I will be presenting the introduction to the forthcoming book ‘Experimental collaborations: Ethnography through fieldwork devices‘ (co-edited with Adolfo Estalella) at the The New Experimentalisms, a one day workshop at CISP/Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London
Tuesday September 20th 2016, 10-5pm
Room RHB 137a
Organized by Michael Guggenheim, Dan Neyland, Alex Wilkie
Recent Science and Technology Studies (STS) work on experiments has provided a basis for rethinking the terms, practices and consequences of experimentation. This has opened up opportunities to question, for example, experimental controls, provocative containments, training and professional practice. This work has also broadened the traditional STS focus on scientific laboratories to also include economic, social scientific and commercial experimentation, exploring new territories of experimentation and their attendant means of reproducing the world.
At the same time, scholars in STS, Sociology, Anthropology and Design have pursued experiments not just as an object of study, but also as something to do. Here we find, for example, experiments with algorithmic walks, expertise and issues. An earlier critique of experiments as artificial and interventionist has given way to a new embracing of material staging of situations and problems.
Social researchers have come to acknowledge we can learn precisely because of the non-naturalism of experiments. Experiments have become legitimate forms to intervene in the world, and to invent new worlds. In this way STS scholars have begun to think again about the realities in which they participate. In this workshop we will feature recent experimenters within STS with scholars who have analysed experiments in specific fields.
Programme
10.00: Welcome
10.15-11.30: Pelle Ehn (Design, Malmö):
democratic design experiments (in the small)
Commentator: Kim Kullmann (Sociology, Goldmsiths)
11.45-1pm: Tomás Sánchez Criado (STS, Munich):
The Ethnographic Experiment, Revisited: Experimental Collaborations, or the ‘Devicing’ of Fieldwork for Joint Problem-Making
Commentator: Isaac Marrero-Guillamón (Anthropology, Goldsmiths)
1pm – 2pm: lunch
2pm-3.15pm: Claire Waterton (Sociology, Lancaster):
An Experimental Collective: Working Through Modalities and the Enrichment of Land and Water
Commentator: Jennifer Gabrys (Sociology, Goldsmiths)
3.30pm-4.45pm: Tobias Bornakke Jørgensen (Sociology, Copenhagen):
Sensing Data: The Emergence of Sensor-Based Experiments in the Social Sciences
Commentator: Noortje Marres (Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick).