While the anthropological study of infrastructure is a fairly recent and uncommon phenomenon in Japan, there has always been a strong interest in infrastructure among Foucault-inspired urban sociologists who emphasize the way infrastructures work as apparatuses to shape and orient...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: In the early 1970s, the idea of precaution "of heeding rather than ignoring scientific evidence of harm when there is uncertainty, and taking action that errs on the side of safety" was so appealing that the US Congress used it as the basis of the toxics provisions of the Clean...Read more
Kim Fortun's 2014 article is available on the website for HAU's Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
Abstract:
"I situate Latour’s latest project—An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME)—in the context of late industrialism and query both its conceptual underpinnings and...Read more
This paper is an introduction to the special issue "Infrastructuring Environments," which is one of the outcomes of the KAKEN research project "Environmental Infrastructures: Comparative...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: Science literacy is frequently touted as a key to good citizenship. Based on a two-year ethnographic study examining science in the community, the authors suggest that when considering the contribution of scientific activity to the greater good, science must be seen as forming...Read more
The relationship between human and nonhuman beings has been investigated in anthropological studies on magical-religious practices such as animism, shamanism, and spirit possession. Studies of gift-exchange and personhood have also elaborated important arguments about the unfolding of encounters...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: There are challenges to the dominant research paradigm in breast cancer science. In the United States, science and social activism create paradigmatic shifts. Using interviews, ethnographic observations, and an extensive review of the literature, we create a three-dimensional...Read more
In this 2015 article, Chelsea Schelly contributes to the wider discussion within STS on the politics of technology by researching and analyzing perceptions on the politics of solar-energy technology held by those who use it.Read more