Backchannels

Backchannels provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community.

Leon Olivé or the citizen philosopher

Reflections / Mónica Lozano

On February 10, 2017, the philosopher and mathematician Leon Olivé died in Mexico, one of the most important contemporary Mexican thinkers and a reference in Latin America for philosophical and social studies on science and technology.

Undoing the Ontology of the Poor: A Participatory Design Project

Reflections / Mariacristina Sciannamblo and Maurizio Teli

Using a participatory design approach, the research consortium of the EU-funded "Commonfare" project rethinks – and critically engages with – the ontological politics of categorizations of poverty.

The employment crisis of young PhDs in Argentina. Is neoliberalism to blame?

/ Federico Vasen

In the days leading up to Christmas, young researchers and postgraduate students occupied for four days the building of the Ministry of Science and Technology in Buenos Aires demanding more permanent positions for Research and Development in the country

Is STS All Talk and No Walk? Steve Fuller

Reflections / James H. Collier

What is perhaps most puzzling from a strictly epistemological standpoint is that STS recoils from these tropes whenever such politically undesirable elements as climate change deniers or creationists appropriate them effectively for their own purposes.

Silenced Issues 4: (Un-)Silencing Issues in Thinking Through Environmental Data

Reflections / Leo Matteo Bachinger

The fourth entry to our ongong series explores and reflects the ways in which data is used to conceal, silence but also bring to the foreground environmental and Climate Change issues.

Researching Sprawling ‘Mobile’ Infrastructures in Nairobi

Reflections / Prince K. Guma

Mobile technology production and development, mobile-based infrastructural engagements, and mobile money markets are increasingly becoming key signifiers for African cities' identity.

Q&A: Global Trouble

Reflections / Scott Macleod

At some level I have to say, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know, how much you feel that you hate the other, or that you are sure the other hates you. I actually think there are global obligations, and also territorial obligations, to live with other people we may not love and to honor their equal right to live there too.

Silenced Issues 3: Silenced Issues in Academic Publishing

Reflections / Joshua Pitt

Joshua Pitt problematizes the ways in which voices and issues remain silenced through inherent and prevailing biases in academic publishing.

Revealing fact and reinforcing faith: Gravitational waves and religion in India

Report-backs / Joseph Satish V

Reflections on the engagements between science and religion in Indian society following the discovery of gravitational waves

Performing Moral Stories through Bodyweight

Reflections / Michael Penkler

Bodyweight is a rich source of ‘moral stories’. In talking about their own and others’ bodies, people not only narrate and negotiate themselves as rational actors and accountable persons, but also hold one another accountable.