| Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design Contributor(s): Leach, James (Editor), Wilson, Lee (Editor) |
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ISBN: 026202716X ISBN-13: 9780262027168 Publisher: MIT Press OUR PRICE: $57.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Science | Philosophy & Social Aspects - Computers | Information Technology - Social Science |
| Dewey: 303.483 |
| LCCN: 2013035705 |
| Series: Infrastructures |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6" W x 9" (1.01 lbs) 257 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Explorations of design, use, and reuse of information technology in diverse historical and cultural contexts. This book explores alternative cultural encounters with and around information technologies. These encounters are alternative because they counter dominant, Western-oriented notions of media consumption; they include media practices as forms of cultural resistance and subversion, "DIY cultures," and other nonmainstream models of technology production. The contributors--leading thinkers in science and technology studies, anthropology, and software design--pay special attention to the specific inflections that different cultures and communities give to the value of knowledge. The richly detailed accounts presented here challenge the dominant view of knowledge as a neutral good--information available for representation and encoding but separated from all social relations. The chapters examine specific cases in which the forms of knowledge and cross-cultural encounters are shaping technology use and development. They consider design, use, and reuse of technological tools, including databases, GPS devices, books, and computers, in locations that range from Australia and New Guinea to Germany and the United States. Contributors |
Contributor Bio(s): Nafus, Dawn: - Dawn Nafus is Senior Research Scientist at Intel Labs and the editor of Quantified: Biosensing Technologies in Everyday Life (MIT Press).Watts, Laura: - Laura Watts is a poet, writer, ethnographer of futures, and Interdisciplinary Senior Lecturer in Energy and Society in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. As a science and technology studies scholar she has explored the effect of "edge" landscapes on how the future is imagined and made. She is coauthor of Ebban an' Flowan, the world's first poetic primer for marine renewable energy, and in 2017 she won the International Cultural Innovation Prize with the Reconstrained Design Group for a community-built energy storage device designed from scrap.Wilson, Lee: - Lee Wilson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.Leach, James: - James Leach is Professor of Anthropology and ARC Future Fellow at the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia and Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CREDO, France.Leach, James: - James Leach is Professor of Anthropology and ARC Future Fellow at the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia and Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CREDO, France.Wilson, Lee: - Lee Wilson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.Blackwell, Alan F.: - Alan Blackwell is Reader in Interdisciplinary Design in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.Bowker, Geoffrey C.: - Geoffrey C. Bowker is Professor and Director of the Evoke Lab at the University of California, Irvine. He is the coauthor (with Susan Leigh Star) of Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences and the author of Memory Practices in the Sciences, both published by the MIT Press.Edwards, Paul N.: - Paul N. Edwards is Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1996) and a coeditor (with Clark Miller) of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (2001), both published by the MIT Press. |