Please note that, due to the Labor Day Holiday, the first meeting of the STS
Circle will take place on Tuesday, September 8th.
STS Circle at Harvard
[cid:[email protected]]
Andreas Mitzschke
Maastricht University
on
Competing, Conflicting, and Contested Futures: Temporal Imaginaries in the GM
Crops Controversy
Tuesday, September 8
12:15-2:00 pm
K262, the Bowie-Vernon Room, Knafel Building, CGIS, 1737 Cambridge Street
[cid:[email protected]]
Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP via our online
form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sG90cy_pwfiAfN_3YsE173lv18MyQfGneuCUjEEaKVY/viewform?usp=send_form>
before Thursday morning, September 3rd.
Abstract: In the enduring controversy about the potential risks and benefits
of genetically modified (GM) crops, different actors construct competing
visions of the future. These conflict over the envisioned impacts and
consequences of this technology. In my presentation I show how various actors
in the Indian and European GM crop debates are constructing sociotechnical
imaginaries which they situate in temporal relations between past, present, and
future. How risks and benefits are imagined to fundamentally change society's
future also relates to ideas about the present reality of agricultural
relations and the history of agricultural development in India and Europe.
Based on an analysis of documents and qualitative in-depth interviews, I argue
that understanding the temporality of sociotechnical imaginaries allows us to
address the competing normative dimensions of the debate more clearly. Further,
I make the methodological proposition that the focus on temporality provides us
with a different historical perspective on visions of socio-technical change.
Biography: Andreas Mitzschke studied European politics, political sociology,
and STS at Maastricht University (NL), the University of Essex (UK), and the
Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (India). He holds a BA in European
Studies (2008) and an MSc (research) Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology
(2010). Andreas is currently writing his PhD thesis at the Department of
Society and Technology Studies in Maastricht, where he also teaches in various
undergraduate courses. In his dissertation on public controversies about
genetically modified crops in India and Europe, Andreas is studying how crop
biotechnology and public involvement in this issue have shaped democratic
political cultures in a globalised world. From a co-constructionist
perspective, he scrutinises the mutual shaping of controversies about risk and
'publics'. His comparative approach to techno-scientific cultures in the global
North and South argues for the explicit inclusion of normative issues of
democracy, imagination, and politics in debates about technological risks.
A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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