Technoscience Janastu Wiki - User contributions [en]

Links to other conversations

2012-12-11T22:55:21Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 2013

"Tales of Tomorrow," Connie Samaras' solo show at the Armory, opens March 2. Samaras' work over 3 decades has framed the city and nature through historically-nuanced critiques of empire, capital, gender, globalization. See this Difference Engines blogpost for more about her work: http://www.differenceengines.com/?p=204

April 2013

The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]

The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."

UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and fiction writer Anil Menon.

November 2013

The Feminist Technology Network (FemTechNet) is applying for an artist & scholars' exchange grant, to enable the travel of creative professionals between LA and the world.
PIs (Alexandra Juhasz and Kavita Philip) plan to host [[people]] from Bangalore and Bogotá.

'''EXTENDED TANGENTS'''

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/] Also see this work from Latin America [[http://www.des-bordes.net/0.5/en/la%20barricada%20de%20los%20muertos/helena_chavez.html]]

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any [[suggestions]]?

Links to other conversations

2012-12-11T22:52:44Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 2013
"Tales of Tomorrow," Connie Samaras' solo show at the Armory, opens March 2. Samaras' work over 3 decades has framed the city and nature through historically-nuanced critiques of empire, capital, gender, globalization. See this Difference Engines blogpost for more about her work: http://www.differenceengines.com/?p=204

April 2013

The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]

The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."

UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and brilliant fiction writer Anil Menon.

November 2013

The Feminist Technology Network (FemTechNet) is applying for an artist & scholars' exchange grant, to enable the travel of creative professionals between LA and the world.
PIs (Alexandra Juhasz and Kavita Philip) plan to host [[people]] from Bangalore and Bogotá.

'''EXTENDED TANGENTS'''

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/] Also see this work from Latin America [[http://www.des-bordes.net/0.5/en/la%20barricada%20de%20los%20muertos/helena_chavez.html]]

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any [[suggestions]]?

Here

2012-12-11T19:26:40Z

Kavita:

Title: Future of the Capitalist City

Description: Although the founders of social theory approached the dynamics of capitalism in terms of their expected momentum, social science today is often reluctant to think big about the future. But in the face of perpetual economic and environmental crisis, thinking about the future is a critical exercise. It compels us to consider the connections between macro dynamics; to unsettle familiar categories in the face of new trends; and to re-read the past and present in light of likely developments. This post-disciplinary panel will discuss the future of the capitalist city in four continents and in terms of several dynamics: claustrophobic climate politics; infinite suburbanization; post-industrial abandonment and rebirth; techno-utopian fantasies; and consultancy feeding frenzies. As sociologist John Urry (2011) writes, "We will all be forced to become futurologists, whether we like it or not.... We all need to be thinking futures even if doing so is immensely difficult."

Organizers:
Daniel Aldana Cohen

Chairs:
Kavita Philip

Participants:

Introducer: Kavita Philip

Presenter: Yannis Tzaninis, Scarcities in Space and the Suburb in Motion: from Amsterdam to Almere and back again

Presenter: Anne Vogelpohl, Urban Futures - A Playground for Consultancies

Presenter: Jessi Quizar, Who cares for the 'hood? The commons and neighbor management of "vacant" land in Detroit

Presenter: Daniel Aldana Cohen, Climate Change, "post-materialism", and the future of the capitalist city

Discussant: Max Besbris

People

2012-12-11T19:20:40Z

Kavita:

(Grant in progress; outcome pending)

FROM BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

Andrés Jurado

Andrés Jurado is a Visual Artist and Curator. He is currently a Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Colombia. He holds a Masters in Visual Arts from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and his studies include an undergraduate degree from the Universidad de Caldas in Manizales, Colombia and a specialitation in Art and New Technologies at Colombia's School of Film and TV at The Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. He has worked as a curator and museographer for the National Museum of Colombia, and has collaborated on films as an art director and cinematographer. He is currently working on a variety of experimental projects about the figure of The Animal in contemporary and media arts. His work has been shown in Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Europe in various exhibitions and festivals such as EMAF, European Media Arts Film Festival in Germany in 2010, Experimenta Colombia, Artronica, Asimtría (Peru), Internacional Festival Cervantes (Mexico), Hexadic 6x6 (Greece), Magmart (Italy), Cologne Off, among others.

Tania Pérez-Bustos

Tania Pérez Bustos is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. She is also independently affiliated with feminist research groups at the School of Gender Studies at the National University of Colombia. She has also worked as a consultant for research projects carried out with the support of institutions such as the Colciencias Colombian Observatory of Science and Technology. Her publications and research are related to popular movements around science and technology, and feminist practices related to science and technology. She addresses these issues in a variety of contexts, including: science museums, free software communities in Colombia and India, the media, victims of violence in Colombia, and racial and sexual minorities. She is interested in how these contexts are traversed by an ethos of care and certain "technologies of contact.” Her ethnographic fieldwork has developed in Global South countries, mainly India and Colombia, but also through collaborative networks with universities and activists in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Germany and the UK.

FROM BANGALORE

Nishant Shah

Nishant Shah is Director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, and a well known public intellectual, writer, and scholar of STS and the digital humanities.

Links to other conversations

2012-12-11T19:18:40Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 2013
"Tales of Tomorrow," Connie Samaras' solo show at the Armory, opens March 2. Samaras' work over 3 decades has framed the city and nature through historically-nuanced critiques of empire, capital, gender, globalization. See this Difference Engines blogpost for more about her work: http://www.differenceengines.com/?p=204

April 2013

The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]

The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."

UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and brilliant fiction writer Anil Menon.

November 2013

The Feminist Technology Network (FemTechNet) is applying for an artist & scholars' exchange grant, to enable the travel of creative professionals between LA and the world.
PIs (Alexandra Juhasz and Kavita Philip) plan to host [[people]] from Bangalore and Bogotá.

'''EXTENDED TANGENTS'''

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any [[suggestions]]?

Here

2012-12-11T17:34:14Z

Kavita:

Title: Future of the Capitalist City

Description: Although the founders of social theory approached the dynamics of capitalism in terms of their expected momentum, social science today is often reluctant to think big about the future. But in the face of perpetual economic and environmental crisis, thinking about the future is a critical exercise. It compels us to consider the connections between macro dynamics; to unsettle familiar categories in the face of new trends; and to re-read the past and present in light of likely developments. This post-disciplinary panel will discuss the future of the capitalist city in four continents and in terms of several dynamics: claustrophobic climate politics; infinite suburbanization; post-industrial abandonment and rebirth; techno-utopian fantasies; and consultancy feeding frenzies. As sociologist John Urry (2011) writes, "We will all be forced to become futurologists, whether we like it or not.... We all need to be thinking futures even if doing so is immensely difficult."

Organizers:
Daniel Aldana Cohen

Chairs:
KAVITA S PHILIP

Participants:

Introducer: KAVITA S PHILIP

Presenter: Yannis Tzaninis, Scarcities in Space and the Suburb in Motion: from Amsterdam to Almere and back again

Presenter: Anne Vogelpohl, Urban Futures - A Playground for Consultancies

Presenter: Jessi Quizar, Who cares for the 'hood? The commons and neighbor management of "vacant" land in Detroit

Presenter: Daniel Aldana Cohen, Climate Change, "post-materialism", and the future of the capitalist city

Discussant: Max Besbris

Affect that isn't psychoanalytic

2012-12-11T08:23:55Z

Kavita:

Ellie and Lilly have an ongoing thread about affect, emotion, capitalism, and work. Ellie asked Lilly for works on affect that aren't psychoanalytic. Lilly figured this would make for just the sort of thing this wiki was made for!

'''Eva Illouz - Cold Intimacies: The Makings of Emotional Capitalism (book)'''
Draws on a lot of frankfurt school, Bourdieu, management studies, studies of online dating she has conducted in Israel to develop the concept of emotional capital -- the capacities to manage and present oneself in an emotionally "authentic" way, where authenticity is a subjective state produced through websites where we have to decide on one self to be because it is our public profile, because therapists train us to locate our authentic self, etc.

'''Eitan Wilf - SINCERITY VERSUS SELF-EXPRESSION: MODERN CREATIVE AGENCY AND THE MATERIALITY OF SEMIOTIC FORMS'''
http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/426
Cultural Anthro piece that looks at how self-help books train people to recognize doubt, passion in themselves as a way of creating subjects who can take on personal risk in pursuit of authentically fulfilling market pursuits,

'''William Mazzarella - Affect: What is it Good for? from Routledge's Enchantments of Modernity'''
http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/docs/mazz_affect.pdf
A critique of Massumi's affect theory, and generally affect theories that seize upon affect as something prelinguistic, biological, essential. Might make more sense read along with Mazzarella's annual review piece Culture, Globalization, Mediation (http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143809)

'''McElhinny - The Audicity of Affect: Gender, Race, and History in Linguistic Accounts of Legitimacy and Belonging'''
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164358
Read a while ago and not sure completely, but seems like a good review that will avoid psychoanalysis. Never seen any ling anthro that takes with psychoanalysis on board (yet?)

'''Amy Wharton - The Sociology of Emotional Labor'''
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115944
More broadly, I've been thinking about affect in part as the emotional labor. In design, producing affects in others as part of facilitating cooperation, enthusiasm, collaboration. And more broadly, the affective work of keeping oneself upbeat, enthusiastic, perky, avoiding "burn out" and "going crazy."

'''Pamela Zoline - The Heat Death of the Universe'''
This was a 1967 short story by feminist SF-NewWave writer Pamela Zoline. It refers to a long history of female domestically-sited fiction, but destroys 19th-Century assumptions about the ontological status of femininity and its link to the domestic sphere. The story, however, is more than just a metaphoric reflection on domestic labor. The structure of the piece destroys the convenional structure of the story (egL 54 numbered paragraphs; interestingly Terry Harpold uses numbered paragraphs in his new media criticism book, Ex-Foliations, as an allusion to hyper-text and the history of digital writing). Critic Elizabeth Hewit asks us to take the physics metaphors literally: "Is Zoline depicting an early manifestation of the end-of-the-world or is she commenting on the social fact of unpaid female labor?" http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/64/hewitt.htm (One problem with taking those metaphors literally: the heat death of the universe refers to thermal equilibrium, not to things getting hot and melting.) The connection to affect studies is in Zoline's concern with representing, critiquing, subverting and ultimately exploding the affective tropes of domestic labor.

