400008 SE How space and place matter in engaging with technoscientific developments (2017W)

The aim of this seminar is to reflect on and articulate the ways in which thinking about place and space is relevant in and for STS-related work. The aim of diverse readings will be to not only look at spaces and places ,Gieryn 2000, but to better grasp how space from the laboratory to many other spaces in which knowledge and technologies are produced and come to matter is brought into being through relations and practices. Thus space is defined neither by its physical dimensions nor by classical representational practices; instead, space is something that must be continuously brought into being through practices. Reading authors like David Harvey 1990, Martina Löw 2008 or Henry Lefèbvre 1991 we will also explore how deeply the capacity of exercising power and domination is intertwined with the capacity to influence and control the production and distribution of space. Making space and reordering space thus always means not only reassembling human and non-human entities but also redistributing agency, recreating networks and meanings that can be stabilizedand it is a deeply political activity, displaying and reconfiguring power relations. In the end this means to create a more fine grained understanding of the often used notion of situatedness in terms of place and space.
The seminar will elaborate on different ways how to understand and relate to the spatiality and placeness of technoscientific developments and link it to the diverse topics of the PhD thesis. The aim is to see and better grasp the spatial/situated dimensions present in the own work and to reflect what understanding spatial dimensions add to the understanding of the issues at stake.