Memo+1+–+Project+Hopping+–+LM+Bachinger


 * Project Hopping – Project 1 **


 * Topical Area **


 * How to care for the environment |**

Although we often claim for the environment, we rarely pay attention to what we mean with //care// (and rather focus on controversies over what to care //for// and //who// is ought to care). The term itself is ambiguous and imprecise in its use. What do environmentalists claim, when they say they care?

Aims of the study: - Shed light on the multiple meanings of contemporary environmental “care”, and its epistemological and ontological politics. - Suggest and experiment with a new conceptualizations of environmental care that gets articulated based on empirical work just as much as from conceptual-theoretical work cross-disciplines (health & medicine, in particular)


 * Data Sets **

__Multi-Case Study Design (Yin, 2013)__

1) Conceptual work on care in environmentalism (kinds, politics) 2) Identify appropriate cases based on conceptual work Comparative approach between two kinds of environmental organizations (grass root vs. bureaucratic) / cross-national comparison (US/Austria)? 3) Ethnographic Case Study approach: 4) Conference: Organization of a conference on the topic of environmental care, organized with the different organizations as co-hosts (bringing them together) and academic as well as activist participants; Topic of the conference is “what is //care// in environmentalism?”; Conference proceedings as well as observations during the conference are empirical material 5) Concpetual-theoretical work (re-appropriating care) based on all of the above 6) “Dissamination-Experiments”: Potentially rather //after// the project (follow-up project): “Experimenting care” – experimental set-up of an bottom-up organized environmentalist group incorporating the new conception of //environmental care// as guiding principle (Formulation, incorporation, and experimentation with care //in practice);// This needs further thinking
 * 1) a. Participatory Ethnography “on site” (where and how do the organizations practice their “care”? How and where do they articulate that they care, to whome?)
 * 2) b. Interviews (with further relevant actors and “on site”)
 * 3) c. Document Analysis (Mission Statements of organizations, Position papers, policy documents published by studied organizations, organization websites, information brochures and other policy and activism materials)


 * Social Theoretical Questions **

__Overarching questions:__

how can //care// be conceptualized appropriately beyond the context of health and medicine?

How can this re-appropriated concept then be applied to an analysis of, and an ethical principle for environmentalism?

How is care practices //currently// in environmentalism, and how can it be re-specified?

*****


 * __Theoretical concepts:__**
 * - Bellacasa “Matters of care” | Situationg of key question; Concept to be countered/specified**
 * - Kim Advocacy after Bhopal, Re-Figuring Liablity, Vulnerabilities, … | A lot of material, conceptual tools and particularly methodological grounding that can facilitate a further specification of the interconnection between empirical and theoretical work; Advocacy, …**
 * - Generative Justice | Helps to situate/facilitate bottom-up organization in later stages; needs expansion and re-appropriation**
 * - Marion Young (Deliberate Democrats vs Activists) | Grounding argumentation along questions of policy advocacy, transformative capacities of political systems, and limitations of bottom-up exercises**
 * - Care in health and medicine (Mol, Winance, Pols, Moser) | Starting point for theoretical/conceptual work; Needs to be carefully reflected in its over-romantization of care**
 * - Environmental Ethics (Nash, Kline, Leopold, Milton) | Theoretical/conceptual basis for understanding the organization and ethics of environmental advocacy and action; helps in particular with situating and identifying potential cases**

Why now?


 * __Politically__**
 * - Relevance of environmental action in context of “climate crash” (John Cox)**
 * - Inefficiency of said action**


 * __Conceptually__**
 * - Neglect of the term “care” in environmental theory (see term paper for Steve)**
 * - “Feed-back” for theories of care in health & medicine and specifically Mol’s (et al) (overly romanticized) logic of care**

How Prepared?


 * - Perspective from the “outside” as alien in US**
 * - “Expert” in care research / Familiar with the perspective on care from health and medicine**
 * - “At home” in both, Austria & US**
 * - Good network of expertise in health and medicine, public engagement and activism, environmental advocacy, environmental ethics**
 * - Strong methodological foundation in case study research and ethnography**
 * - Access to funding both in EU and US**
 * - Connections to environmental activists in both US (Troy & NYC) and EU (Vienna)**
 * - Increasing familiarity with environmental theories and simultaneously “fresh” perspective due to only recent encounter with the topic**

Bias


 * - Culturally biased (I am European, I am particularly Austrian – specific relationship to environmentalism, I am closely associated to the green party in Austria, and other advocacy groups from the “left”)**
 * - I can be associated with the “academic bubble” which could be a problem //on site//**
 * - I am no expert in environmentalist theory nor in activism**
 * - Strongly limited funds**
 * - Male perspective can be a problem here (I think there is a male dominance in the conceptualization of environmental ethics)**
 * - I am academic: top down still persists… How to organize bottom up while at the same time suggesting the “correct” conception of care as a guiding ethical principle just as much as theoretical framework for social theory?**
 * - The hybridity of care as concept and ethical principle can just as much be a strength as it can be a problem**
 * - How to get access?**
 * - Ethical concerns (making environmentalist groups my experimental playground)**