'''Deleuze and Guattari - A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (book)'''
To many (anarchists, post-Marxists and various others), D&G offer a more satisfying route to understanding desire & politics, in ways that avoid the Freudian and Lacanian turns in psychoanalysis and its institutionalization. The ruse and delusion of psychoanalysis was in getting individuals to speak supposedly in their own name but actually in the service of a conventional (oedipal) formation. Brian Massumi says of Deleuze's position: "He came to occupy the same position in relation to psychoanalysis as he had all along in relation to the parties of the left: an ultra-opposition within the opposition. His antihierarcihcal leanings made him a precursor to the events of May 1968 and an early partisan of the social movements that grew from them, including feminism and the gay rights movement." (translator's Foreword, xi)

Affect that isn't psychoanalytic

2012-12-11T05:19:01Z

Kavita:

Environmental Politics

2012-12-02T23:42:59Z

Kavita:

'''CURRENT EVENTS:'''

'''URBAN ECOLOGIES'''
Upcoming deadline: Applications due early December:
http://uchri.org/funding/cfps/residential-research-group-fellowships/

November 2012 at Janastu:

Discussion with riseup and indymedia activists.

[[THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL THOUGHTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS]]

Questions and Concerns: Technology, Work, Family, Life

2012-11-28T00:06:00Z

Kavita:

Some reflections in progress about probably far too many things... Feel free to leave comments, questions, etc..

Back to the [[Postcolonial Techno-Science]] research page

==Initial Questions about Mobile ICTs==

A few months ago, I thought my project was about smartphones -- or at least mobile ICTs. Fieldwork-wise, I've already spent time with 3 families in SoCal (2 families x 4 visits in a week; 1 family x 14 visits over 6 weeks), and corporate professionals in an organizational context (~30 interviews + ~10 days of workplace observations over 4 months). I have been planning a (hopefully) complementary study of mobile ICT use with a different population — long-distance hikers. In shifting my attention to (unemployed) hikers, I would hope to open up some of the concepts from previous smartphone research that has focused primarily on working professionals.

At that point, I had a whole set of questions arranged around themes, something like this:

;“Connectivity”: What does it mean to be ‘connected’? To who? To what? Via who/what? [Likewise for ‘dis-connection,’ ‘unplugging.’ Since that is so popular these days.]

;“Capture”: More than just tools for communication, smartphones are also tools of capture: of pictures, knowledge, data about the self (think personal wellness apps). (How) do smartphones play a role in creating memories of a once-in-a-lifetime event?

;“Nature”: How do people articulate boundaries: What is natural or not? Is nature something a person can be part of? An object? What kinds of objects? Etc…

;“Ubiquity”: In HCI, “naturalness” is often a tool for creating ubiquitous computing, and a measure of whether an object is ubiquitous. What kinds of things are ubiquitous for hikers? What does it mean for a device to be “ubiquitous”? What are the markers and stakes of “ubiquity? (How) does this relate to “naturalness”?

;Intimacy, boundaries, technology as self/other: This comes up a lot with professionals. When/how is the smartphone articulated as intimate & personal, part of or aligned with the self? When do people move to distance it as other? Technologies (gear) is super important for hiking & super-personal (carried for 5 months!). How do ICTs fit in?

==Evolving Questions about Work, Family, Life==

I started fieldwork with a new family in SoCal (14 x 4 hour visits, spread over 7 weeks), and of course, they were not really using their smartphones at home at all! Nonetheless, the way that their life seems to revolve entirely around their work totally freaked me out. And so that got me reading Melissa Gregg's [http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745650289| Work's Intimacy] and Kathi Weeks's [http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=48492&viewby=title| The Problem with Work] ... and so now I have a bunch of reflections and other questions that will be somewhat framed in terms of those lovely authors because that's what's on my mind...

===Framing concerns===

With both Gregg & Weeks, I share a lot of political/practical concerns/opinions:

* over-prioritization of work (to the detriment of other aspects of life. Family seems most important in the press and maybe to Gregg. Weeks also highlights importance of having time for "what we will")
* precarity of work is commonplace (and likewise unemployment and underemployment)
* that precarity (and under/un employment) creates an additional overhead of always needing to be networking, getting ready for the next thing
* the camaraderie among colleagues can be difficult to negotiate -- on the one hand its the only social interaction many people get outside of home. on the other hand, what is up with this mixing of "friends" and "colleagues" on facebook and elsewhere
* workloads are excessive
* wages for workers are (too) low

At the specific level (accounts of work, email, etc.), there are a lot of resonances between my interview data and Gregg's interview data. Things, like:
* people over-work for their immediate team / a sense of obligation to immediate co-workers more than due to threats from management/bosses
** this is important for political stances. The traditional labor movement/union ideology doesn't speak to these experiences well.
* affective experience of 'constant connectivity' is described as compulsive, uncontrollable, obsessive
* negotiating email is hard and people are concerned about things like: over cc-ing, sending too many, whether they or others are avoiding face to face conversation, whether email creates more work

But, big picture, now I'm wondering so.. what? What next? What am I researching that's more than pointing to a series of encounters with technology and work?

===Work===

Weeks nicely articulates that its not so much perplexing that people are "resigned" to a current state of affairs that involves low pay, under/un/precarious employment, and excessive overworking. Rather it's perplexing that people are seemingly neither resigned, nor questioning/concerned. Instead, there is a seemingly pervasive "willingness to live for work." Big picture, I think this is another question for me right now, too.
* What is it about work that makes people willing to let it completely dominate their lives?
* And for whom is work central? For whom is it not?

I realize that with my plan to study long-distance hikers, I also have a population that is interesting because at least some portion of them aren't living the typical model of an American life: 40-hour work week, 2 weeks of vacation a year, and devotion to a career. Some are/could be -- like they are retired or they are kids between high school and college, etc. But, at least some portion of people turn hiking into their career. Some other group of them work to save up funding for a 6 month vacation once every couple of years... etc...

===Technology's role?===

I've often felt like technology serves as a thing to point to, a sort of scape goat for what I tend to see as broader social concerns and frustrations with work/life/family, etc.

Steve Barley has a lovely paper about email as a oft-invoked reason for overload; however, he finds that it is not correlated with stress/overload. Instead, it's such a good symbol/figure, that it distracts people from facing/recognizing the actual/more likely sources of stress. Smartphones are good figures for work-life-balance issues, too. I have long felt like the problematization of smartphones distracts/serves as a scapegoat for other issues.
* What is it about mobile ICTs? And what are the "real"/other problems?

I never know what to make sense of suggestions about the "impacts" of new technologies. Gregg points to Whyte & Mills studies of work to note that the extended workday is nothing new (yay!) and this was really nice to see. Looking back to studies like these, which I'm not all that familiar with, should likely help me think about this history question further.

However, I just can't decide what I think about Gregg’s suggestion that new technologies make it easier for /everyone/ to be "driven to work" outside of work, "not just leaders and managers" (which Whyte & Mills reported on). My best grasp of history is just my own relatively short life experience. But certainly my mom, a teacher, and my dad a salesman, brought lots of work home in the 1980s without the aid of any new media technologies. Mom was often working on freaking triplicate carbon copy forms. Paper has (always?) been portable. I'm really confused about what is different, today.
* Is work really changing that much in response to tools?
* Or are the tools of work just changing? (And becoming scapegoats for a work that is simultaneously changing?)
* Maybe it was a big deal to bring a dictaphone home for people in Whyte's study, and certainly that object lets them do tasks at home that they couldn't do without it. But, were they not working at an earlier point in time, simply sans-dictaphone? With pen, paper and a snifter of brandy in the study? I don't really know, but I obviously have my own assumptions ;)

In studying technology, this always feels like a big struggle... deciding how to articulate what is "new" about the contemporary moment. I'm usually inclined to say nothing, but that's not any more helpful than saying everything is new. I don't feel good about drawing lines in either the history of technology or the history of work.
* What is new?

It seems like there is something particularly personal/mobile/intimate with an object like a smartphone that fits in a pocket, goes everywhere -- bedroom, bathroom, boardroom... But it's not this alone, this coupled with what -- communication? entertainment? photography? Is it about the multi-functionality? I am not sure...
* Gregg terms ''presence bleed'' the mixing of work/life that comes along with online (and importantly mobile) technologies -- friending colleagues, twittering about research, emailing from bed, etc.

===Identity & stories===

In Gregg's book, there is a lot of history that is referred to, but not made explicit. She says, e.g. "Professional work generates...pleasure and accomplishment that rival the markers of identity favored in previous historical formations." I don't know this history, and am left wondering:
* What were these markers?
* What were these historical formations?

Weeks draws much attention to the role of a pervasive "work ethic" in shaping attitudes, drawing on The Protestant Ethic for historical framing
* What other similar analyses (besides Weber) exist?

In one of the three families I've spent time with so far, both parents are working really long hours + have a significant commute, and Mom, especially, seems really tired all the time. She fell asleep on the sofa on almost every single one of my visits to their house. In her position, I would be going crazy, and looking hard for a way out -- a new job, a different career, something. In the final interview, we talked about some specific frustrations with things like not getting to do a particular family activity because of work obligations, etc.

But, then her framing story, her big picture assessment of life satisfaction, both work and family, was that she feels incredibly lucky and she has an amazing life and there is nothing she wants to change. I am so perplexed by what seems perfect about this life, and how it seems that things aren't open to and don't need to be changed. It seems like the ability to tell a big picture story of happiness, luck and perfection is really helpful for making this assessment.

What are people's stories of their life? Their work? Their family? Their technology?
* How do these stories make sense? What are their scales?
* Frictions and alignments across stories?
* Frictions and alignments across stories and little moments of living life?

There seems to be an un-questioning of work's domination in life. It is not that anyone would say it is "the most important thing" and people certainly bring their kids up as the things that give them the "most satisfaction" in life, but the devotion of time and energy disproportionately to work activities is somehow a non-issue.
* What is it that makes work unquestionable?

Gregg, by way of partial explanation for such a question, points to the way that paid employment is socially/culturally important. As she puts it, wage labor is "the most compelling demonstration of virtue, accomplishment, and self-identity that society makes available" (p. xi). And, as I said above, Weeks puts a lot of emphasis on the pervasiveness of a certain (historically-‘protestant’) 'work ethic.'
* How/where/when is this ethic invoked/reproduced/refigured today? Aren't there other stories out there, too?
* How does technology/media fit into this story? Is technology just on a side-stage, another piece of material that reproduces stories/values/ethics?

And then the little stories about what’s happening in the moment matter, too -- like I interpret a little boy's consistently bad behavior -- crying, screaming, hitting his little sister, dumping his plate of food on the table, flinging yogurt at his mom with a spoon -- as "attention seeking behaviors" (thanks to my mom, the kindergarten & preschool special ed teacher). I see them as learned because in my view he is reinforced/rewarded/gets what he wants when he does these things. But, over the course of my fieldwork, and in the final interviews, I found out this little boy's mom didn't see them that way at all. No, for her they were just manifestations of him being "such a boy" -- boys are destructive and angry by nature. Suddenly everyone's actions around the house, and non-concern for the little boy's behavior, seemed completely reasonable. I'm not really sure where to go with this, but, anyway, another example of a story that really impacted my understanding of what I was observing...

