About the research project
The transition to a new ‘bioeconomy’ offer promises of a bright, green future. The life sciences are called upon to create new forms of value from biological life. The promise is not only that this economy will produce surplus value; it should also provide sustainable growth, employment, animal and human welfare along with the protection of nature – solutions to our current predicaments. In other words, the economy promises to be good. This, what we in this project term ‘good economy’, is precisely what the Little Tools project aims to study. Which actual practices attempt to bring this good economy into being?
A ‘blue revolution’ in aquaculture and a ‘blue economy’ based on marine biomass: Fish will be farmed rather than caught, and marine organisms will provide the raw material for food, energy or new pharmaceutical products. But how do you create such a future, and who decides that this is a future that should be realized? What are policy documents and research programs actually doing, when they present these promises and project these futures? How do they connect to the offices, laboratories and sea-cages where the future aquaculture is being worked upon and accorded value?
The Little Tools project studies such efforts in terms of practices of valuation – in the market, in the life sciences, and in politics and in planning and innovation strategies. The flesh of the farmed fish is judged an evaluated according to consumer preferences, and as a commodity it is compared to its wild-caught relatives or other candidates for the dinner plate. Biological research investigates genetics, life cycles and the potential for modification and inclusion in industrial scale production. Planning documents and innovation programs connect to global environmental policy aims and project a new industry into national budgets and a sustainable and prosperous future.
These practices of valuation happen by way of a range of what we call little tools – modest entities and technologies such as consumer surveys, innovation documents or lighting technologies in fish cages. They act locally, but are assembled and connected within the larger attempts to realize the promises of the good economy. Without grasping how they work and how they connect in larger assemblages, it is hard to get a handle on how large transitions such as the bioeconomy happen – or fail to happen – in practice. This is precisely the new insight the Little Tools project aims to provide, through close study and analyses across various sites. Cod farming will form one important point of entry to address these questions: As a struggling, long-time and ongoing venture, it points to the contingencies and difficulties involved. Will the ‘blue economy’ of the future include farmed cod? The question remains open.
Publications
2021
Asdal, Kristin and Cointe, Beatrice. 2021. Experiments in co-modification: a relational take on the becoming of commodities and the making of market value. Journal of Cultural Economy, Published online 12.01.21.
2020
Asdal, Kristin. 2020. Foucaults metode og nyliberalismen. Eller skal vi heller snakke om den grenseløse og intense innovasjonsøkonomien? Agora 3-4 (2020), 86-119.
Asdal, Kristin and Hilde Reinertsen. 2020. Hvordan gjøre dokumentanalyse. En praksisorientert metode. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Asdal, Kristin and Bård Hobæk. 2020. The modified issue: Turning around parliaments, politics as usual and how to extend issue-politics with a little help from Max Weber. Social Studies of Science 50(2), 252-270.
Asdal, Kristin. 2020. For å oppnå en grønn omstilling må vi lære av krisen på 70-tallet. Aftenposten, 05.06.2020.
2019
Asdal, Kristin, Béatrice Cointe, Bård Hobæk, Tone Huse, Silje R. Morsman, Tommas Måløy and Hilde Reinertsen. 2019. "The Good Economy": Re-casting the bioeconomy, its normativities and its trouble. The Good Economy Working Paper Series, no. 3/2019. Published on the Little Tools webpage.
Asdal, Kristin and Béatrice Cointe. 2019. Experiments in co-modification: A relational take on the becoming of commodities and the making of market value. The Good Economy Working Paper Series, no. 2/2019. Published on the Little Tools webpage.
Reinertsen, Hilde and Kristin Asdal. 2019. Calculating the blue economy: producing trust in numbers with business tools and reflexive objectivity. Journal of Cultural Economy 12(6), 552-570.
Asdal, Kristin. 2019. Is ANT equally good in dealing with local, national, and global natures? In: The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory, edited by Anders Blok, Ignacio Farias and Celia Roberts. Routledge.
2018
Reinertsen, Hilde and Kristin Asdal. 2018. Ikke lenger uberegnelig og uregjerlig? Visjoner om et kalkulerbart, produktiv og bærekraftig hav i politiske dokumenter. Arr Idéhistorisk tidsskrift 3-4.
Asdal, Kristin. 2018. From Commodification to Co-modification. The Good Economy Working Paper Series, no. 1/2018. Published on the Little Tools webpage.
