and the role science
and technology have played both in the emergence of crisis or in
attempts to master it. The focus will be on
the postwar period and stories from all world regions are invited.
Contributions to the panel will investigate question such as the
following:
· What
is the role science and technology have played in the emergence,
perceptions and ideologies of global crisis and the detachment of crisis
phenomena from local experience?
· What
have global challenges (caused by large-scale technologies,
transboundary infrastructures, global economic integration and global
environmental change) meant on the local level and for individual
citizens?
· How
did global crises and challenges translate into local perspectives, politics and action?
This session is an attempt to establish an international network
of researchers interested in historical work about global crisis and
re-inventions of the human scale in postwar global history. It is our aim
to establish the basis for launching collaboration in the framework of
the Tensions of Europe network, which aims at covering tensions between
global crisis and local life in a broad range of knowledge domains,
technologies and geographical and cultural settings.