==Discussion==

I see you're using Melissa Gregg's book, which draws on several conversations, including a marxist-feminist debate about labour, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic writing about affect. You could, of course, trace this back as fas as you like (eg to Marx and Keynes; to Heidi Hartmann, Rosemary Hennessy, and recent materialist feminisms).

1) Consider this much-quoted passage from The German Ideology:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

2) Think about models of self (and other). I think your work/life questions map in some obvious ways onto the long history of private/public constructions, and the related constructions of labour. In addition, there are models of self in specific historical contexts that beg to be picked up for discussion here. Look at work on the clock and models of temporality and self-management; and later "industrial" constructions of self (eg The Human Motor, Anson Rabinbach) and Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines.

Questions and Concerns: Technology, Work, Family, Life

2012-11-26T21:58:22Z

Kavita:

Some reflections in progress about probably far too many things... Feel free to leave comments, questions, etc..

Back to the [[Postcolonial Techno-Science]] research page

==Initial Questions about Mobile ICTs==

A few months ago, I thought my project was about smartphones -- or at least mobile ICTs. Fieldwork-wise, I've already spent time with 3 families in SoCal (2 families x 4 visits in a week; 1 family x 14 visits over 6 weeks), and corporate professionals in an organizational context (~30 interviews + ~10 days of workplace observations over 4 months). I have been planning a (hopefully) complementary study of mobile ICT use with a different population — long-distance hikers. In shifting my attention to (unemployed) hikers, I would hope to open up some of the concepts from previous smartphone research that has focused primarily on working professionals.

At that point, I had a whole set of questions arranged around themes, something like this:

;“Connectivity”: What does it mean to be ‘connected’? To who? To what? Via who/what? [Likewise for ‘dis-connection,’ ‘unplugging.’ Since that is so popular these days.]

;“Capture”: More than just tools for communication, smartphones are also tools of capture: of pictures, knowledge, data about the self (think personal wellness apps). (How) do smartphones play a role in creating memories of a once-in-a-lifetime event?

;“Nature”: How do people articulate boundaries: What is natural or not? Is nature something a person can be part of? An object? What kinds of objects? Etc…

;“Ubiquity”: In HCI, “naturalness” is often a tool for creating ubiquitous computing, and a measure of whether an object is ubiquitous. What kinds of things are ubiquitous for hikers? What does it mean for a device to be “ubiquitous”? What are the markers and stakes of “ubiquity? (How) does this relate to “naturalness”?

;Intimacy, boundaries, technology as self/other: This comes up a lot with professionals. When/how is the smartphone articulated as intimate & personal, part of or aligned with the self? When do people move to distance it as other? Technologies (gear) is super important for hiking & super-personal (carried for 5 months!). How do ICTs fit in?

==Evolving Questions about Work, Family, Life==

I started fieldwork with a new family in SoCal (14 x 4 hour visits, spread over 7 weeks), and of course, they were not really using their smartphones at home at all! Nonetheless, the way that their life seems to revolve entirely around their work totally freaked me out. And so that got me reading Melissa Gregg's [http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745650289| Work's Intimacy] and Kathi Weeks's [http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=48492&viewby=title| The Problem with Work] ... and so now I have a bunch of reflections and other questions that will be somewhat framed in terms of those lovely authors because that's what's on my mind...

===Framing concerns===

With both Gregg & Weeks, I share a lot of political/practical concerns/opinions:

* over-prioritization of work (to the detriment of other aspects of life. Family seems most important in the press and maybe to Gregg. Weeks also highlights importance of having time for "what we will")
* precarity of work is commonplace (and likewise unemployment and underemployment)
* that precarity (and under/un employment) creates an additional overhead of always needing to be networking, getting ready for the next thing
* the camaraderie among colleagues can be difficult to negotiate -- on the one hand its the only social interaction many people get outside of home. on the other hand, what is up with this mixing of "friends" and "colleagues" on facebook and elsewhere
* workloads are excessive
* wages for workers are (too) low

At the specific level (accounts of work, email, etc.), there are a lot of resonances between my interview data and Gregg's interview data. Things, like:
* people over-work for their immediate team / a sense of obligation to immediate co-workers more than due to threats from management/bosses
** this is important for political stances. The traditional labor movement/union ideology doesn't speak to these experiences well.
* affective experience of 'constant connectivity' is described as compulsive, uncontrollable, obsessive
* negotiating email is hard and people are concerned about things like: over cc-ing, sending too many, whether they or others are avoiding face to face conversation, whether email creates more work

But, big picture, now I'm wondering so.. what? What next? What am I researching that's more than pointing to a series of encounters with technology and work?

===Work===

Weeks nicely articulates that its not so much perplexing that people are "resigned" to a current state of affairs that involves low pay, under/un/precarious employment, and excessive overworking. Rather it's perplexing that people are seemingly neither resigned, nor questioning/concerned. Instead, there is a seemingly pervasive "willingness to live for work." Big picture, I think this is another question for me right now, too.
* What is it about work that makes people willing to let it completely dominate their lives?
* And for whom is work central? For whom is it not?

I realize that with my plan to study long-distance hikers, I also have a population that is interesting because at least some portion of them aren't living the typical model of an American life: 40-hour work week, 2 weeks of vacation a year, and devotion to a career. Some are/could be -- like they are retired or they are kids between high school and college, etc. But, at least some portion of people turn hiking into their career. Some other group of them work to save up funding for a 6 month vacation once every couple of years... etc...

===Technology's role?===

I've often felt like technology serves as a thing to point to, a sort of scape goat for what I tend to see as broader social concerns and frustrations with work/life/family, etc.

Steve Barley has a lovely paper about email as a oft-invoked reason for overload; however, he finds that it is not correlated with stress/overload. Instead, it's such a good symbol/figure, that it distracts people from facing/recognizing the actual/more likely sources of stress. Smartphones are good figures for work-life-balance issues, too. I have long felt like the problematization of smartphones distracts/serves as a scapegoat for other issues.
* What is it about mobile ICTs? And what are the "real"/other problems?

I never know what to make sense of suggestions about the "impacts" of new technologies. Gregg points to Whyte & Mills studies of work to note that the extended workday is nothing new (yay!) and this was really nice to see. Looking back to studies like these, which I'm not all that familiar with, should likely help me think about this history question further.

However, I just can't decide what I think about Gregg’s suggestion that new technologies make it easier for /everyone/ to be "driven to work" outside of work, "not just leaders and managers" (which Whyte & Mills reported on). My best grasp of history is just my own relatively short life experience. But certainly my mom, a teacher, and my dad a salesman, brought lots of work home in the 1980s without the aid of any new media technologies. Mom was often working on freaking triplicate carbon copy forms. Paper has (always?) been portable. I'm really confused about what is different, today.
* Is work really changing that much in response to tools?
* Or are the tools of work just changing? (And becoming scapegoats for a work that is simultaneously changing?)
* Maybe it was a big deal to bring a dictaphone home for people in Whyte's study, and certainly that object lets them do tasks at home that they couldn't do without it. But, were they not working at an earlier point in time, simply sans-dictaphone? With pen, paper and a snifter of brandy in the study? I don't really know, but I obviously have my own assumptions ;)

In studying technology, this always feels like a big struggle... deciding how to articulate what is "new" about the contemporary moment. I'm usually inclined to say nothing, but that's not any more helpful than saying everything is new. I don't feel good about drawing lines in either the history of technology or the history of work.
* What is new?

It seems like there is something particularly personal/mobile/intimate with an object like a smartphone that fits in a pocket, goes everywhere -- bedroom, bathroom, boardroom... But it's not this alone, this coupled with what -- communication? entertainment? photography? Is it about the multi-functionality? I am not sure...
* Gregg terms ''presence bleed'' the mixing of work/life that comes along with online (and importantly mobile) technologies -- friending colleagues, twittering about research, emailing from bed, etc.

===Identity & stories===

In Gregg's book, there is a lot of history that is referred to, but not made explicit. She says, e.g. "Professional work generates...pleasure and accomplishment that rival the markers of identity favored in previous historical formations." I don't know this history, and am left wondering:
* What were these markers?
* What were these historical formations?

Weeks draws much attention to the role of a pervasive "work ethic" in shaping attitudes, drawing on The Protestant Ethic for historical framing
* What other similar analyses (besides Weber) exist?

In one of the three families I've spent time with so far, both parents are working really long hours + have a significant commute, and Mom, especially, seems really tired all the time. She fell asleep on the sofa on almost every single one of my visits to their house. In her position, I would be going crazy, and looking hard for a way out -- a new job, a different career, something. In the final interview, we talked about some specific frustrations with things like not getting to do a particular family activity because of work obligations, etc.

But, then her framing story, her big picture assessment of life satisfaction, both work and family, was that she feels incredibly lucky and she has an amazing life and there is nothing she wants to change. I am so perplexed by what seems perfect about this life, and how it seems that things aren't open to and don't need to be changed. It seems like the ability to tell a big picture story of happiness, luck and perfection is really helpful for making this assessment.

What are people's stories of their life? Their work? Their family? Their technology?
* How do these stories make sense? What are their scales?
* Frictions and alignments across stories?
* Frictions and alignments across stories and little moments of living life?

There seems to be an un-questioning of work's domination in life. It is not that anyone would say it is "the most important thing" and people certainly bring their kids up as the things that give them the "most satisfaction" in life, but the devotion of time and energy disproportionately to work activities is somehow a non-issue.
* What is it that makes work unquestionable?

Gregg, by way of partial explanation for such a question, points to the way that paid employment is socially/culturally important. As she puts it, wage labor is "the most compelling demonstration of virtue, accomplishment, and self-identity that society makes available" (p. xi). And, as I said above, Weeks puts a lot of emphasis on the pervasiveness of a certain (historically-‘protestant’) 'work ethic.'
* How/where/when is this ethic invoked/reproduced/refigured today? Aren't there other stories out there, too?
* How does technology/media fit into this story? Is technology just on a side-stage, another piece of material that reproduces stories/values/ethics?

And then the little stories about what’s happening in the moment matter, too -- like I interpret a little boy's consistently bad behavior -- crying, screaming, hitting his little sister, dumping his plate of food on the table, flinging yogurt at his mom with a spoon -- as "attention seeking behaviors" (thanks to my mom, the kindergarten & preschool special ed teacher). I see them as learned because in my view he is reinforced/rewarded/gets what he wants when he does these things. But, over the course of my fieldwork, and in the final interviews, I found out this little boy's mom didn't see them that way at all. No, for her they were just manifestations of him being "such a boy" -- boys are destructive and angry by nature. Suddenly everyone's actions around the house, and non-concern for the little boy's behavior, seemed completely reasonable. I'm not really sure where to go with this, but, anyway, another example of a story that really impacted my understanding of what I was observing...

