4S/EASST-Konferenz (Web), Organizers: Martina Erlemann (FU Berlin), Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer (U Prague) and Elvira Scheich (FU Berlin)

Venue: Kopenhagen
Time: 17.-20.10.2012
Deadline: 11.03.2012, Abstract-Submission-Link

Gender research in science and technology studies has opened new questions and several new lines of investigation. Its critical feminist starting point was the asymmetrical design of gender arrangements and how they were structurally embedded in scientific communities, their traditions, methods and arte/facts. A gender approach broadens the scope of scientific activities and analyses how parts of doing science became obscured in the production of facts and construction of ideas, both in life sciences and material sciences. Furthermore, gender studies brings into focus how these displacements were carried out through scientific language and practices and intersected with other social hierarchies.

On these grounds we invite contributions to the following topics and questions: Which concepts are needed to describe gendered science collectives and to account for the marginalized and invisible work which is nevertheless indispensable for the working science? What are the consequences for shaping problem definitions, research approaches and material outcomes? Thus, how to understand the linkages between social orderings and the orderings of knowledge, what sorts of transfers occur and what gets excluded or displaced? Which are the relevant modes of representation and how to deconstruct them? Here in particular attention should be given to the simultaneous processes of en-gendering and de-gendering of arte/facts, practices and ideas, as e.g. in the patterns of universalism and otherness. What are the epistemological consequences for studying sciences, and conceptualizing the governance of science and science-society relations from the vantage point of feminist research? What alignments, conflicts and innovations have occurred when STS and feminist science studies meet?

Instead of seeing gender research as yet another subfield of STS, the key aim of this panel is to re-assess basic STS concepts such as symmetry, trading zone, thought collective and materiality, and to examine and utilize the displacements of gender as a challenge for their redesign.

Deadline for submissions is 11th March 2012. Acception notifications will be given 1st May 2012.

Please forward this call to anyone to whom it might be relevant. For further questions please contact: Martina Erlemann: martina.erlemann@fu-berlin.de; Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer: d.lorenzmeyer@gmail.com; Elvira Scheich: elvira.scheich@fu-berlin.de

Kontakt
Dr.phil Dipl.-Phys. Martina Erlemann
Freie Universität Berlin
FB Physik, Geschlechterstudien in der Physik
Arnimalle 14
14195 Berlin
Tel: +49-30-838-75438
martina.erlemann@fu-berlin.de
http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/summerschool