Asdal, Kristin. 2018. Å gjøre oppdrettstorsk spiselig: Innovasjonsprosa som verdsettingsverktøy. In: Rapporten: Sjanger og styringsverktøy, edited by Kristian Bjørkdahl. Pax forlag.
Reinertsen, Hilde. 2018. Aldri nok rapporter? Om evalueringens optikk og bistandens resultater. In: Rapporten: Sjanger og styringsverktøy, edited by Kristian Bjørkdahl. Pax forlag.
Asdal, Kristin. 2018. 'Interested Methods' and 'Versions of Pragmatism'. Science, Technology, & Human Values 43(4).
Asdal, Kristin and Helge Jordheim. 2018. Texts on the move: Textuality and historicity revisited. History and Theory 57(1).
Mangset, Marte and Kristin Asdal. 2018. Bureaucratic power in note-writing: authoritative expertise within the state. British Journal of Sociology.
2017
Asdal, Kristin, Tone Druglitrø and Steve Hinchliffe (eds.). 2017. Humans, Animals and Biopolitics. The more-than-human condition. Routledge.
Asdal, Kristin. 2017. Er samfunnsforskere nyttige? Dagens næringsliv, 09.02.2017.
2016
Asdal, Kristin and Bård Hobæk. 2016. Assembling the Whale: Parliaments in the Politics of Nature. Science as Culture 25(1), 96-116.
Kristin Asdal 2016. Verkstedet på løvebakken. Klassekampen, 20.04.2016.
Kaijser, Anna. 2016. Looking at value-making: Cod and scientists swimming their own way: An interview with Kristin Asdal by Anna Kaijser. In: New Big Science in Focus: Perspectives on ESS and MAX IV, edited by Josephine V. Rekers and Kerstin Sandell. Lund.
2015
Asdal, Kristin. 2015. Enacting values from the sea: On innovation devices, value-practices and the modification of markets and bodies in aquaculture". In: Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine, edited by I. Dussauge, C.-F. Helgesson and F. Lee. Oxford University Press.
Asdal, Kristin. 2015. What is the issue? The transformative capacity of documents". Distinktion 16(1), 74-90.
Events
2019
Welcome to the workshop: Good economics in the good economy
Time and place: Oct. 14, 2019 9:00 AM – Oct. 15, 2019 3:00 PM, Tøyen Hovedgård, Oslo Botanical Garden
The ERC Little Tools team is organising a workshop to explore relations across economics, economy and the bioeconomy. The event will start with an open programme from 09.00 to 15.00 on October 14.
Workshop theme
In recent years, the so-called bioeconomy has received a growing interest in both scholarship and policy. This up-and-coming new form of economy is envisioned to rely on biological resources, scientific knowledge and state-of-the-art technology to fuel sustained and sustainable growth.
This notion of the bioeconomy envisions a transition away from the fossil economy towards a green future. In doing so, this economy promises to be good and to do good – in short, to redefine its values. Yet the bioeconomy also causes new tensions to arise, for economic life and political action alike.
This workshop asks:
- What is the economics of the bioeconomy?
- What forms of knowledge production and valuation practices make up this new economy?
- What do the promises of a ”good economy” imply for economics as a discipline, as an expertise, and as a set of practices and devices?
- How does economics handle nature and the environment in new ways through practices of calculation and quantification?
- How does the economics discipline take part in defining and shaping this new good economy?
Open programme: Welcome and keynotes
October 14, 9.00-15.00 | Tøyen Hovedgård, Oslo Botanical Gardens
- 09.00 Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo): The Good Economy: Welcome and Introduction
- 10.00 Eve Chiapello (Centre d’Etude des Mouvement Sociaux-Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), author with Luc Boltanski of The New Spirit of Capitalism: Finance as a response to global environmental crises?
- 13.00 Andrew Barry (University College London), author of Political Machines: Governing a technological society and Material Politics: Disputes along the pipeline: Capitalization and Transition
Closed programme: worshop sessions
14. October 15.00-21.00, 15. October 9.00-16.00 | Tøyen Hovedgård, Oslo Botanical Gardens
The public lectures will be followed by closed sessions with discussions of work-in-progress.
2018
Little Tools Workshop at Hamarøy: The Good Economy - If valuation studies and ‘the bioeconomy’ meet
Time and place: June 8, 2018 – June 9, 2018, Hamarøy, Norway
In June 2018 the Little Tools project hosted a workshop at Hamarøy, Nordland. The workshop was organized by Professor Kristin Asdal and Post Doc Tone Huse, as part of their study ‘The Economic Life of Cod’.