==Discussion==

I see you're using Melissa Gregg's book, which draws on several conversations, including a marxist-feminist debate about labour, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic writing about affect. You could, of course, trace this back as fas as you like (eg to Marx and Keynes; to Heidi Hartmann, Rosemary Hennessy, and recent materialist feminisms).

Consider, for now, this much-quoted passage from The German Ideology:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

Questions and Concerns: Technology, Work, Family, Life

2012-11-26T21:57:09Z

Kavita:

Some reflections in progress about probably far too many things... Feel free to leave comments, questions, etc..

Back to the [[Postcolonial Techno-Science]] research page

==Initial Questions about Mobile ICTs==

A few months ago, I thought my project was about smartphones -- or at least mobile ICTs. Fieldwork-wise, I've already spent time with 3 families in SoCal (2 families x 4 visits in a week; 1 family x 14 visits over 6 weeks), and corporate professionals in an organizational context (~30 interviews + ~10 days of workplace observations over 4 months). I have been planning a (hopefully) complementary study of mobile ICT use with a different population — long-distance hikers. In shifting my attention to (unemployed) hikers, I would hope to open up some of the concepts from previous smartphone research that has focused primarily on working professionals.

At that point, I had a whole set of questions arranged around themes, something like this:

;“Connectivity”: What does it mean to be ‘connected’? To who? To what? Via who/what? [Likewise for ‘dis-connection,’ ‘unplugging.’ Since that is so popular these days.]

;“Capture”: More than just tools for communication, smartphones are also tools of capture: of pictures, knowledge, data about the self (think personal wellness apps). (How) do smartphones play a role in creating memories of a once-in-a-lifetime event?

;“Nature”: How do people articulate boundaries: What is natural or not? Is nature something a person can be part of? An object? What kinds of objects? Etc…

;“Ubiquity”: In HCI, “naturalness” is often a tool for creating ubiquitous computing, and a measure of whether an object is ubiquitous. What kinds of things are ubiquitous for hikers? What does it mean for a device to be “ubiquitous”? What are the markers and stakes of “ubiquity? (How) does this relate to “naturalness”?

;Intimacy, boundaries, technology as self/other: This comes up a lot with professionals. When/how is the smartphone articulated as intimate & personal, part of or aligned with the self? When do people move to distance it as other? Technologies (gear) is super important for hiking & super-personal (carried for 5 months!). How do ICTs fit in?

==Discussion==

I see you're using Melissa Gregg's book, which draws on several conversations, including a marxist-feminist debate about labour, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic writing about affect. You could, of course, trace this back as fas as you like (eg to Marx and Keynes; to Heidi Hartmann, Rosemary Hennessy, and recent materialist feminisms).

Consider, for now, this much-quoted passage from The German Ideology:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

==Evolving Questions about Work, Family, Life==

I started fieldwork with a new family in SoCal (14 x 4 hour visits, spread over 7 weeks), and of course, they were not really using their smartphones at home at all! Nonetheless, the way that their life seems to revolve entirely around their work totally freaked me out. And so that got me reading Melissa Gregg's [http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745650289| Work's Intimacy] and Kathi Weeks's [http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=48492&viewby=title| The Problem with Work] ... and so now I have a bunch of reflections and other questions that will be somewhat framed in terms of those lovely authors because that's what's on my mind...

===Framing concerns===

With both Gregg & Weeks, I share a lot of political/practical concerns/opinions:

* over-prioritization of work (to the detriment of other aspects of life. Family seems most important in the press and maybe to Gregg. Weeks also highlights importance of having time for "what we will")
* precarity of work is commonplace (and likewise unemployment and underemployment)
* that precarity (and under/un employment) creates an additional overhead of always needing to be networking, getting ready for the next thing
* the camaraderie among colleagues can be difficult to negotiate -- on the one hand its the only social interaction many people get outside of home. on the other hand, what is up with this mixing of "friends" and "colleagues" on facebook and elsewhere
* workloads are excessive
* wages for workers are (too) low

At the specific level (accounts of work, email, etc.), there are a lot of resonances between my interview data and Gregg's interview data. Things, like:
* people over-work for their immediate team / a sense of obligation to immediate co-workers more than due to threats from management/bosses
** this is important for political stances. The traditional labor movement/union ideology doesn't speak to these experiences well.
* affective experience of 'constant connectivity' is described as compulsive, uncontrollable, obsessive
* negotiating email is hard and people are concerned about things like: over cc-ing, sending too many, whether they or others are avoiding face to face conversation, whether email creates more work

But, big picture, now I'm wondering so.. what? What next? What am I researching that's more than pointing to a series of encounters with technology and work?

===Work===

Weeks nicely articulates that its not so much perplexing that people are "resigned" to a current state of affairs that involves low pay, under/un/precarious employment, and excessive overworking. Rather it's perplexing that people are seemingly neither resigned, nor questioning/concerned. Instead, there is a seemingly pervasive "willingness to live for work." Big picture, I think this is another question for me right now, too.
* What is it about work that makes people willing to let it completely dominate their lives?
* And for whom is work central? For whom is it not?

I realize that with my plan to study long-distance hikers, I also have a population that is interesting because at least some portion of them aren't living the typical model of an American life: 40-hour work week, 2 weeks of vacation a year, and devotion to a career. Some are/could be -- like they are retired or they are kids between high school and college, etc. But, at least some portion of people turn hiking into their career. Some other group of them work to save up funding for a 6 month vacation once every couple of years... etc...

===Technology's role?===

I've often felt like technology serves as a thing to point to, a sort of scape goat for what I tend to see as broader social concerns and frustrations with work/life/family, etc.

Steve Barley has a lovely paper about email as a oft-invoked reason for overload; however, he finds that it is not correlated with stress/overload. Instead, it's such a good symbol/figure, that it distracts people from facing/recognizing the actual/more likely sources of stress. Smartphones are good figures for work-life-balance issues, too. I have long felt like the problematization of smartphones distracts/serves as a scapegoat for other issues.
* What is it about mobile ICTs? And what are the "real"/other problems?

I never know what to make sense of suggestions about the "impacts" of new technologies. Gregg points to Whyte & Mills studies of work to note that the extended workday is nothing new (yay!) and this was really nice to see. Looking back to studies like these, which I'm not all that familiar with, should likely help me think about this history question further.

However, I just can't decide what I think about Gregg’s suggestion that new technologies make it easier for /everyone/ to be "driven to work" outside of work, "not just leaders and managers" (which Whyte & Mills reported on). My best grasp of history is just my own relatively short life experience. But certainly my mom, a teacher, and my dad a salesman, brought lots of work home in the 1980s without the aid of any new media technologies. Mom was often working on freaking triplicate carbon copy forms. Paper has (always?) been portable. I'm really confused about what is different, today.
* Is work really changing that much in response to tools?
* Or are the tools of work just changing? (And becoming scapegoats for a work that is simultaneously changing?)
* Maybe it was a big deal to bring a dictaphone home for people in Whyte's study, and certainly that object lets them do tasks at home that they couldn't do without it. But, were they not working at an earlier point in time, simply sans-dictaphone? With pen, paper and a snifter of brandy in the study? I don't really know, but I obviously have my own assumptions ;)

In studying technology, this always feels like a big struggle... deciding how to articulate what is "new" about the contemporary moment. I'm usually inclined to say nothing, but that's not any more helpful than saying everything is new. I don't feel good about drawing lines in either the history of technology or the history of work.
* What is new?

It seems like there is something particularly personal/mobile/intimate with an object like a smartphone that fits in a pocket, goes everywhere -- bedroom, bathroom, boardroom... But it's not this alone, this coupled with what -- communication? entertainment? photography? Is it about the multi-functionality? I am not sure...
* Gregg terms ''presence bleed'' the mixing of work/life that comes along with online (and importantly mobile) technologies -- friending colleagues, twittering about research, emailing from bed, etc.

===Identity & stories===

In Gregg's book, there is a lot of history that is referred to, but not made explicit. She says, e.g. "Professional work generates...pleasure and accomplishment that rival the markers of identity favored in previous historical formations." I don't know this history, and am left wondering:
* What were these markers?
* What were these historical formations?

Weeks draws much attention to the role of a pervasive "work ethic" in shaping attitudes, drawing on The Protestant Ethic for historical framing
* What other similar analyses (besides Weber) exist?

In one of the three families I've spent time with so far, both parents are working really long hours + have a significant commute, and Mom, especially, seems really tired all the time. She fell asleep on the sofa on almost every single one of my visits to their house. In her position, I would be going crazy, and looking hard for a way out -- a new job, a different career, something. In the final interview, we talked about some specific frustrations with things like not getting to do a particular family activity because of work obligations, etc.

But, then her framing story, her big picture assessment of life satisfaction, both work and family, was that she feels incredibly lucky and she has an amazing life and there is nothing she wants to change. I am so perplexed by what seems perfect about this life, and how it seems that things aren't open to and don't need to be changed. It seems like the ability to tell a big picture story of happiness, luck and perfection is really helpful for making this assessment.

What are people's stories of their life? Their work? Their family? Their technology?
* How do these stories make sense? What are their scales?
* Frictions and alignments across stories?
* Frictions and alignments across stories and little moments of living life?

There seems to be an un-questioning of work's domination in life. It is not that anyone would say it is "the most important thing" and people certainly bring their kids up as the things that give them the "most satisfaction" in life, but the devotion of time and energy disproportionately to work activities is somehow a non-issue.
* What is it that makes work unquestionable?

Gregg, by way of partial explanation for such a question, points to the way that paid employment is socially/culturally important. As she puts it, wage labor is "the most compelling demonstration of virtue, accomplishment, and self-identity that society makes available" (p. xi). And, as I said above, Weeks puts a lot of emphasis on the pervasiveness of a certain (historically-‘protestant’) 'work ethic.'
* How/where/when is this ethic invoked/reproduced/refigured today? Aren't there other stories out there, too?
* How does technology/media fit into this story? Is technology just on a side-stage, another piece of material that reproduces stories/values/ethics?

And then the little stories about what’s happening in the moment matter, too -- like I interpret a little boy's consistently bad behavior -- crying, screaming, hitting his little sister, dumping his plate of food on the table, flinging yogurt at his mom with a spoon -- as "attention seeking behaviors" (thanks to my mom, the kindergarten & preschool special ed teacher). I see them as learned because in my view he is reinforced/rewarded/gets what he wants when he does these things. But, over the course of my fieldwork, and in the final interviews, I found out this little boy's mom didn't see them that way at all. No, for her they were just manifestations of him being "such a boy" -- boys are destructive and angry by nature. Suddenly everyone's actions around the house, and non-concern for the little boy's behavior, seemed completely reasonable. I'm not really sure where to go with this, but, anyway, another example of a story that really impacted my understanding of what I was observing...

