Donnerstag, 08. Mai 2025, 17:00 - 19:00 iCal
IPW-Lecture: Kean Birch (York University, Canada)
Do Artefacts Have Political Economy?
Seminarraum STS
Universitätsstraße 7/II/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
Antrittsvorlesung, Public Lecture, Vortrag
Harking back to Langdon Winner’s now classic article, ‘Do artifacts have politics?’, my aim in this paper is to ask a very similar question – namely, do artefacts have political economy? Following Winner and with the same objective in mind, I analyse artefacts that: (1) have been designed in ways that embed particular political economies; or (2) are compatible with particular political economies. I illustrate the former using Winner’s own example of Robert Moses and the design of bridges in New York City. For the latter, I illustrate a strong and weak version of the compatibility claim with the strong version characterized by the adoption of both a particular technology and political economy, while the weak version is characterized by the adaptation of the social context to a particular technology and political economy. I use the example of advertising technology (‘adtech’) and generative artificial intelligence respectively to illustrate these two versions. I frame this discussion within an approach I define as constructivist political economy sitting at the interface of science and technology studies (STS) and political economy, which can provide a useful analytical tool to analyse and address the vagaries of contemporary technoscientific capitalism.
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Veranstalter
IPW: Digital Health Governance/Value-Vacc & STS Department
Kontakt
Anna Weithaler
Institut für Politikwissenschaft
+43-1-4277-494 11
anna_weithaler@univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Dienstag, 11. März 2025, 08:38
Letzte Änderung am Mittwoch, 12. März 2025, 10:57