Fields of work? **

- Advocacy for environmental groups and their set-up - Environmental activism (start my own group) - Academia: - Policy Advocacy (EU, UN, …)
 * o STS & Enviornmentalism
 * o STS & Care/Health and Medicine
 * o STS & Public engagement
 * o Organizational Sociology


 * Funding **

For funding can be applied in person (PhD student grants) or through institutions I have afiliations with or can establish co-operation (RPI, University of Vienna, Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology, IHS Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
 * HASS
 * NSF
 * o DRMS ([])
 * o GRFP ([])
 * o PS DDRiG ([])
 * o SciSIP DDRIG ([])
 * o STS ([])
 * o Soc DDRIG ([])
 * EU
 * o Marie Curie ([])
 * o Open Funding Schemes ([])
 * o Consumers, Health, Argriculture and Food Executive Agency ([])
 * o Multiple calls ([|http://www.welcomeurope.com/europe-funding-opportunities.html#!key=%7B%22keywords%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pgm%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22opening%22%3A%5B1%5D%2C%22date%22%3A%5Bnull%5D%2C%22deadline%22%3A%5Bnull%5D%2C%22region%22%3A%5B1%2C14%2C9%5D%2C%22sector%22%3A%5B25%2C16%2C14%2C10%2C3%5D%2C%22benef%22%3A%5B9%2C12%2C1%2C3%2C11%5D%2C%22p%22%3A0%2C%22sort%22%3A6%7D])
 * Austria
 * o FWF
 * o Austrian Academy of Science
 * o Ministries:
 * § Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
 * § Ministry of Health
 * § Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection
 * § Ministry of Science, Research and Economy
 * o City of Vienna


 * Project Hopping – Project 2 **


 * Topical Area **


 * Old Age in Crisis: Care practices for and through Technology |**

Care is in crisis, we hear. And new ICT for eldercare is ready to step in and take on the challenge. But how does care play in these new, transformative situation of technological implementation. This study seeks to shed light on how care is re-invented in and through technology, and how we can utilize the transformative power the new technologies implemented in and for different kinds and formats of eldercare? The co-constitutive capacities of technologies (Winner) can be utilized to re-invent care, but also bear the danger of locking-in the marginalizing moral and value-judgments that are embodied by the notion of the care-crisis (Bachinger).

Aims & Scope: - How is care practiced in new, “technologically enhanced” settings of eldercare? - How do different actors conceptualize and practice care in such settings? - How does the new social organization of care play out in such settings? - How, on the other hand, can these technologies be designed to uphold a deliberative promise that counteracts the marginalizing eldercare politics they potentially imply in their current conceptions?

A comparative approach is chosen, tracing the varying conceptions and practices of care in two institutions of eldercare, utilizing new ICT for eldercare – one in the US and one in Europe. In a first part of the study, I follow the various actors (doctors, engineers, service personal, nurses, clients, family members, legislators) in their daily work to carve out their practices of care and its material constitution. The focus rests on ontological politics and how they play out //in situ// through technology and beyond. Secondly, inferences are made on the logic of care (Mol) to draw conclusions on the politics of caring with, through and in the social context of these new technologies. Thirdly, I will re-apply this conceptual work to re-evaluate the modes of technology design, their implementation, and the way they co-constitute new socio-cultural systems of care. The immediate hope is to find alternative models and practices for the co-production of technology and socio-cultural systems. This is a deliberative democratic promise.


 * Data Sets **

__Ethnographically guided Case Study (Yin, 2013)__


 * Case Description
 * o Docoment Analysis, Mission Statements, Standard Procedure Regulations, etc.,
 * o Descirption of Care and Welfare Systems in US and Austria (legal texts, academic analyses, interviews)
 * o participant descriptions (interviews), Participant Observations, Organizational Studies
 * Ethnography
 * o Field Observations (Participant Observation), Work Life Interviews, Stakeholder analysis, Device-Centered and Actor Centered (Follow Devices, Follow Clients)
 * Actors/Stakeholders: Doctors, Nurses, Technology, Technology Developers, Test Trial Participants, Clients, Family Members, Administrators, Welfare Organizations (Social Security Insurance, etc.) – Administrators, Expert Interviews (Technology Assessment, Social Work, Sociology of health and medicine, political science)
 * Statistical Analysis (Social Welfare, financing care, demographics, including policy regulations, urban-rural, US – Austria, …)


 * Social Theoretical Questions **

Potentially: - Politics of Artifacts - Co-Production of socio-cultural systems of care and technological systems (knowledge and social orders) - Actor-Networks of Care - Marginalization (Second Childhood, Mask of Aging, …) - Care Theories in context of new technology - politics of crisis framings/ science dynamics (the mutual shaping of emergent technological research, politics (care and welfare politics in context of care in crisis), and the shaping of social realities (care practices)) - the conceptualization of care, late life, health and medicine - normalcy, a-normalcy and its (embodied) politics


 * Why now? **

Key moment in the implementation and advancement of new technologies of eldercare that provides the necessary degree of “market implementation” (already existing sites of eldercare through and with technology) and remaining openness of the “black box” (containing the moral, value and normative judgments about “good care”, “successful aging”, etc.) for reflection on “what kind of care” we want to “build” with/into these technologies.

