348 research outputs found
Care, laboratory beagles and affective utopia
A caring approach to knowledge production has been portrayed as epistemologically radical, ethically vital and as fostering continuous responsibility between researchers and research-subjects. This article examines these arguments through focusing on the ambivalent role of care within the first large-scale experimental beagle colony, a self-professed âbeagle utopiaâ at the University of California, Davis, (1951-1986). We argue that care was at the core of the beagle colony; the lived environment was re-shaped in response to animals âspeaking backâ to researchers, and âloveâ and âkindnessâ were important considerations during staff recruitment. Ultimately, however, we show that care-relations were used to manufacture compliancy, preventing the predetermined ends of the experiment from being troubled. Rather than suggesting Davis would have been less ethically troubling, or more epistemologically radical, with âbetterâ care, however, we suggest the case troubles existing care theory and argue that greater attention needs to be paid to histories, contexts, and exclusions
Is it possible to formulate least action principle for dissipative systems?
A longstanding open question in classical mechanics is to formulate the least
action principle for dissipative systems. In this work, we give a general
formulation of this principle by considering a whole conservative system
including the damped moving body and its environment receiving the dissipated
energy. This composite system has the conservative Hamiltonian
where is the kinetic energy of the moving body, its potential
energy and the energy of the environment. The Lagrangian can be derived
by using the usual Legendre transformation where is the
total kinetic energy of the environment. An equivalent expression of this
Lagrangian is where is the energy dissipated by the
friction from the moving body into the environment from the beginning of the
motion. The usual variation calculus of least action leads to the correct
equation of the damped motion. We also show that this general formulation is a
natural consequence of the virtual work principle.Comment: 11 pages, no figur
On equal temperament
In this article, I use Stengersâ (2010) concepts of âfactishâ, ârequirementsâ and âobligationsâ, as well as Latourâs (1993) critique of modernity, to interrogate the rise of Equal Temperament as the dominant system of tuning for western music. I argue that Equal Temperament is founded on an unacknowledged compromise which undermines its claims to rationality and universality. This compromise rests on the standardization which is the hallmark of the tuning system of Equal Temperament, and, in this way, it is emblematic of Latourâs definition of modernity. I further argue that the problem of the tuning of musical instruments is one which epitomizes the modern distinction between the natural and the social. In turn, this bears witness to what Whitehead calls the âbifurcation of natureâ. Throughout this article, using the work of Stengers and Latour, I seek to use tuning as a case study which allows social research to talk both of the natural and of the social aspects of music and tuning, without recourse to essentialism or simple social construction. In this way, my argument seeks to avoid bifurcating nature
Ethics, space, and somatic sensibilities: comparing relationships between scientific researchers and their human and animal experimental subjects
Drawing on geographies of affect and nature-society relations, we propose a radical rethinking of how scientists, social scientists, and regulatory agencies conceptualise human and animal participants in scientif ic research. The scientific rationale for using animal bodies to simulate what could be done in human bodies emphasises shared somatic capacities that generate comparable responses to clinical interventions. At the same time, regulatory guidelines and care practices stress the differences between human and animal subjects. In this paper we consider the implications of this differentiation between human and animal bodies in ethical and welfare protocols and practices. We show how the bioethical debates around the use of human subjects tend to focus on issues of consent and language, while recent work in animal welfare reflects an increasing focus on the affectual dimensions of ethical practice. We argue that this attention to the more-than-representational dimensions of ethics and welfare might be equally important for human subjects. We assert that paying attention to these somatic sensibilities can offer insights into how experimental environments can both facilitate and restrict the development of more care-full and response-able relations between researchers and their experimental subjects. <br/
Data intimacies: building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution
The air is, in many urban contexts, polluted. Governments and institutions monitor particles and gas concentrations to better understand how they perform in the light of air quality guidance and legislation, and to make predictions in terms of future environmental health targets. The visibility of these data is considered crucial for citizens to manage their own health, and a proliferation of new informational forms and apps have been created to achieve this. And yet, beyond everyday decisions (when to use a mask or when to do sports outdoors), it is not clear whether current methods of engaging citizens produce behavioural change or stronger citizen engagement with air pollution. Drawing on the design, construction and ethnography of an urban infrastructure to measure, make visible and remediate particulate matter (PM2.5) through a water vapour cloud that we installed at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, we examined the effects and affects of producing a public space that allows for physical interaction with data. In Yellow Dust, data from PM2.5 were translated into mist, the density of which was responsive to the number of particles suspended in the air. Data were made sense/ible by the changing conditions of the air surrounding the infrastructure, which can be experienced in embodied, collective and relational ways: what we call âmolecular intimaciesâ. By reflecting on how the infrastructure facilitated new modes of sensing data, we consider how âdata intimaciesâ can re-specify action by producing different forms of engagement with air pollution
Online drug scenes and harm reduction from below as phronesis
This article presents a theoretical critique of notion of harm reduction on the basis of an empirical investigation of a variety of online manifestations of drug culture. Taking a multi-case study approach to drug use related forums, blogs and âstory sitesâ focused on NPS/âlegal highâ use and non-medicinal prescription drug use, our analysis of data leads us to describe the culture of âharm reduction from belowâ it reveals in terms the Aristotelian concept of phronesis. We argue that peer-to-peer co-creation of knowledge, sharing and support constitutes an emergent and constantly evolving form of âpractical wisdomâ with respect to drugs. Drawing on Flyvbjergâs (2001, 2007) accounts of phronetic social science as a practice, which proposes a permeable boundary between theoretical and practical inquiry, and Stengerâs (2005) account of the âcollective voice from belowâ as always embedded within an âecology of practicesâ, we offer an interpretation of the online dimension of drug taking in terms of drug usersâ shared aim of âdoing drugs wellâ. The investigation of online life in terms of the multiple contexts of drug-related communicative exchange thus allows us to identify harm reduction from below as an ethical practice inherent to a variety of online drug scenes themselves
Walking and the social life of solar charging in rural Africa
We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africaâs Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are poor and, like 25% and 92% of the world, respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We describe nine practices in using the charging stations we deployed. We recorded 700 people using the stations, over a year, some regularly. We suggest that the way we frame practices limits insights about them, and consider various routines in using and sharing local resources to discover relations that might also feature in charging. Specifically, walking interconnects routines in using, storing, sharing and sustaining resources, and contributes to knowing, feeling, wanting and avoiding as well as to different aspects of sociality, social order and perspectives on sustainability. Along the way, bodies acquire literacies that make certain relationalities legible. Our study shows we cannot assert what sustainable practice means a priori and, further, that detaching practices from bodies and their paths limits solutions, at least in rural Africa. Thus, we advocate a more âalonglyâ integrated approach to data about practices.Web of Scienc
Doing time and motion diffractively: Academic life everywhere and all the time
This article offers a diffractive methodological intervention into workplace studies of academic life. In its engagement of a playful, performative research and writing practice the article speaks back to technocratic organisational and sociological workplace âtime and motionâ studies which centre on the human and rational, and presume a linear teleology of cause and effect. As a counterpoint, we deploy posthumanist new materialist research practices which refuse human-centric approaches and aim to give matter its due. As a means to analyse what comes out of our joint workspaces photo project we produce two âpassesâ through data â two diffractive experiments which destabilise what normally counts as âfindingsâ and their academic presentation. The article deploys the motif of âstarting somewhere elseâ to signal both our intention to keep data animated, alive and interactive, and to utilise visual and written modes of seriality as enabling constraints which produce a more generative focus on the mundane, emergent, unforeseen, and happenstance in studies of daily working life
The social, cosmopolitanism and beyond
First, this article will outline the metaphysics of âthe socialâ that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of lassical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates the cultural sphere from the natural objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology â in order to be cosmopolitan â is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines âthe socialâ as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of âthe socialâ that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well
Enacting the Soft Automaton: Empirical Ontologies of Two Soft Robots from Technical Research and Media Art
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