Am 22. März 2018 ist Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University) am Institut für Soziologie der Technischen Universität Berlin im Graduiertenkolleg mit dem Vortrag „Innovation at the Crossroads: Contested Imaginaries of Progress in Bangalore“ zu Gast.
Innovation figures today as a panacea for all social ills in the minds of policymakers around the world. The idea of Silicon Valley, in particular, has taken hold globally to the extent that every nation, region, and city dreams of emulating, and replicating, that Californian miracle. Drawing on comparative research on innovation policy and fieldwork in Bangalore, India, this talk shows how the imported imaginary of a future transformed by digital technology fares when confronted by grounded, local imaginaries of progress and emancipation. Using methods from science and technology studies (STS), I show how a controversy over road-building reveals fundamentally incompatible visions of good human futures enabled by science and technology. This research confirms that the contemporary discourse of innovation, resting on aggregate economic models of progress, lacks power to overcome deep- seated problems of inequality, social injustice, and lack of democratic accountability.
Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen. Der Vortrag findet am 22.03.2018 um 17 Uhr in Raum FH 804 des Instituts für Soziologie (Fraunhoferstraße 33–36, 10587 Berlin) statt. Details können dem Veranstaltungsplakat entnommen werden.