During the workshop, participants discussed papers that deal with ways of grasping how nature and nature objects intersect with, shape and are shaped by the economic. A starting-point for these conversations, as defined by the organizers, was the observation that social studies often present the economy as a given, driven by either unknown forces, or large ideological programs such as ‘neoliberalism’ or large capital flows such as ‘biocapital’. What happens, the workshop participants were asked, if we instead approach the economy not so much as ‘force’ but rather as a series of valuation practices? And moreover, as practices that are not linear and smooth, but which cause friction, and even resistance, and that may fail or go in unexpected ways?
Workshop participants tackled these questions through work on quite different objects, among them climate change, soy beans, salmon and cod fish, microbes and the biocapital of pharmaceutical companies. Participants questioned what the tools applied in economic and market work do to these objects, but also, conversely, what they do to the economy. The workshop contributed greatly to the Little Tools team’s work on the notion of co-modification, and we would like to extend a great thanks to all participants for their spirited involvement and valuable contributions.
Talks and presentations
Day 1 - 08.06.2018
- ‘The Good Economy’, Kristin Asdal
- ‘Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value in Biomedicine’, Kaushik Sunder Rajan
- ‘Carbon, Footprints, Objects and the Endlessness of Relations’, Hannah Knox
- ‘Salmon in the Global Protein Space’, Bård Hobæk
- ‘Agribiopolitics (or the Long Green Revolution)’, Kregg Hetherington
- ‘Paper Care, or the Exercise of Harm-Benefit Analysis in Animal Research Economies’, Tone Druglitrø
Day 2 - 09.06.2018
- ‘Discounting the Future, a Political Technology’, Liliana Doganova
- ‘Commodification and Valuation Experiments’, Beatrice Cointe
- ‘Economising the Rural: How new markets and property rights transform rural economies’, Alexander Dobeson
- ‘Co-modification and the Domestication of the North Atlantic Cod’, Tone Huse
- ‘The Public Life of Microbes: Infrastructuring public issues in the age of the digital’, Ana Delgado
- ‘Extracting, Scaling, Re-producing: How mathematical modelling re-aligns and valuates salmon and public health’, Susanne Bauer
Participants
- Kristin Asdal, Professor, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Susanne Bauer, Professor, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Beatrice Cointe, Postdoctoral Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Ana Delgado, Associate professor, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Alexander Dobeson, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Uppsala
- Liliana Doganova, Associate professor, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation
- Tone Druglitrø, Associate professor, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Kregg Hetherington, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Concordia University
- Bård Hobæk, Doctoral Research Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Tone Huse, Postdoctoral Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Hannah Knox, Lecturer, Dept of Anthropology, University College London
- Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Little Tools workshop in Tromsø: Mattering the economy
Time and place: Apr. 9, 2018 – Apr. 10, 2018, Kystens hus, Tromsø
The Little Tools project hosted a workshop in Tromsø in April. The workshop was organized by Professor Kristin Asdal and Post Doc Tone Huse, as part of their study ‘The Economic Life of Cod’.
About the workshop
What shall we live off in the future? Where will our food come from and what will form the basis for our economies? A blue revolution, where seafood is farmed rather than caught, is increasingly presented as an answer to the above questions. This transformation of the economy is a significant example of efforts to produce new forms of capital out of the ordering and reordering of life. It is intimately related to the expanding life sciences, the so-called bioeconomy and what is sometimes called new forms of biocapital.
“The economy” is often presented as a given, driven by unknown forces that simply determine contemporary and future ways of life. The objective of this workshop is to open up what is often labelled “the bioeconomy” and explore how such assumingly new economies come about in practice. We examine how marine life is increasingly enrolled in bio-economic ventures involving a strong orientation towards research and development. We will also attend to how such ventures often co-exist with and develop in tandem with more conventional resource based economies, such as, for the marine economy, conventional fisheries.
In recent years STS scholars have increasingly turned to the study of markets and ‘the economy’. The workshop takes this turn as its point of departure, but will focus upon a set of challenges: How to capture ‘the bio’ in these economies? First, how to capture the fact that fisheries are not simply about markets, but crucially also about living entities that go by their own instincts. How does their materiality and biology matter? Surprisingly, and despite an expressed interest in the non-human, this aspect often seems to get lost in the market turn in STS. Second, how to capture the fact that the marine economy is not only about markets and market-devices, but also crucially about the state, its devices and machineries? Hence, the workshop is about what we choose to label ‘mattering the economy’: making the problematics of government matter to the study of economies and to investigate how matter – the living as well as the slaughtered – intervene and make a difference to economies and market making.
