In the introduction to 'Imperial Formations' Ann Stoler and Carole McGranahan theorized empire not as a territorial regime but as an assemblage of practices. We are concerned with how the methods, insights, and theoretical frames from science and technology studies can be brought to bear on the construction/production/reproduction of imperial formations. Circuits, as material and metaphorical conduits, imply the connection and circulation of information, energy, power, and capital. For this panel, we seek empirical contributions that engage with historical or contemporary imperial circuits. We seek contributions that trace the algorithmic, infrastructural, or ideological dimensions of technoscience as it is invested in the political, economic, cultural, and/or affective projects of empire. We ask how affordances of technological systems configure or are configured by imperial practices, logics, and calculi. We welcome papers that research the constitutive tensions between empire and circuits or develop methodological innovations for studying the intersection of technology/technoscience/big tech and imperial formations. For example, we are interested in work that employs multi-sited methods or that charts co-constitutive interconnections between sites; work that documents the world historical and planetary scale of imperial circuits and the mobilities of infrastructure, policy, and logics; work that employs critical data studies to map the construction of imperial classificatory systems, taxonomies, and data structures; and/or work that maps histories of empire, tourism, and militarism in the technological present. Topics may include but not are limited to: Big Tech, Finance/Financialization, Militarism, Digital Imperialism, Platform Tourism, Race, Empire, and Technology, Digital Affective Labor and Empire.
Keywords: Decolonial and Postcolonial STS, Race/Black Studies and STS, Infrastructure, Feminist STS, Big Tech, Finance/Financialization, Militarism, Digital Imperialism, Platform Tourism, Race and Technology, Digital Affective Labor