Suggestions

2012-11-22T01:34:30Z

Kavita:

Many thanks to Dan Burk (Chancellor's Professor of Law, UC Irvine) for these references:

John Logie's book (open access):
http://www.parlorpress.com/pdf/PeersPiratesPersuasion-Logie.pdf

Feminist work on copyright, patents, and innovation:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1753166

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1514970

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1687885

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rhetoric-Intellectual-Property-Communication/dp/0415999073/ref=reg_hu-rd_dp_img

http://www.bu.edu/sociology/faculty-staff/faculty/laurel-smith-doerr/

Links to other conversations

2012-11-22T01:30:50Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 2013
"Tales of Tomorrow," Connie Samaras' solo show at the Armory, opens March 2. Samaras' work over 3 decades has framed the city and nature through historically-nuanced critiques of empire, capital, gender, globalization. See this Difference Engines blogpost for more about her work: http://www.differenceengines.com/?p=204

April 2013

The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]

The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."

UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and brilliant fiction writer Anil Menon.

'''EXTENDED TANGENTS'''

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any [[suggestions]]?

Presenting papers

2012-11-21T22:09:13Z

Kavita:

Lots of fun stuff going on at the Eaton.

'''ABSTRACTS'''

''Seventh Sense and Technological Nationalism: Watching Global SF Film Doing
Postcolonial Theory''

Kavita Philip kphlip@uci.edu / Geeta Patel patel.weston@gmail.com / Ward
Smith wardgsmith@gmail.com

This paper reads a recent Indian SF blockbuster, Seventh Sense [Ezhaam
Arivu (Tamil; 2011)]. Produced by the Tamil film industry (part of the
polycentric Indian film production circuit, which includes Mumbai’s
Bollywood), it stars two young Tamil-film stars and a
Vietnamese-Californian martial artist, with special effects produced by a
US studio. The plot moves rapidly: temporally shifting from the 6th to the
21st century, skipping from martial arts to biowarfare, and stretching
spatially from China to the biotechnology labs of Chennai, via streetdogs
and a small-town circus.

Seventh Sense announces the place of the global in the local at the level
of production and plot. Despite nods to changing gendered conventions in
the casting of the female lead as a geneticist, however, the plot turns
around conventional tropes of race, gender and nationalism. Unlike earlier
Indian SF film, such as Krrish (Hindi; 2008), its nationalism is located
in specific notions of Tamil identity, rather than in some universalized
Hindu/Indian ethos. The plot entangles the local and the global, with
science and technology characterizing both, but through different
socialities. The street scenes re-craft classic SF film stagings such as
Bladerunner’s chase scenes. The climactic battle between hero and villain
is a spectacularly choreographed martial arts scene in which the hero’s
escape entails a detailed knowledge of local bus routes, and a casual
comfort with the busy streets of a postcolonial city that the
globally-mobile villain lacks.

The plot, woven around a fantasy of genetic continuity and resurgence over
the centuries, envisions the creation of a superman from small-town stock,
which has preserved all that was good within the Tamil psyche, uncorrupted
by modernity. Science and Technology, whose infrastructure shine in long
shots of Chennai’s Adyar and OMR areas (home to numerous research
institutes and scientific labs), are personified in the
attractive-but-incomplete persona of the woman who, initially seduced by a
love of science for its own sake, comes to see how it might be more
appropriately used in a program of linguistic and racial re-assertion for
the Tamil people.

What does it mean for a film so wide-ranging in technique and style to
rework long-sedimented narratives of the Tamil nation, the
re-masculinized, formerly-emasculated male, and a Chinese “threat” to
Indian identity? Like Hollywood SF, Global SF film is shaped by historical
legacies and their contemporary resonances. India’s war with China in
1962, and their growing economic rivalry in the 21st century, bracket the
historical context in which audiences received this film in 2011.

Seventh Sense sets the stage for the deployment of futuristic
technological narratives as a mode of nationalist re-imagining of
postcolonial futurity. Comparison with Hollywood SF helps us understand
the ways in which nationalist identities are co-produced with popular
understandings of science. A comparison of Seventh Sense with emerging
Indian science fiction writing highlights a different set of questions.
Not a block-buster genre, SF writing, as compared with film, is still a space for critical, progressive
imaginations. We close with speculations across genres and nations.

Links to other conversations

2012-11-21T22:05:43Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

April 2013
The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]

The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."

UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and brilliant fiction writer Anil Menon.

'''EXTENDED TANGENTS'''

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any suggestions?

Links to other conversations

2012-11-21T22:04:04Z

Kavita:

'''EVENTS'''

April 2013
The American Association of Geographers meets in Los Angeles this year, April 9 - 13. Daniel Cohen has organized a panel on the future city; more details [[here]]
The Eaton Conference honours Ursula Leguin this year, Riverside, CA, April 12 - 14. Kavita Philip, Ward Smith, Geeta Patel, Anil Menon and others are [[presenting papers]] on "global SF."
UC Irvine will host a [[panel]] on global SF with physicist and Locus award-winning fiction writer Vandana Singh, and her co-conspirator, software engineer and brilliant fiction writer Anil Menon.

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any suggestions?

Environmental Politics

2012-11-21T21:11:51Z

Kavita:

'''CURRENT EVENTS:'''

'''URBAN ECOLOGIES'''
Upcoming deadline: Applications due Dec 7
http://uchri.org/funding/cfps/residential-research-group-fellowships/

November 2012 at Janastu:

Discussion with riseup and indymedia activists.

Focus on:

Brazil-India comparative perspectives. (Pietro)

Education and Activism in Palestine (Marcy?)

[[THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL THOUGHTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS]]

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

2012-11-21T20:43:20Z

Kavita:

[[MARX on Nature]]

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL THOUGHTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

2012-11-21T20:43:20Z

Kavita:

#REDIRECT [[THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS]]

Pedagogy

2012-11-21T20:41:09Z

Kavita:

[[Modern India: A possible course outline]]

[[Business and Banking: Histories and Theories in Finance, Markets, Globalization]]

[[History and Theory]]

Pedagogy: History of Modern India

2012-11-21T20:41:09Z

Kavita:

#REDIRECT [[Pedagogy]]

History and Theory

2012-11-21T20:38:13Z

Kavita:

I've been thinking about how to design a course around the methodological question of dialectics. What does it mean to think/do/write in dialectical fashion? And what are the primary challenges to dialectics? I think by the time I draw up a reading list, the ostensible thematics will look different. More details soon.

Business and Banking: Histories and Theories in Finance, Markets, Globalization

2012-11-21T20:35:24Z

Kavita:

Geeta Patel at UVa is teaching a course that brings together writing on risk, finance, and south asian economic history. More details soon.

Theory IS sf

2012-11-21T20:33:16Z

Kavita:

Erik Davis notes:
"As Deleuze proclaimed in his introduction to Difference and Repetition, philosophy must be a kind of science fiction. The strange rhetoric and monster slang of SF estrange one from the historical inertia of the "now", and allows a leap into "untimely" futures with their own singular self-consistency. SF also allows a rigorous yet hallucinogenic relationship with a scientific discourse D&G value without attempting to assimilate. "Philosophy can speak of science only by allusion, and science can speak of philosophy only as of a cloud." They attack the scientific pretensions of cognitive philosophy, while mocking logic as "less like a game of chess, or a language game, than a television quiz game." Yet by dipping into SF, they can extrapolate the conceptual imagination into a world transformed by science and technology." http://www.techgnosis.com/dg.html

On a tangent: Erik Davis also has some interesting writing on demons and magic; see http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?cat=phantasy&sec=articles&file=chunkfrom-2011-01-25-0857-0.txt

Theory IS sf

2012-11-20T23:14:25Z

Kavita:

http://www.techgnosis.com/dg.html

Erik Davis notes:
"As Deleuze proclaimed in his introduction to Difference and Repetition, philosophy must be a kind of science fiction. The strange rhetoric and monster slang of SF estrange one from the historical inertia of the "now", and allows a leap into "untimely" futures with their own singular self-consistency. SF also allows a rigorous yet hallucinogenic relationship with a scientific discourse D&G value without attempting to assimilate. "Philosophy can speak of science only by allusion, and science can speak of philosophy only as of a cloud." They attack the scientific pretensions of cognitive philosophy, while mocking logic as "less like a game of chess, or a language game, than a television quiz game." Yet by dipping into SF, they can extrapolate the conceptual imagination into a world transformed by science and technology. How do we conceive of being when the distinction between organic and machinic dissolves? When reality is folded into virtuality, the body morphs, and computer networks suck knowledge into a digital monad? How do we think if thinking is chaotic at its core?"

Links to other conversations

2012-11-20T23:12:52Z

Kavita:

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

SF and critical theory
Here SF stands not only for science fiction but for the broader term "speculative fiction" as well. Few other than literary critics have picked up on Deleuze's famous claim that [[theory IS sf]]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any suggestions?

Postcolonial Techno-Science

2012-11-18T01:49:40Z

Kavita:

This page gathers resources for researchers.

Pedagogy [[http://janastu.org/technoscience/index.php/Pedagogy:_History_of_Modern_India]]

[[Environmental Politics]]

[[Links to other conversations]]

Postcolonial Techno-Science

2012-11-18T01:49:06Z

Kavita:

This page gathers resources for researchers.

[[Pedagogy http://janastu.org/technoscience/index.php/Pedagogy:_History_of_Modern_India]]

[[Environmental Politics]]

[[Links to other conversations]]

Postcolonial Techno-Science

2012-11-18T01:47:43Z

Kavita:

This page gathers resources for researchers.

[[Pedagogy]]

[[Environmental Politics]]

[[Links to other conversations]]

Pedagogy

2012-11-18T01:46:41Z

Kavita:

[[Modern India: A possible course outline]]

[[Business and Banking: Histories and Theories in Finance, Markets, Globalization]]

[[History and Theory]]

Main Page

2012-11-17T21:51:59Z

Kavita:

Welcome to this TechnoScience wiki, earlier known as
Technology Governance and Citizenship discussion forum,
This is a space for communications and reflections regarding technology and society.

We look forward to your edits.

'''''Contribute''''' to the '''Open Source as Infrastructure argument''' here:

[[Open_Source_as_Infrastructure]]

'''''Look up''' a Past event:''

[[TGC2011 | TGC 2011]] on March 18,19 2011; Bangalore

'''''Research''' and Pedagogy Resources:''

[[Postcolonial Techno-Science]]

[[Category:Events]]
[[Category:OSasInfrastructure]]
[[Category : Alipi]]
[[Category : Research]]

You are likely to have come here
from [http://janastu.org/main.html janastu.org]

Links to other conversations

2012-11-17T21:29:37Z

Kavita:

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

Leo saldanha on the politics of co-optation in development projects:
[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. An overview of the field IN THIS PDF
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

'''HAUNTS'''

Haunting may be thought of as related to futurology. If one doesn't privilege a time line from origin to infinity, then one might think of haunting as happening in any direction. Ghosts of the future haunt the present and shape our selective readings of the past, just as much as the more conventional story about past ghosts haunting the present. And nostalgia (though it is a longing for the past) is a form of future-thinking (in the sense that it shapes our desire for certain kinds of futures, similar to a selective shaping of our pasts - as, for example, in the mythical notion of the 1950s that the US Republicans evoked as being lost in the 2012 elections and Obama's version of the future).
Here's a film that draws together urban labour politics and technological infrastructure (the Bangalore Metro) through the metaphor of ghosts: Behind The Tin Sheets
[http://www.tinsheets.in/]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''

If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:

"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

'''SOPA'''

I'm looking for good close readings of the Stop Online Piracy Act. I'd like to figure out SOPA through an analysis of its legal discourse + critical close reading. Any suggestions?