Talks and presentations
Day 1 – 09.04.18
- ‘"The Good Economy" and its little tools of valuation’, Kristin Asdal
- ‘Transcending modernization?’, Narve Fulsås
- ‘Drawing versions of Leviathan together'. Discussion on the circulated draft chapter by Kristin Asdal and Bård Hobæk
- ‘Creating political spaces at sea – governmentalisation and governability in Norwegian fisheries’, Jahn Petter Johnsen
Day 2 – 10.04.18
- ‘Mis/translation, colonialism and environmental conflict’, John Law
- ‘Towards an understanding of Arctic knowledge production: The case of Atlantic wild salmon governance in Norway and Finland’, Camilla Brattland
- ‘The Push Economy: Dealing with the Meaty Matters of Atlantic Cod'. Discussion on pre-circulated draft chapter by Kristin Asdal & Tone Huse
- ‘De-cod-ing valuation experiments: the co-modification of seafood and consumers in experimental settings’, Béatrice Cointe
- 'What happened to a theory of citation?', Tommas Måløy
Participants
- Kristin Asdal, Professor, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Camilla Brattland, Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Sami Studies, University of Tromsø
- Béatrice Cointe, Postdoctoral Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Narve Fulsås, Professor, Department of Archeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology, University of Tromsø
- Petter Holm, Professor, The Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø
- Tone Huse, Postdoctoral Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
- Jahn Petter Johnsen, Professor, The Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø
- John Law, Emeritus Professor, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
- Tommas Måløy, Doctoral Research Fellow, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo
2017
Little Tools hosts a workshop on valuations and its problems
Time and place: Sep. 23, 2017 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM, Eilert Sundt's hus, room 551
Fabian Muniesa was invited to lecture on valuations and its problems at the TIK Centre, on September 23rd.
Abstract
The field of valuation studies is growing. Assisted and inspired by the pragmatist John Dewey (e.g. 1939), one of the objectives of this field and the notion ‘valuations’ has been, and still is, to overcome disciplinary boundaries. Whereas economists used to “own” the question of the value of goods, and sociologists the question of human values and moral sensibilities, ‘valuation studies’ approach this differently. First, value or values are approached not as something that is, but as something that is being performed in practices – hence the notion of ‘valuation’. Secondly, valuation envelopes other ways of wording value – for instance, price, praise, appreciate – thus giving us the benefit of studying different value practices together. Moreover, the valuation studies approach has come to imply attention not so much to valuation as something that is either subjective or objective, but rather as something that is realized, or assisted by devices. In this respect, valuations are material-semiotic achievements. But what are valuations -and its problems? The workshop brings together scholars who will engage with this issue in two, possible, directions: What are the problems that valuation studies are aiming at working with? And do valuation studies in and of itself have problems? In other words, what are its weak spots or pressing challenges to tackle?
About the speaker
Fabian Muniesa is a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris, and studies the cultures of business life from a pragmatist perspective. He is the author of The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn (2014, Routledge) and the co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide (2017, Presses des Mines).
The workshop was organized by the Little Tools Project at the TIK Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo.
Fabian Muniesa: On the political vernaculars of value creation
Time and place: Sep. 22, 2017 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM, Room 551, 5th floor, Eilert Sundt Building
Fabian Muniesa, was invited to give the talk "On the political vernaculars of value creation" at a seminar hosted by the TIK Centre, on September 22nd.
Abstract
Of the many ideas that control economic reasoning and the policies that go with it, that of 'value creation' is certainly a most intriguing one. Something called 'value' is assumed to be 'created' and this essentially virtuous process is supposed to guide not only economic conduct but the orientation of the transformation of the world altogether.
What are the assumptions that lie beneath that notion? What is the worldview that is required in order for it to make sense? Considering 'value creation' as both a moral horizon and a political technology means examining the rhetorical role of the 'investor' in the conduct of political life and the particular blend of eschatological disinhibition that it prompts.
About the speaker
Fabian Muniesa is a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris, and studies the cultures of business life from a pragmatist perspective. He is the author of The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn (2014, Routledge) and the co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide (2017, Presses des Mines).
Little Tools Workshop: Digital methods in Science and Technology Studies
Time and place: Apr. 24, 2017 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Eilert Sundt's hus, room 529
Join us for a hands-on lecture and workshop on digital methods!
