Feminist technoscience and feminist phenomenology have seldom been brought into dialogue with each other, despite them sharing concerns with subjectivity and normativity, and despite both of them moving away from sharp subject-object distinctions. This is unfortunate. This article argues that, while differences between these strands need to be acknowledged, such differences should be put to productive use. The article discusses a case of school bullying, and suggests that bringing these analytic perspectives together enables and sharpens examinations of the role of (...) subjectification and subject positions for subjectivity in the phenomenological sense; affectivity within material-discursive entanglements and constellations of humans and things, and as connecting the body, things and the world in specific ways; and normativity as enacted, lived and embedded in perception. (shrink)

El artículo afronta un tema novedoso que ha tenido recientemente tratamientos muy diversos. Algunosde sus objetivos podrían ser los siguientes: pretende señalar algunos caminos realizados en el diálogo entreciencia y técnica a lo largo de las últimas décadas y describir sucintamente los hitos que han conducido desde la ciencia clásica (newtoniana) a la tecnociencia actual. En el fondo, ofrecer también unas pinceladas sobre la nueva filosofía de la técnica, que se construye apartando viejos prejuicios humanistas, que cuenta con el desarrollo (...) teórico de la consiliencia y que no quiere estar dirigida ni principalmente ni exclusivamente hacia la ingeniería. En definitiva, una filosofía de la técnica con nueva ‘agenda’. El trabajo tiene cuatro grandes bloques: en el primero se describe el proyecto de la tecnociencia en su perspectiva histórica. En un segundo momento se pretende situar la técnica en la historia de las ciencias y de las técnicas. La tercera parte aborda la posibilidad (también necesidad) de una nueva visión de estos temas, que se ha dado en llamar visión sapiencial y transdisciplinar. Finalmente, en la cuarta parte, se señalan algunos pasos que se están dando en el campo de la filosofía de la técnica bajo esta nueva mirada, lo que podrían ser consideradas como las conclusiones, la nueva agenda: irrupción de enfoques éticos (entre otros, el de la responsabilidad) y nuevas visiones de ciencia-tecnología-sociedad. (shrink)

We are currently witnessing a genuine proliferation of new feminist or pro-feminist work on posthumanities, in art and research, in Sweden as in other corners of the world. What matters most to me as a feminist scholar is the synergy and new conversations within feminist theory, and what they can do. Reinventing the humanities today can no longer signify the relaunching of a school of thought, style, or theory with a hegemonic vocation. It must entail the very recomposition of disciplinarity, (...) theory, and everyday doing. Feminist posthumanities testify not to any crisis of the content, rigor, or intellectual liveliness of the humanities and adjacent social sciences, but to its sociability in the more-than-human domains. Feminist posthumanities, with its mixed origin stories and foremothers, are to me the becoming minoritarian of collective academic insight, and it comes with both its perks, and setbacks. It is needed more now than ever, as we need communities that work together, across the ecologies and technologies of the postnatural condition we often simply call the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Robots equipped with artificial intelligence pose a huge challenge to traditional ontological differentiations between the spheres of the human and the non-human. Drawing mainly from neo-animistic and perspectivist approaches in anthropology and science and technology studies, the paper explores the potential of new forms of interconnectedness and rhizomatic entanglements between humans and a world transcending the boundaries between species and material spheres. We argue that intelligent robots meet virtually all criteria Western biology came up with to define ‘life’ and that (...) it ultimately makes sense to recognize them as a new species that is part of our social universe. Contrasting dualistic concepts of man and nature with a monistic approach, we show that traditional properties of life (agency, self-replication, etc.) may apply to artefacts and that, once we accept the idea that social relationships are ultimately open connections to matter of any kind, the seemingly strict boundaries between species and material spheres can no longer be sustained. Instead, we propose to include ‘matter’ and ideas into the sphere of the social as agents in their own right to form a _relational ontology of multi-species assemblages_ (ROMA). (shrink)

Digital health and welfare technologies and artificial intelligence are proposed to revolutionise healthcare systems around the world by enabling new models of care. Digital health and welfare technologies enable remote monitoring and treatments, and artificial intelligence is proposed as a means of prediction instead of reaction to individuals’ health and as an enabler of proactive care and rehabilitation. The digital transformation not only affects hospital and primary care but also how the community meets older people's needs. Community care is often (...) provided by informal and formal care‐givers, most of whom are women. Gender equality is at the heart of many national strategies, but do all genders have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities when it comes to community care and its digital transformation? The digital transformation of community care is entangled with how care is provided to older people and the working conditions of community‐care professionals. Current and, even more so, future community‐care systems are and will be partly constituted by networks of technological artefacts. These health and welfare technological artefacts and the discourse surrounding them mediate and constitute social relations and community care. This article looks into how health and welfare technology and artificial intelligence‐based devices and systems mediate and constitute gender relations in community care and presents an argument for reflexivity, embodiment, pluralism, participation and ecology as an alternative strategy to treating community care as one‐size‐fit‐all and being blind to gender‐related issues. (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic project in a public high school in a low-income neighborhood in South Los Angeles, this paper argues that access to information and communication technologies cannot be taken as helpful or empowering on its own terms; instead, concerns about justice must be accounted for by the local communities technology is meant to benefit. This paper juxtaposes the concept of technological access with recent work in feminist science and technology studies on infrastructure, maintenance, and ethics. In contrast to (...) popular descriptions of ICTs as emancipatory and transformative, in the setting of an urban school, access produced extensive demands for attention, time, and information. This paper focuses on the labor of a group of student workers, Student Technology Leaders, and how they became responsible for the significant amount of repair and maintenance work involved in keeping hundreds of new computing devices available for use. An expanded process of accounting can more realistically frame issues of justice and its relationship to ICTs. I use a town hall meeting held with these students as an example of a processual vision of justice, one that encourages the beneficiaries of technological access to evaluate costs, benefits, and ethical concerns together. (shrink)

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values assembles papers that consider relations among science, ethics, and justice. The papers are drawn from a 2011 National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop that brought together interdisciplinary scholars to consider, incorporate, and attend to the meanings, uses, and social consequences of ethical questions and justice ideals in technoscientific projects. The papers included in this special issue examine key areas that emerged from this workshop, including public participation, the production of knowledge, what counts as (...) consent, ownership of biomaterials, and others. Together, the papers raise questions about new directions and articulations of power, justice, and inequalities in science and technology studies. (shrink)