The Mission of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is to foster interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in the social studies of science, technology, and medicine across the globe. We are also a diverse, international academic association with multiple sensibilities, faiths, and histories, and our members have been appalled by human suffering, including the killing of civilians in Palestine and Israel.
On November 5, 2023, 4S Council met and discussed the devastating situation in Palestine and Israel. The Council condemns the crimes of war being committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, including the destruction of homes and hospitals. We rebuke Israel’s bombardment of Gaza which has led to the loss of more than 32,000 Palestinian lives, 13,000 of whom are children and Hamas’s Oct 7th attack on Israeli settlements surrounding the Gaza strip that led to the loss of 1,200 lives of Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli residents. We mourn all of these losses. Settler colonialism is never an even process and marginalized Jewish people have long been those given housing along the borders. We are aware that neither the Israeli state nor Hamas act independently, and that the US military-industrial complex and government are deeply enmeshed and facilitative of this uneven and unequal war.
At the meeting it was agreed upon that the plausible genocide unfolding in Gaza is – and as this inaugural Forum will show – fundamentally an STS issue.
At the meeting Council voted to form the Working Group on War and Genocide (WGWG), acknowledging the role STS can play in uncovering and highlighting issues and impacts of war, genocide, occupation, and militarism, and in this deeply concerning moment, the assault on Gaza. Discussions at the 4S Business Meeting and other occasions in the following days of the Honolulu meeting reinforced the sense that there was a need for an STS forum exploring these vital themes.
As such, our inaugural effort as the WGWG is the Palestine Forum with contributions from scholars with a diverse range of expertise and experience. From technologies of war (Lucy Suchman), contestations of indigeneity (Noah Tamarkin), reproductive injustices (Michal Nahman, Sigrid Vertommen, Rodante van der Waal, Rishita Nandagiri, Elif Gül, Weeam Hammoudeh, Fatima Mohamied), and An Ode to Gazans (Jess Bier). We are mindful of how few Palestinian voices are present in the forum and would like to emphasize that the WGWG endeavors to forefront those voices in future forums and conversations. Yet we are also mindful of the additional burden of doing so for Palestinians who are under conditions of such duress.
We hope this forum will reinvigorate discussions and contributions from STS and 4S scholars on war and genocide. Understanding, examining, and critiquing the politics of science and technology is a foundation of STS as a discipline and 4S as an academic society. The current war on Gaza forefronts the violent practices and complexities of settler colonialism, the complicity of the United States’ military industrial complex, the insidious and growing prevalence of AI, and the impacts of bombing and starvation on Palestinian bodies, lives and society. We cannot imagine a more appropriate intervention and the necessity of STS scholarship and solidarity than this moment.
