Stefanie Mauksch | MA 03-ETH-2012 | 10 LP | Tuesdays, 11:15 am – 12:45 pm, S102
Course Description:
This subject examines relationships among technology, culture,
politics, animals and the (human) body in a range of social settings. In
this reading-intensive course, we encounter a few core concepts and
theorists relevant to the anthropological study of science and
technology. We explore the often unacknowledged political, aesthetic,
religious, ethical and embodied aspects of technology and science, and
ask how we may study these as sociomaterial practices rather than human
mastery over Nature. Specific attention will be paid to contexts of
so-called Global South. What hopes, fears, and uncertainties are evoked
by the global circulation of science and technology? How are scientific
knowledge and technological innovations constantly redrawing the
boundaries between Nature and Society? How do new technologies evolve in
relation to, and transform imaginations of identity, power, and
knowledge? Each session is organized around either analytical core
concepts, or anthropological encounters with a distinct thing, field or
process, such as the wheelchair, the plastic spoon, the cyborg, stem
cells, the cochlear implant, the fingerprint, childbirth. We use these
as cases to explore how technology shapes, and is being shaped by,
cultural assumptions, utopian imagery, and complex interactions between
human and non-human substances and agencies.