March 22, 2019
By: Yesmar Oyarzun
This year the annual 4S conference will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was also the site of our 1994 conference. Every month until this year’s conference, we will share something connecting the 1994 and 2019 conferences. Welcome to our 1994 flashback series!
To kick off this flashback we bring you a few fast facts you might not know about the 1994 conference:
Fact 1: The 1994 conference was the first time a woman, anthropologist Prof. Linda Layne, served as program chair. This was a multi-organization conference that included the History of Science and Society (HSS), as well as the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA). Dr. Layne was crucial in integrating more anthropological work and anthropologists into the 4S community. Using the theme Science, Technology, and Multiculturalism, she invited key medical anthropologists to enrich the conversations by showing the connection between social sciences and the medical field.
Fact 2: Prof. Emily Martin gave the 1994 keynote speech entitled Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science. Martin offered the citadel, the rhizome, and the string figure as ways science both permeates and is permeated by cultur[e], but really, the point of the text was to think about the ways culture— that infamous object— could help us think about science. Fortunately for us, that lecture was preserved through publication in Science, Technology, & Human Values (STHV).
Fact 3: For the more established STSers, it may come as no surprise but for fresh graduate students, including myself, it may be interesting to know that registration used to look like this:
History of Science Society. July 1994 HSS Newsletter.
Source: https://hssonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Newsletter1994-July.pdf
That’s right: you had to send in your registration (and abstracts) via regular postal mail. While this is an interesting institutional artifact, the process was time consuming for both participants and organizers. For example, I have it on good authority (from Wenda Bauchspies who assisted Dr. Layne with organization) that conference organizers had to take on creating the program using a mix of index cards and papers. Fortunately, the tides have turned and you can register to attend the 2019 conference online. Registration opens up on March 25th! Visit https://www.4sonline.org/meeting for details.
Fact 4: Current president of 4S, Kim Fortun, was among those subjected to registration via snail mail. In fact, the 1994 meeting in New Orleans was Dr. Fortun’s first 4S meeting. Here’s what she has to say about that meeting:
4S New Orleans, 1994 was my very first 4S meeting! I had graduated from Rice Anthropology in May 1993 (after a few years of fieldwork in India) then got a postdoc fellowship at Cornell STS and an assistant professor position at RPI STS. It was something of a breakthrough year for anthropology in 4S — partly signaled by Emily Martin’s keynote. The craze of the science wars is also memorable.
Drawing on our conference theme, this is just the first of a few flashbacks we will have this year to highlight and create dialogues around continuities, innovations, interruptions, and regenerations in 4S between the 1994 and 2019 conferences. Follow our conference twitter @4sConference, check our Flashback section on the conference website. You’ll get a preview of each post monthly in Technoscience!