Long Abstract
The adage "technology is politics by other means" emphasizes that technoscientific practices contribute to the making of collective orders which are not given by nature, but made, involving decision, power, and authority. While the 4S/EASST motto "science & technology by other means" is meant to be a conspicuous alternative to laboratory and epistemic authority‐based reality‐making, it also provides an occasion to
come back to "politics by the same means". The challenge: to explore ways of studying "politics as usual" by taking inspiration from the conceptual repertoire developed in STS for scrutinizing "science as usual".
We invite proposals for papers that mobilize STS concepts, methodologies, and practices for studying and engaging with "politics as usual". This includes actors, knowledges, institutions, discourses, practices,infrastructures, etc., that make‐up what we "traditionally" call politics and the political process, but also those that are not on that traditional list. Examples include studies of publics, policy, parties, interest groups, social movements, terrorist groups, state and non‐state agencies, political representation and communication, democracy and participation, parliaments and lobbyism, nation‐states, populations and
stateless persons, international relations, diplomacy and conflict, multi‐level and global governance, protest and resistance. A general interest is with the tools and machineries of knowing and assembling governance, the epistemic and ontological practices that make these specifically political realities, actors, processes, powers, and modes of authority. Recalling the conference motto: what are we to do about the seemingly intransigent politics of re‐assembling "technoscientific practices along routes that do not follow once established divides"?
Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and should be submitted to http://www.sts2016bcn.org/ until February 21 2016.