[INES Announce] American Anthropological Association round table asap!

[Elizabeth Reddy]

Hi all,
If you are looking for an AAA activity, please get in touch ASAP to join our round table




Our goal is to bring scholars together who have a range of positions and experiences in order to highlight the practical and conceptual resources that anthropology (particularly anthropology of engineering) has for understanding and navigating this moment.  Abstract is below.





Thanks much,

Beth



Abstract:

​​​​The Anthropology of Engineering: US Institutions Shift, and We Have Been Here Before



Radical shifts in institutional investment in the US are having serious consequences for academic studies, collaborations, and teaching.  Research and teaching alike are transformed as the executive branch of the United States government takes radical steps to transform national culture, with attention to socially relevant topics and themes of particular anthropological expertise. Resource availability is re-written and our relations shift, but, as Smith et al write in an editorial for the journal engineering studies, “we have been here before (2025).” We have observed and documented the many ways that engineering has engaged authoritarianism and nationalism.  We are cognizant of how ways of knowing and being associated with engineering can be mobilized for violence. We are aware of places and times where well-intentioned technological opportunities and modes of action facilitate other, better outcomes.



Anthropologists of engineering have developed insights for practice; insights related to teaching critical perspectives on technology, to developing and maintaining support for our activities,  to building solidarities across radical disciplinary difference, and to helping students, professors and practicing engineers imagine otherwise.



This participatory round table brings together anthropologists who study, work with, and teach engineers and engineering. From diverse institutional positions, we consider such topics as research, collaboration, teaching, and activism in engineering contexts.


Best,
Beth

Elizabeth Reddy, PhD
she/her/hers

Assistant Professor | Engineering, Design, & Society | Geophysics
Associate Director | Humanitarian Engineering and Science
Colorado School of Mines

reddy at mines.edu<mailto:reddy at mines.edu>  |  www.elizabethreddy.info<http://www.elizabethreddy.info>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.inesweb.org/pipermail/announce-inesweb.org/attachments/20250331/57fda5d3/attachment.htm>