 |
 |
CFP: Uncertainty: ambiguity and doubt in knowledge production
| Location: | California, United States |
| Conference Date: | 2010-04-23 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2010-01-11 |
| Announcement ID: |
173214 |
|
Uncertainty: ambiguity and doubt in knowledge production
Graduate student conference
April 23-25, 2010
Stanford University
What work does uncertainty do? How is it produced and how is it involved in settling questions of classification, causality, and accountability? What types of political engagements are made possible by making uncertainty and ambiguity--rather than certainty and consensus--a central analytical concern?
Recent scholarship in science studies and other fields suggests that the production and management of uncertainty is central to political, social, and ethical debates around many of today's most controversial issues. Models of risk and uncertainty have been implicated in the recent financial crisis, and the threshold of certainty required by "sound science" has been a matter of contention in debates about anthropogenic climate change and environmental toxicity. Similar issues of uncertainty have marked a number of sites of critical inquiry, from the court room to the genetics lab to the experimental field plot. While a great deal of work on this topic and related inquiries into risk and ignorance have been motivated by the post-structural critique of certainty, truth, and objectivity, older debates in anthropology and related fields--about value and fetishism, purity and the sacred, risk society, the nature/culture distinction, and the production of race, gender, and sexuality--have also been centrally concerned with ambiguity and uncertainty.
This conference aims to foster productive dialogue across diverse areas of current study and long-standing scholarly discussion around these and related themes.
We invite submissions that engage with the problem of uncertainty from across the critical social sciences and humanities: papers that investigate the production, marshaling, or technical management of uncertainty from a historical, ethnographic, or theoretical perspective. Among other topics, papers might address the role of uncertainty in environmental management, scientific and actuarial forecasting, the deployment of medical technologies and treatments, and the crafting of identity. We also welcome submissions focusing on the methods and ethics of social scientific inquiry and how we understand and communicate uncertainties in our own research.
The conference will feature Hugh Gusterson and Karen Barad as keynote speakers as well as faculty discussants from several institutions for student panels. There is no registration fee. Please send abstracts for 15 minute papers to uncertainty2010@gmail.com by February 1, 2010. Submissions should include a title, abstracts of no more than 250 words, and a short biography of no more than 100 words. Please email uncertainty2010@gmail.com with any inquiries.
|
Didn't find what you're looking for?
Try our power search! |
Return to the top of this page
Return to announcements home
|
Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff. H-Net reproduces announcements that have been submitted to us as a
free service to the academic community. If you are interested in an announcement
listed here, please contact the organizers or patrons directly. Though we strive
to provide accurate information, H-Net cannot accept responsibility for the text of
announcements appearing in this service. (Administration)
|
|