Workshop program
11.00-13.00. The challenge with the digital in STS
Lecture with Andreas Birkbak and Mathieu Jacomy.
The lecture will focus on Andreas' and Mathieu's recent work on the question of fake news and what digital methods has to offer. They will discuss specific tools and ‘recipes’ for tracing the phenomenon of fake news online and discuss these in relation to STS perspectives on issue mapping.
About the lecturers:
Andreas Birkbak is an assistant professor at the Techno-Anthropology Research Group, Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University (campus Copenhagen). He recently published a book on digital methods with Anders Kristian Munk (in Danish: Digitale metoder).
Mathieu Jacomy is a research engineer developing digital methods for the social sciences. He works at the Média Lab at Science Po University in Paris.
Recommended readings (not required):
- Marres, N. (2015). "Why map issues? On Controversy Analysis as a Digital Method”. Science, Technology and Human Values Vol. 40 (5).
- Bounegru et al. (2017). A field guide to fake news: A collection of recipes for those who love to cook with digital methods. Public Data Lab.
- Birkbak, A. & A.K. Munk. (2017). Digitale metoder. Hans Reitzels Forlag.
13.00-14.00. Lunch
14.00-16.00. To which research questions can digital tools respond?
The workshop will focus on briefly introducing two tools (around 30 mins) before allowing participants to do hands-on work with a question of their own choice under supervision by Andreas and Mathieu. We will end with a round of brief presentations of the individual experiences.
The workshop is organized by the Little Tools Project at the TIK Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo.
2016
Thomas Lemke: An Alternative Model of Politics? Perspectives and Problems of Jane Bennett’s Vital Materialism
Time and place: Dec. 6, 2016 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Eilert Sundts Hus, meeting room 450
Thomas Lemke visits the Little Tools Project for a seminar on new materialism in social and political theory, discussing Jane Bennett's vitalist notion of 'enchanted materialism'.
Abstract for the talk
Recently, social and political theory has demonstrated a renewed theoretical interest in matter and materiality. The “new materialism”, as it is sometimes called encompasses a plurality of different approaches and disciplinary perspectives, ranging from science and technology studies via feminist theory and political philosophy to geography. The new materialist scholarship shares the conviction that the “linguistic turn” or primarily textual accounts are insufficient for an adequate understanding of the complex and dynamic interplay of meaning and matter.
One of the main strands in new materialist scholarship is explicitly vitalist. The political dimensions of this “vital materialism” are best spelled out in the writings of Jane Bennett, Professor of Political Theory at Johns Hopkins University. The talk will present Bennett’s concept of “thing-power” and her idea of a posthuman political theory. It will discuss conceptual ambiguities and unresolved tensions in this “enchanted materialism” (Bennett) The talk seeks to clarify these theoretical problems and argues for a relational account of agency and ontology that allows for a more materialist account of politics.
About the speaker
Thomas Lemke is Professor of Sociology with focus on biotechnologies, nature and society at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. He is the author of several books, including Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (New York University Press, 2011).
Lemke will also participate in the workshop Versions of Biopolitics/Versions of Foucault, to be held at TIK on December 5. The workshop is organized by the Little Tools Project on the occasion of the new book "Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More-Than-Human Condition" (Routledge, 2016).
Versions of biopolitics/Versions of Foucault
Time and place: Dec. 5, 2016 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Eilert Sundt Hus, room 830
On the occasion of the new book, Humans, animals and biopolitics: the more-than-human condition, the Little Tools Project organizes the workshop "Versions of biopolitics/Versions of Foucault".
Is there still life to the biopolitics of Michel Foucault?
This workshop springs from an intention to reformulate and reinvigorate Michel Foucault's notion of biopolitics. The workshop will present and discuss different 'new' versions of biopolitics that expand their scope beyond the human species to include non-humans in their understanding of the governance of life. In the workshop, we want to consider if and how these different versions may enable readings of Foucault that shift toward a more empirically open version of biopolitics – that is, so to speak, less ‘disciplined’. In the workshop, we will discuss whether such a shift might open space for a more lively and unruly politics of life.
The venture will take its point of departure in considerations and investigations of how human and non-human animal lives intersect. The occasion for the seminar is the release of the volume 'Humans, Animals and Biopolitics' – the more than human condition’ (Asdal, Druglitrø, Hinchliffe (eds.) Routledge 2016) which intervenes and engages with the above topic and offer a series of contributions which in different ways consider how, for instance, farmed fish, flu-infected birds, nomadic camels and enviro-pigs add to the political collectives they enter.