Main Page

2012-11-17T21:22:53Z

Kavita:

Welcome to this TechnoScience wiki, earlier known as
Technology Governance and Citizenship discussion forum,
This is a space for communications and reflections regarding technology and society.

We look forward to your edits.

'''Contribute''' to the '''Open Source as Infrastructure argument''' here:

[[Open_Source_as_Infrastructure]]

'''Look up''' a Past event:

[[TGC2011 | TGC 2011]] on March 18,19 2011; Bangalore

'''Research''' and Pedagogy Resources:

[[Postcolonial Techno-Science]]

[[Category:Events]]
[[Category:OSasInfrastructure]]
[[Category : Alipi]]
[[Category : Research]

You are likely to have come here
from [http://janastu.org/main.html janastu.org]

Main Page

2012-11-17T21:03:05Z

Kavita:

Welcome to this TechnoScience wiki, earlier known as
Technology Governance and Citizenship discussion forum,
is a space for communications and reflections regarding technology and society.

We look forward to your edits.

Contribute to the Open Source as Infrastructure argument here:

[[Open_Source_as_Infrastructure]]

Past event:

[[TGC2011 | TGC 2011]] on March 18,19 2011; Bangalore

Research and Pedagogy Resources:

[[Postcolonial Techno-Science]]

[[Category:Events]]
[[Category:OSasInfrastructure]]
[[Category : Alipi]]
[[Category : Research]

You are likely to have come here
from [http://janastu.org/main.html janastu.org]

MARX on Nature

2012-11-17T21:01:36Z

Kavita:

Here are some thought-in-progress on thinking nature via dialectical materialist histories:

''“[N]ature, the nature that preceded human history, … is nature which today no longer exists anywhere”''
[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

What Marx is saying here is simply that there is no “essence” of nature, no primary, originary, discoverable natural ground; nature is nothing more than its engagements through time, with humans and non-humans, its practical and theoretical conjurations. Nature comes to be in, and via, the passage of time, it is not timeless or transcendent. Nature comes to be with and through entanglements with the human, the animal, the inorganic, the artificial, etc, not in opposition to them. It is not to be thought of in a relationship of purity to their impurity, original innocence to their fallen corruption. Nature is never purely, simply, transparently “presented” to our innermost being, as the romantics (the daffodils flashing upon Wordsworth’s inner eye) and transcendentalists (cf Richard grusin, on the American transcendentalists and nature) would have it. Nature does not exist in a timeless present, always spread out and available to the possessing eye of the surveyor, the geographer, the explorer, the tourist. [Here I refer to two decades of feminist work on geography]. Nature is always already entangled; indeed even to talk about a “natural” entangled with “artifice” or a “nature” with “culture” misses the mark, misrepresents the situation, because it suggests that these are at some time pre-formed objects/ concepts which are at some later time brought into interaction, like billiard balls on a Newtonian table-top. Rather, nature, culture, the human, the animal and so on come into being (never statically, always re-becoming) via these entanglements. Nature is always social, but that means different configurations, different conjurations, at different times, and depending on how we are positioned when we look at this process, when we talk about it.

[Canadian marxist-feminist Michelle Murphy works on the politics of becoming, on distributed ontologies.]

[Derrida, in La difference, trans Alan Bass, Margins of Philosophy “what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility.” Brian Rotman: " ... how are we to escape form the sedimented legitimacy and beguiling immediacy of the "natural"? [Ad Infinitum , p 6]

""He [Feuerbach] does not see how the sensuous world around him is … an historical product … Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.""

[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

P 98 in Signifying Nothing, Brian Rotman explaining Derrida: “Derrida’s thesis is that all such binary orderings are misplaced and illusory and that the priorities they take for granted must be dismantled and overturned. His strategy is to deconstruct each of these oppositions, to read texts depending on and structured around them, and show, through a certain mode of textual attention, that what at first appears as the privileged originating term is as secondary and dependent as the minor term it supposedly gives rise to.
P 99 .. [what is not said, found :] In the significance of the text’s silences, gaps, hidden denials and disavowals, in its excesses and circumlocutions, in the breaks and continuities of its narrative, in what the text avoids and what it insists on, in its apparently ‘neutral’ choices of metaphor, and so on.”

Rotman reads Derrida’s use of monetary metaphors (devaluation, inflation, etc) P 99 : “where in the field of money signs does logocentrism, that is the metaphysical belief that signs are always grounded in some ultimate originating beginning experienced as a full, self-validating presence, make its appearance? …
P 100

“… the myth of presence gold gave to money signs, that is the origin of value, the source of transcendental ‘intrinsic’ worth, the value in kind (specie) and not token, the preciousness incarnate and palpably present, finds its image in, and in fact is, the logocentric fantasy of an originating transcendental presence behind written signs.
For money signs the resting place of thus myth, as we saw, was convertible paper money. The US Treasury, by promising the bearer of a dollar redemption in gold, located the absolute value and origin of its money-signs in a material, physical presence stored in Fort Knox. … [paper money promises gold] The specie they promise to deliver is the icon of pure speech, meaning-originating speech, speech that is unmediated, filled, pre-semiotic, real to itself without the agency of signs.”

MARX on Nature

2012-11-17T21:00:07Z

Kavita:

''“[N]ature, the nature that preceded human history, … is nature which today no longer exists anywhere”''
[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

What Marx is saying here is simply that there is no “essence” of nature, no primary, originary, discoverable natural ground; nature is nothing more than its engagements through time, with humans and non-humans, its practical and theoretical conjurations. Nature comes to be in, and via, the passage of time, it is not timeless or transcendent. Nature comes to be with and through entanglements with the human, the animal, the inorganic, the artificial, etc, not in opposition to them. It is not to be thought of in a relationship of purity to their impurity, original innocence to their fallen corruption. Nature is never purely, simply, transparently “presented” to our innermost being, as the romantics (the daffodils flashing upon Wordsworth’s inner eye) and transcendentalists (cf Richard grusin, on the American transcendentalists and nature) would have it. Nature does not exist in a timeless present, always spread out and available to the possessing eye of the surveyor, the geographer, the explorer, the tourist. [Here I refer to two decades of feminist work on geography]. Nature is always already entangled; indeed even to talk about a “natural” entangled with “artifice” or a “nature” with “culture” misses the mark, misrepresents the situation, because it suggests that these are at some time pre-formed objects/ concepts which are at some later time brought into interaction, like billiard balls on a Newtonian table-top. Rather, nature, culture, the human, the animal and so on come into being (never statically, always re-becoming) via these entanglements. Nature is always social, but that means different configurations, different conjurations, at different times, and depending on how we are positioned when we look at this process, when we talk about it.

[Canadian marxist-feminist Michelle Murphy works on the politics of becoming, on distributed ontologies.]

[Derrida, in La difference, trans Alan Bass, Margins of Philosophy “what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility.” Brian Rotman: " ... how are we to escape form the sedimented legitimacy and beguiling immediacy of the "natural"? [Ad Infinitum , p 6]

""He [Feuerbach] does not see how the sensuous world around him is … an historical product … Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.""

[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

P 98 in Signifying Nothing, Brian Rotman explaining Derrida: “Derrida’s thesis is that all such binary orderings are misplaced and illusory and that the priorities they take for granted must be dismantled and overturned. His strategy is to deconstruct each of these oppositions, to read texts depending on and structured around them, and show, through a certain mode of textual attention, that what at first appears as the privileged originating term is as secondary and dependent as the minor term it supposedly gives rise to.
P 99 .. [what is not said, found :] In the significance of the text’s silences, gaps, hidden denials and disavowals, in its excesses and circumlocutions, in the breaks and continuities of its narrative, in what the text avoids and what it insists on, in its apparently ‘neutral’ choices of metaphor, and so on.”

Rotman reads Derrida’s use of monetary metaphors (devaluation, inflation, etc) P 99 : “where in the field of money signs does logocentrism, that is the metaphysical belief that signs are always grounded in some ultimate originating beginning experienced as a full, self-validating presence, make its appearance? …
P 100

“… the myth of presence gold gave to money signs, that is the origin of value, the source of transcendental ‘intrinsic’ worth, the value in kind (specie) and not token, the preciousness incarnate and palpably present, finds its image in, and in fact is, the logocentric fantasy of an originating transcendental presence behind written signs.
For money signs the resting place of thus myth, as we saw, was convertible paper money. The US Treasury, by promising the bearer of a dollar redemption in gold, located the absolute value and origin of its money-signs in a material, physical presence stored in Fort Knox. … [paper money promises gold] The specie they promise to deliver is the icon of pure speech, meaning-originating speech, speech that is unmediated, filled, pre-semiotic, real to itself without the agency of signs.”

MARX on Nature

2012-11-17T20:57:51Z

Kavita:

''“[N]ature, the nature that preceded human history, … is nature which today no longer exists anywhere”''
[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

What Marx is saying here is simply that there is no “essence” of nature, no primary, originary, discoverable natural ground; nature is nothing more than its engagements through time, with humans and non-humans, its practical and theoretical conjurations. Nature comes to be in, and via, the passage of time, it is not timeless or transcendent. Nature comes to be with and through entanglements with the human, the animal, the inorganic, the artificial, etc, not in opposition to them. It is not to be thought of in a relationship of purity to their impurity, original innocence to their fallen corruption. Nature is never purely, simply, transparently “presented” to our innermost being, as the romantics (the daffodils flashing upon Wordsworth’s inner eye) and transcendentalists (cf Richard grusin, on the American transcendentalists and nature) would have it. Nature does not exist in a timeless present, always spread out and available to the possessing eye of the surveyor, the geographer, the explorer, the tourist. [Here I refer to two decades of feminist work on geography]. Nature is always already entangled; indeed even to talk about a “natural” entangled with “artifice” or a “nature” with “culture” misses the mark, misrepresents the situation, because it suggests that these are at some time pre-formed objects/ concepts which are at some later time brought into interaction, like billiard balls on a Newtonian table-top. Rather, nature, culture, the human, the animal and so on come into being (never statically, always re-becoming) via these entanglements. Nature is always social, but that means different configurations, different conjurations, at different times, and depending on how we are positioned when we look at this process, when we talk about it. [Look at Michelle’s notes on becoming, on distributed ontologies.] [Derrida, in La difference, trans Alan Bass, Margins of Philosophy “what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility.” Brian Rotman: " ... how are we to escape form the sedimented legitimacy and beguiling immediacy of the "natural"? [Ad Infinitum , p 6]

He [Feuerbach] does not see how the sensuous world around him is … an historical product … Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.

