3+Panels,+3+Abstracts

This panel asks STS scholars, Political economists, Cultural Anthropologists and Social Theorists to consider economic trends and technological practices in a fairly broad discursive sense. How is the current state of global economic practices, structures and trends affected by and affecting local technological practices? Are local economic values having a greater outward effect on global economic scales, or are certain practices remaining at the local? Either way, what are the implications and what might this indicate? Particularly, this panel narrows in on technological practices that may have a lasting socio-economic effect with considerations in the realm of innovation & patenting, production, waste reuse and recovery, and environmental safety standards. It is also interested in scholarship that demonstrates how local socio-cultural practices might have broader effects and over-arching trends that may create shifts in practices. // My Abstract: // This paper explores the resurgence of DIY/Maker culture and the implications of this movement within current sociocultural and political climates, particularly in terms of Philip J. Frankenfeld’s concept, “technological citizenship.” It considers the proliferation of Makerspaces and the current trend from grass-roots organizations toward Public Library Makerspaces, TechShops focused on proto-typing, and the MENTOR program, which is funded by DARPA to create Makerspaces in high schools. These more recent iterations seem to focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the pipelining of students into engineering fields that promote a competitive edge for the U.S. in the global economy.
 * PANEL: Technological Practices and Implications from Local to Global Economies**
 * From Hackers to Innovators: Exploring Innovation Practices in Maker Culture**

As social scientists, how can we provide an analytic framework that will help disentangle these hegemonic forms of DIY from their oppositional forms, such as citizen science in the service of environmental justice? Would such “disentanglement” even play a positive role, or does the ambiguity actually aid the grass-roots efforts? In cases where Makerspaces do contribute to social justice efforts in the communities in which they are situated physically and socially, what technosocial innovations or institutions might nurture the collective development and distribution of participatory aspects of innovation and design? How can Maker communities conduct the social research that would enable empowering forms of problem definition, design practice, and modes of production? Drawing on discourse analysis and participant observation, this paper seeks to rework concepts of citizenship in relation to material and human agency, and develop improved frameworks for the analysis of the political economy that operates within a diverse set of maker communities.

This panel brings together scholars looking at the connection between the virtual and physical worlds, particularly by looking at communities that have both an online and offline presence. It hopes to tie together a myriad of on-line practices, that often have physical-world impacts and vice versa, particularly in regards to the systematization of data and transference of technical knowledge and practices. How do digital technological practices inform the social structures of these communities, and in turn how do social structures affect this technology? How might one or the other be better formed to help the communities in which they work? This panel is also interested in research regarding on-line embodiment and extension of self within the virtual realm, particularly in the implications of this work both socially, politically and technologically. It hopes for scholars to explore and consider whether this virtual embodiment is an extension of self, a hindrance to self or a creation of multiple selves that cannot be embodied all at once. // My Abstract: // This paper aims to explore both the physical and virtual communities of civic science and citizen science practices. While remaining critical of the intention behind the trends of many virtual citizen science sites, it narrows in on a few instances that substantiate a physical, or very salient virtual component which effects and empowers the participants directly in the capacity of social justice. Through discursive analysis and digital ethnographic methods and interviews, this work demonstrates the efficacious connection that can form between physical communities and their online presence and considers the practices of embodiment to which each realm contributes. It also questions the transference of tacit knowledge and expert practices through online civic science groups such as PLOTS 1 (Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science), and explores the importance of open source software and hardware for such groups to exist and flourish. Among other groups, it will also study the Critical-Making Lab run by Matt Ratto which has both an online community, and a physical space at the University of Toronto for fabrication. By creating an online presence and sharing information freely, these civic science groups demonstrate the efficacy of Online communities for organizing and reaching a broader audience, but how might these technologies be further or better utilized to instigate change? This work emerges out of the current need and call for a more transparent database of environmental risks and hazards for a more sustainable living and the ability of citizens to partake in the governance side of a technological citizenship.
 * PANEL: Embodiment On-Line and Off **
 * Civic Science and Making On-Line**

This panel is interested in seeking out scholars studying the making and further definition of communities, particularly with an agenda for sociotechnical or political change. Not only is it interested in incorporating work that explores communities which grow out of relationships outside of physical space, but also what the physical building and substantiation of public spaces does for "community." What is it to make a public space or create a new system of habit within (or without) existing sociopolitical strictures? What might define a public and how do different publics interact and transform the systems in which they exist? This panel is interested in exploring the many ways in which communities are formed, particularly in reaction to science policy, environmental concerns, expanding/new technologies.
 * PANEL: Making Communities in a Sociotechnical World**

My Abstract: This paper explores issues of making communities not just through space and materials, but through the building of relationships in so-called makerspaces and hackerspaces. These are collective spaces where like-minded individuals can go to partake in skill-sharing and tool-sharing practices in the mindset of working on personal or collective projects which re-use or re-interpret existing technologies--yet, this paper's main concern is not in focusing on the realms of the physical spaces or capacities of these maker and hackerspaces. Instead, it aims to explicate how a move toward entrepreneurship and innovation goals may transform initial ideas regarding community among these "like-minded" individuals and explores what a difference of intention behind the community spaces might do to relationships or the drive of making within these various and particular realms.


 * PANEL: Empowerment and Embodiment through Making**

STEM education, STEAM education, consciousness-raising, Learning through praxis, learning through doing

My Abstract: How do these maker dudes embody the tension within the maker community itself, particularly in terms of community, subversive values and entrepreneurial, individualistic innovation purposes?

1. http://publiclaboratory.org/home