In the workshop, Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke, Prof. Stephen Hinchliffe and Dr. Martina Schlünder will each comment on the theme, whereafter an open discussion will follow.
In his work as Professor of Sociology with focus on biotechnologies, nature and society at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Thomas Lemke has worked on Michel Foucault's relation to the 'material turn' in philosophy and sociology.
Steve Hinchliffe, who is Professor in Human Geography in the College of Life and Environmental Science at the University of Exeter, has written on human-nonhuman relations and movements of infectious diseases.
Martina Schlünder is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technoscience Research Unit at University of Toronto, Canada. Among her publications are Becoming Bone Sheep and Wissens-Hunger im Stall: Die Entstehung von Knochen-Schafen als Versuchstiere in der Unfallchirurgie
We hope the workshop will be of relevance for people with interest in Science and Technology Studies, human-animal relations, or people more broadly interested in foucaldian scholarship.
Little Tools workshop: The sites of documents
Time and place: Apr. 29, 2016 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 648 Eilert Sundts hus
Documents are everywhere. Yet despite their persistent presence, they are often disregarded as irrelevant, dusty, and dull. This workshop takes a fundamentally different approach by considering documents as lively research objects in their own right.
The sites of documents
What are the specific sites of documents? By what practices are they produced? What kind of work do they enable? How do they act upon and even potentially transform the contexts into which they intervene? And with what methods may we best explore these questions? In pursuing a dual interest in texts and practices, this workshop brings together the research traditions of History, Anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) in new ways.
Participants:
- Matthew Hull, professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Michigan, USA
- Kristin Asdal, professor, TIK, UiO
- Bård Hobæk, Ph.D. candidate, TIK, UiO
- Hilde Reinertsen, PhD, university lecturer, TIK, UiO
- Linda Madsen, postdoc, University of Freiburg, Germany
- Sylvia Lysgård, Ph.D candidate, TIK
- Bård Lahn, MA candidate, TIK
- Marte Mangset, postdoc, Oslo and Akershus University College
Matthew Hull: Satisfied callers: police, corporations, and documentation in India
Time and place: Apr. 28, 2016 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Eilert Sundts hus, seminar room 551
Matthew Hull visits TIK and the Little Tools Project to present his ongoing research on the reshaping of lines of authority and police practice in India.
Abstract for the talk
State organizations are infamous for insatiable appetites for documentation, but sometimes they refuse to produce documents. In India, police officers often refuse to register complaints and initiate proceedings.
A recent project by the police in the Indian state of Punjab has aimed to eliminate this practice. The state hired a private corporation to run a call center to take emergency calls to the police. Young, middle-class, educated women staff the phones and act as case coordinators, dispatching police in locations across the state and monitoring the progress of cases through an elaborate database that logs communications from victims and police documents.
Procedures embedded in corporation software translates the government procedure into the language of customer service. This disjunct arrangement appears to be reshaping lines of authority and police practice.
About the speaker
Matthew Hull is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the book Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan (University of California Press, 2012). He is currently working on the history and theory of the modern corporation in India.
The seminar is co-organized the TIK Center's invited lecture series.
Valuography as a new way to (re-)visit the lab as well as the restaurant?
Time and place: Jan. 13, 2016 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Eilert Sundt's building, seminar room 551
As the first invited speaker in the Little Tools seminar series, professor Claes-Fredrik Helgesson will introduce valuography, a programme of empirically oriented research into the enacting, ordering, and displacing of values.
Understanding values
Following a pragmatist understanding of values and valuations from John Dewey and Fabian Muniesa and others, a valuographic research programme is inclined to examine how and with what means some aspects come to count as important values, some comes to be considered as opposing one another, and still others come to be discounted.
Valuographic research programme
The talk further elaborates what a valuographic research programme might entail and gives examples from two ongoing research projects: one about the valuations in clinical trial design for drug development and another about the splitting of restaurant bills.
About the speaker
Claes-Fredrik Helgesson is professor at Linköping University. He holds a PhD from Stockholm School of Economics and has a prolonged research interest in medicine and public health. He currently heads the new research program ValueS (Science, Technology & Valuation Practices) and is a co-editor of the journal Valuation Studies. He recently co-edited the volume Value Practices in the Life sciences & Medicine.
The seminar is co-hosted by the TIK Center's ongoing seminar series.