[Marx 1845, The German Ideology, Section/ Ch 2, “Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism”]

P 98 in Signifying Nothing, Brian Rotman explaining Derrida: “Derrida’s thesis is that all such binary orderings are misplaced and illusory and that the priorities they take for granted must be dismantled and overturned. His strategy is to deconstruct each of these oppositions, to read texts depending on and structured around them, and show, through a certain mode of textual attention, that what at first appears as the privileged originating term is as secondary and dependent as the minor term it supposedly gives rise to.
P 99 .. [what is not said, found :] In the significance of the text’s silences, gaps, hidden denials and disavowals, in its excesses and circumlocutions, in the breaks and continuities of its narrative, in what the text avoids and what it insists on, in its apparently ‘neutral’ choices of metaphor, and so on.”

Rotman reads Derrida’s use of monetary metaphors (devaluation, inflation, etc) P 99 : “where in the field of money signs does logocentrism, that is the metaphysical belief that signs are always grounded in some ultimate originating beginning experienced as a full, self-validating presence, make its appearance? …
P 100

“… the myth of presence gold gave to money signs, that is the origin of value, the source of transcendental ‘intrinsic’ worth, the value in kind (specie) and not token, the preciousness incarnate and palpably present, finds its image in, and in fact is, the logocentric fantasy of an originating transcendental presence behind written signs.
For money signs the resting place of thus myth, as we saw, was convertible paper money. The US Treasury, by promising the bearer of a dollar redemption in gold, located the absolute value and origin of its money-signs in a material, physical presence stored in Fort Knox. … [paper money promises gold] The specie they promise to deliver is the icon of pure speech, meaning-originating speech, speech that is unmediated, filled, pre-semiotic, real to itself without the agency of signs.”

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

2012-11-17T20:57:03Z

Kavita:

[[MARX on Nature]]

Environmental Politics

2012-11-17T20:56:35Z

Kavita:

'''CURRENT EVENTS:'''

November 2012 at Janastu:

Discussion with riseup and indymedia activists.

Focus on:

Brazil-India comparative perspectives.

Education and Activism in Palestine

[[THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL THOUGHTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS]]

Links to other conversations

2012-11-17T20:33:02Z

Kavita:

Links to other conversations

2012-11-17T19:59:40Z

Kavita:

Links to other conversations

2012-11-17T19:58:13Z

Kavita:

'''JNNURM, NREGA,''' and other development projects in Modern India

[http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/2006-July/002433.html]

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. Below is an overview of the field.
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

'''OPEN SOURCE'''

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''
If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:
"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity

Environmental Politics

2012-11-17T19:52:21Z

Kavita:

November 2012 at Janastu:

Discussion with riseup and indymedia activists.

Focus on:

Brazil-India comparative perspectives.

Education and Activism in Palestine

Modern India: A possible course outline

2012-11-17T19:49:45Z

Kavita:

MODERN INDIA

India’s global role is rapidly changing today, but its future depends on how it can negotiate complex historical legacies. We will discuss the emergence of the modern Indian state and population through analytical readings about political processes including colonialism, state-formation and scientific change. Readings explore historiography and politics, agriculture and technology, caste and gender, development and conflict. The study of modern India has, in recent years, offered models that help us understand the past, present, and possible futures of the subcontinent. In addition, these models have inspired new comparative and theoretical perspectives on a wide range of global issues. Rather than following a strict national frame or chronological development (too large a task for one quarter), we will approach the study of India through these new comparative, interdisciplinary frameworks. There will be a midterm and final paper. Readings are conceptually challenging, and participation in class discussions is a significant part of your final grade.

Readings will be drawn from the following :

'''BOOKS (Excerpts; To Be Assigned)'''

Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories)[Paperback]

Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press (2001) [Paperback]

Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist Among the Historians & Other Essays.Delhi: Oxford University Press India. 1987.

Cohn, Bernard S.. Colonialism & Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996

Vinayak Chaturvedi ed. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Paperback, July 2000

Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose eds. South Asian Feminisms , Duke university Press, 2012

Adas, M. (1989). Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

Viswanathan, G. (1989). Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. NY, Columbia University Press.

'''ESSAYS & ONLINE RESOURCES'''

Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm

Prakash, Gyan. "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historigraphy." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 2 (April 1990) pp. 383-408.

Arnold, David Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development Journal of Agrarian Change Vol 5 No 4 October 2005, pp 505-525

Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender", Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society
Edited by Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty

Bose, Brinda. "Contemporary Problems Routed through History," The Book Review. v.21:no.6 (June 1997) pp. 5-7. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/bbose97.html

Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)

Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1905) http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html

Partha Chatterjee Democracy and economic transformation in India Economic & Political Weekly, april 19, 2008

Perry Anderson- In the LRB Archive: After Nehru · 2 August 2012 Why Partition? · 19 July 2012 Gandhi Centre Stage · 5 July 2012 http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/perry-anderson

The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75

James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994

Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Feminist Studies; Spring 1992; 18, 1; GenderWatch

Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India Author(s): Ajay Skaria Source: Past and Present, No. 155, (May, 1997), pp. 109-141

'''Blogs''':
http://sepiamutiny.com/sepia/faq.php

http://kafila.org/

'''Video resources :'''

Cultural Anthropology Reflecting on 30 Years of Subaltern Studies: Conversations with Profs. Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/469

Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view

Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

'''Theme I (week 1&2): Overview: What is “Modern”? What is “India”?'''

Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India

Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India

Perry Anderson, 3 essays in London Review of Books; & responses / critiques

Prakash, Gyan. Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World

Arnold, David, Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India

Loomba and Lukose, textbook

'''Theme II (week 3): Development and Change'''

Prakash, G. (1999). Another reason : science and the imagination of modern India. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.

Senthil Babu, 2012 “Science and Self-Respect,” Economic and Political Weekly

Ramamurthy, Priti. (2009). "Why are men doing floral sex work? Gender, Cultural reproduction, and the Feminization of agriculture." SIGNS Autumn 2009 (Special Issue on Women and Agriculture).

Loomba and Lukose, textbook

Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view

Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

'''Theme III (week 4): Colonialism, Orientalism, Modernity'''

Edward Said, Orientalism (selections)

O'Hanlon, Rosalind. "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia."Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988) pp. 189-224.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies," Economic and Political Weekly v.30:no.14 (8 April 1995) pp. 751-759.

'''Theme IV (week 5, 6, 7): Sanctioned Silences: Gender, Caste, Violence'''

Loomba and Lukose, TEXTBOOK

Metcalf, TEXTBOOK; + Online news, contemporary: On caste violence

Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate

Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender"

Ajay Skaria, Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India

'''Theme V (week 8, 9, 10): Dialogues with Space and Time: Facts, Fictions & Futures'''

The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75

Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)

James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994

Rokheya Hossein, Sultana's Dream

Amitav Ghosh, The Slave of MS. H.6 in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm

Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Conversation, in Radical History Review

Vandana Singh and Anil Menon, selections from new Indian science fiction

Modern India: A possible course outline

2012-11-17T19:46:25Z

Kavita:

MODERN INDIA

India’s global role is rapidly changing today, but its future depends on how it can negotiate complex historical legacies. We will discuss the emergence of the modern Indian state and population through analytical readings about political processes including colonialism, state-formation and scientific change. Readings explore historiography and politics, agriculture and technology, caste and gender, development and conflict. The study of modern India has, in recent years, offered models that help us understand the past, present, and possible futures of the subcontinent. In addition, these models have inspired new comparative and theoretical perspectives on a wide range of global issues. Rather than following a strict national frame or chronological development (too large a task for one quarter), we will approach the study of India through these new comparative, interdisciplinary frameworks. There will be a midterm and final paper. Readings are conceptually challenging, and participation in class discussions is a significant part of your final grade.

Readings will be drawn from the following :

BOOKS (Excerpts; To Be Assigned)

Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories)[Paperback]
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press (2001) [Paperback]
Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist Among the Historians & Other Essays.
Delhi: Oxford University Press India. 1987.
- - - -. Colonialism & Its Forms of Knowledge.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996
Vinayak Chaturvedi ed. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Paperback, July 2000
Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose eds. South Asian Feminisms , Duke university Press, 2012
Adas, M. (1989). Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Viswanathan, G. (1989). Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. NY, Columbia University Press.

ESSAYS & ONLINE RESOURCES
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Prakash, Gyan. "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historigraphy." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 2 (April 1990) pp. 383-408.
Arnold, David Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development Journal of Agrarian Change Vol 5 No 4 October 2005, pp 505-525
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender", Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society
Edited by Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty
Bose, Brinda. "Contemporary Problems Routed through History," The Book Review. v.21:no.6 (June 1997) pp. 5-7. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/bbose97.html
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1905) http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html

Partha Chatterjee Democracy and economic transformation in India Economic & Political Weekly, april 19, 2008
Perry Anderson- In the LRB Archive: After Nehru · 2 August 2012 Why Partition? · 19 July 2012 Gandhi Centre Stage · 5 July 2012 http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/perry-anderson
The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Feminist Studies; Spring 1992; 18, 1; GenderWatch
Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India Author(s): Ajay Skaria Source: Past and Present, No. 155, (May, 1997), pp. 109-141
Blogs:
http://sepiamutiny.com/sepia/faq.php
http://kafila.org/
Video resources :
Cultural Anthropology Reflecting on 30 Years of Subaltern Studies: Conversations with Profs. Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/469
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

'''Theme I (week 1&2): Overview: What is “Modern”? What is “India”?'''

Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India
Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India
Perry Anderson, 3 essays in London Review of Books; & responses / critiques
Prakash, Gyan. Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World
Arnold, David, Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India
Loomba and Lukose, textbook

'''Theme II (week 3): Development and Change'''

Prakash, G. (1999). Another reason : science and the imagination of modern India. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
Senthil Babu, 2012 “Science and Self-Respect,” Economic and Political Weekly
Ramamurthy, Priti. (2009). "Why are men doing floral sex work? Gender, Cultural reproduction, and the Feminization of agriculture." SIGNS Autumn 2009 (Special Issue on Women and Agriculture).
Loomba and Lukose, textbook
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

'''Theme III (week 4): Colonialism, Orientalism, Modernity'''

Edward Said, Orientalism (selections)
O'Hanlon, Rosalind. "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia."
Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988) pp. 189-224.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies," Economic and Political Weekly v.30:no.14 (8 April 1995) pp. 751-759.
Theme IV (week 5, 6, 7): Sanctioned Silences: Gender, Caste, Violence
Loomba and Lukose, TEXTBOOK
Metcalf, TEXTBOOK; + Online news, contemporary: On caste violence
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender"
Ajay Skaria, Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India

'''Theme V (week 8, 9, 10): Dialogues with Space and Time: Facts, Fictions & Futures'''

The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Rokheya Hossein, Sultana's Dream
Amitav Ghosh, The Slave of MS. H.6 in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Conversation, in Radical History Review
Vandana Singh and Anil Menon, selections from new Indian science fiction

Modern India: A possible course outline

2012-11-17T19:44:34Z

Kavita:

<nowiki>MODERN INDIA HISTORY 174 G WINTER 2013
Professor Kavita Philip, Murray Krieger Hall 3rd Floor
India’s global role is rapidly changing today, but its future depends on how it can negotiate complex historical legacies. We will discuss the emergence of the modern Indian state and population through analytical readings about political processes including colonialism, state-formation and scientific change. Readings explore historiography and politics, agriculture and technology, caste and gender, development and conflict. The study of modern India has, in recent years, offered models that help us understand the past, present, and possible futures of the subcontinent. In addition, these models have inspired new comparative and theoretical perspectives on a wide range of global issues. Rather than following a strict national frame or chronological development (too large a task for one quarter), we will approach the study of India through these new comparative, interdisciplinary frameworks. There will be a midterm and final paper. Readings are conceptually challenging, and participation in class discussions is a significant part of your final grade.
Readings will be drawn from the following :
BOOKS (Excerpts; To Be Assigned)
Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories)[Paperback]
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press (2001) [Paperback]
Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist Among the Historians & Other Essays.
Delhi: Oxford University Press India. 1987.
- - - -. Colonialism & Its Forms of Knowledge.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996
Vinayak Chaturvedi ed. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Paperback, July 2000
Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose eds. South Asian Feminisms , Duke university Press, 2012
Adas, M. (1989). Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Viswanathan, G. (1989). Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. NY, Columbia University Press.

ESSAYS & ONLINE RESOURCES
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Prakash, Gyan. "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historigraphy." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 2 (April 1990) pp. 383-408.
Arnold, David Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development Journal of Agrarian Change Vol 5 No 4 October 2005, pp 505-525
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender", Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society
Edited by Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty
Bose, Brinda. "Contemporary Problems Routed through History," The Book Review. v.21:no.6 (June 1997) pp. 5-7. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/bbose97.html
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1905) http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html

Partha Chatterjee Democracy and economic transformation in India Economic & Political Weekly, april 19, 2008
Perry Anderson- In the LRB Archive: After Nehru · 2 August 2012 Why Partition? · 19 July 2012 Gandhi Centre Stage · 5 July 2012 http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/perry-anderson
The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Feminist Studies; Spring 1992; 18, 1; GenderWatch
Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India Author(s): Ajay Skaria Source: Past and Present, No. 155, (May, 1997), pp. 109-141
Blogs:
http://sepiamutiny.com/sepia/faq.php
http://kafila.org/
Video resources :
Cultural Anthropology Reflecting on 30 Years of Subaltern Studies: Conversations with Profs. Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/469
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

Theme I (week 1&2): Overview: What is “Modern”? What is “India”?
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India
Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India
Perry Anderson, 3 essays in London Review of Books; & responses / critiques
Prakash, Gyan. Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World
Arnold, David, Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India
Loomba and Lukose, textbook

Theme II (week 3): Development and Change
Prakash, G. (1999). Another reason : science and the imagination of modern India. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
Senthil Babu, 2012 “Science and Self-Respect,” Economic and Political Weekly
Ramamurthy, Priti. (2009). "Why are men doing floral sex work? Gender, Cultural reproduction, and the Feminization of agriculture." SIGNS Autumn 2009 (Special Issue on Women and Agriculture).
Loomba and Lukose, textbook
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view
Theme III (week 4): Colonialism, Orientalism, Modernity
Edward Said, Orientalism (selections)
O'Hanlon, Rosalind. "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia."
Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988) pp. 189-224.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies," Economic and Political Weekly v.30:no.14 (8 April 1995) pp. 751-759.
Theme IV (week 5, 6, 7): Sanctioned Silences: Gender, Caste, Violence
Loomba and Lukose, TEXTBOOK
Metcalf, TEXTBOOK; + Online news, contemporary: On caste violence
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender"
Ajay Skaria, Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India
Theme V (week 8, 9, 10): Dialogues with Space and Time: Facts, Fictions & Futures
The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Rokheya Hossein, Sultana's Dream
Amitav Ghosh, The Slave of MS. H.6 in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Conversation, in Radical History Review
Vandana Singh and Anil Menon, selections from new Indian science fiction

</nowiki>

Modern India: A possible course outline

2012-11-17T19:43:57Z

Kavita:

MODERN INDIA

India’s global role is rapidly changing today, but its future depends on how it can negotiate complex historical legacies. We will discuss the emergence of the modern Indian state and population through analytical readings about political processes including colonialism, state-formation and scientific change. Readings explore historiography and politics, agriculture and technology, caste and gender, development and conflict. The study of modern India has, in recent years, offered models that help us understand the past, present, and possible futures of the subcontinent. In addition, these models have inspired new comparative and theoretical perspectives on a wide range of global issues. Rather than following a strict national frame or chronological development (too large a task for one quarter), we will approach the study of India through these new comparative, interdisciplinary frameworks. There will be a midterm and final paper. Readings are conceptually challenging, and participation in class discussions is a significant part of your final grade.
Readings will be drawn from the following :
BOOKS (Excerpts; To Be Assigned)
Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories)[Paperback]
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press (2001) [Paperback]
Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist Among the Historians & Other Essays.
Delhi: Oxford University Press India. 1987.
- - - -. Colonialism & Its Forms of Knowledge.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996
Vinayak Chaturvedi ed. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Paperback, July 2000
Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose eds. South Asian Feminisms , Duke university Press, 2012
Adas, M. (1989). Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Viswanathan, G. (1989). Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. NY, Columbia University Press.

ESSAYS & ONLINE RESOURCES
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Prakash, Gyan. "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historigraphy." Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, 2 (April 1990) pp. 383-408.
Arnold, David Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development Journal of Agrarian Change Vol 5 No 4 October 2005, pp 505-525
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender", Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society
Edited by Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty
Bose, Brinda. "Contemporary Problems Routed through History," The Book Review. v.21:no.6 (June 1997) pp. 5-7. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/bbose97.html
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1905) http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html

Partha Chatterjee Democracy and economic transformation in India Economic & Political Weekly, april 19, 2008
Perry Anderson- In the LRB Archive: After Nehru · 2 August 2012 Why Partition? · 19 July 2012 Gandhi Centre Stage · 5 July 2012 http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/perry-anderson
The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India Feminist Studies; Spring 1992; 18, 1; GenderWatch
Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India Author(s): Ajay Skaria Source: Past and Present, No. 155, (May, 1997), pp. 109-141
Blogs:
http://sepiamutiny.com/sepia/faq.php
http://kafila.org/
Video resources :
Cultural Anthropology Reflecting on 30 Years of Subaltern Studies: Conversations with Profs. Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/469
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view

Theme I (week 1&2): Overview: What is “Modern”? What is “India”?
Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India
Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India
Perry Anderson, 3 essays in London Review of Books; & responses / critiques
Prakash, Gyan. Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World
Arnold, David, Agriculture and ‘Improvement’ in Early Colonial India
Loomba and Lukose, textbook

Theme II (week 3): Development and Change
Prakash, G. (1999). Another reason : science and the imagination of modern India. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
Senthil Babu, 2012 “Science and Self-Respect,” Economic and Political Weekly
Ramamurthy, Priti. (2009). "Why are men doing floral sex work? Gender, Cultural reproduction, and the Feminization of agriculture." SIGNS Autumn 2009 (Special Issue on Women and Agriculture).
Loomba and Lukose, textbook
Michael Goldman talks about the World Bank: http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/MichaelGoldmanpresentationsmall_0.mp4/view
Aruna Roy discusses the World Bank in India : http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/IPTsecretariat/videos/aruna-roy-at-the-world-bank-tribunal/view
Theme III (week 4): Colonialism, Orientalism, Modernity
Edward Said, Orientalism (selections)
O'Hanlon, Rosalind. "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia."
Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988) pp. 189-224.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies," Economic and Political Weekly v.30:no.14 (8 April 1995) pp. 751-759.
Theme IV (week 5, 6, 7): Sanctioned Silences: Gender, Caste, Violence
Loomba and Lukose, TEXTBOOK
Metcalf, TEXTBOOK; + Online news, contemporary: On caste violence
Agarwal, Bina The Gender and Environment Debate
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender"
Ajay Skaria, Women, Witchcraft and Gratuitous Violence in Colonial Western India
Theme V (week 8, 9, 10): Dialogues with Space and Time: Facts, Fictions & Futures
The Eames Report April 1958 Author(s): Charles Eames and Ray Eames Source: Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-75
Lilly Irani, article on AMT (forthcoming)
James Ferguson with Larry Lohman, “The Anti-Politics Machine,” In The Ecologist Vol 24 No 5 September/October 1994
Rokheya Hossein, Sultana's Dream
Amitav Ghosh, The Slave of MS. H.6 in Subaltern Studies No. 7 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/subaltern/ss07.htm
Amitav Ghosh and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Conversation, in Radical History Review
Vandana Singh and Anil Menon, selections from new Indian science fiction

Pedagogy

2012-11-17T19:43:03Z

Kavita:

[[Modern India: A possible course outline]]

Links to other conversations

2012-11-17T19:28:57Z

Kavita:

'''FUTUROLOGY'''

''Institutional Sites''
The Univ of Hawai'i at Manoa has a famous institute for Futures Studies. Debora Halbert does some good activist/feminist stuff there. Below is an overview of the field.
[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/FuturesStudiesForSAGE2011.pdf]

The Institute for Alternative Futures makes this into a money-spinning consultancy gig! I can't quite figure out the politics of how this kind of pro-poor work actually functions:
[http://altfutures.org/?q=pro_poor]

''SF and Future Thinking''
The SF-encyclopaedia has a page on Futures Studies. It's not very well footnoted, but it makes useful links, pointing to the often-conservative politics of future-oriented thinking (from Thomas Malthus to Donella Meadows), and linking it to Science Fiction, as well as to a military-industrial-imperialist set of political concerns
[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/futures_studies]

OPEN-SOURCE

''Open Source Education''
[http://thepublicschool.org/about]

''Open Source Design''
If The Economist is onto it, you know it's mainstream now! And no surprises, they want to figure out how to profit:
"The big question is how to profit from all of this fevered making. Does open-source design risk breaking the link between intellectual property and value, and doing to designers what the internet did to music and journalism?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/open-source-design?fb_ref=activity