A prolific research and development landscape of/on/about these devices that a) provides funding b) shows an already established need for a more reflexive and engaged social science research c) provides a strong openness for interdisciplinary research and collaboration between engineers and designers, care professionals, social science researchers, publics, etc., due to the strongly felt uncertainties by all the aforementioned actors (due to lack of legal regulation, standardization, distrust/suspicion towards the devices, experimental attitudes towards the conception of age, health with the developers and engineers, and still on-going controversies over the purpose of the devices) etc. d) d) still by an large lack of actual critically engaged and supportive social science research, such as STS e) potential and openness to the shaping of the technologies in their hybrid status of marketization and in-development/in-experimentation


 * How Prepared? **

- already done some work in the field - Support from and potential access to institutions/actors in Austria and Europe - General interest in the topic by a number of key actors, from policy makers, funders, developers, care service providers, and their clients
 * o familiarity with key concepts, concerns and problematizations, but also hopes and promises different actors articulate
 * o particularly in Europe: strong network with different actors engaged in the field
 * o articulated already key conceptual interests and primary analyzes I can build on
 * o articulated a language that the actors (at least those I engaged with so far) can relate to and collaborate on
 * o familiarity with legal issues, political issues, funding issues, ethical concerns, practical necessities within the European context
 * o I am in a place that works on such devices (RPI)

- Unfamiliarty with the US context that implies issues in my value system (e.g. I take for granted that health care is an universal right for everybody) - This also can provide difficulties in access, exchange and collaboration - Normative assumptions about what good care and successful aging could mean that do not derive from engagement and interaction with elderlies - Left politics are at home in my brain - Potential problems for access to different sites to do my visa status? - Same for funding - I am male, I have no medical background, I am a foreigner – and thus in a problematic position in regards to different actors in the field, especially when it comes to building a bridge between technology, developers, care providers, families
 * Bias **


 * Fields of work? **

- Advocacy on different institutional and… - …and thematic levels
 * o State, Governmental, European bodies
 * o Regulators and policy makers
 * o Developers and Tech companies
 * o Care service providers
 * o Costumers/Clients/Patients…
 * o new modes of tech development
 * o implementation
 * o diffusion and facilitation
 * o institutional support in introduction and implementation of devices
 * o organizational sociological roles
 * o ..

- Academic work
 * o Sociology of age (and related fields)
 * o Sociology of health and medicine (and related fields)
 * o Health care policy
 * o Organizational sociology
 * o Bottom-up technology development
 * o Public engagement
 * o “innovation studies” and technology assessment
 * o Reseach policy and responsible innovation

For funding can be applied in person (PhD student grants) or through institutions I have afiliations with or can establish co-operation (RPI, University of Vienna, Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology, IHS Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
 * Funding **
 * HASS
 * NSF
 * o Obama declared socio-demographic change a key challenge for contemporary society and re-allocated substantial funding for research programs
 * o DRMS ([])
 * o GRFP ([])
 * o PS DDRiG ([])
 * o SciSIP DDRIG ([])
 * o STS ([])
 * o Soc DDRIG ([])
 * o LeadingAge and its sub-institutions have regular call for proposals
 * o AAHASA and other agency and advocacy groups to so also
 * EU
 * o Care crisis and aging is one of the “societal challenges”, a key-pillar in the EU funding scheme
 * o AAL Joint Program
 * o Marie Curie ([])
 * o Open Funding Schemes ([])
 * o Consumers, Health, Argriculture and Food Executive Agency ([])
 * o Multiple calls ([|http://www.welcomeurope.com/europe-funding-opportunities.html#!key=%7B%22keywords%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pgm%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22opening%22%3A%5B1%5D%2C%22date%22%3A%5Bnull%5D%2C%22deadline%22%3A%5Bnull%5D%2C%22region%22%3A%5B1%2C14%2C9%5D%2C%22sector%22%3A%5B25%2C16%2C14%2C10%2C3%5D%2C%22benef%22%3A%5B9%2C12%2C1%2C3%2C11%5D%2C%22p%22%3A0%2C%22sort%22%3A6%7D])
 * Austria
 * o FWF
 * o Austrian Academy of Science
 * o Ministries:
 * § Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
 * § Ministry of Health
 * § Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection
 * § Ministry of Science, Research and Economy
 * o City of Vienna
 * o AIT Austrian Institute for Technology
 * o Ministry for Health and Medicine
 * o Public Insurance for Health and Eldercare (issues research proposal calls)
 * o Large tech companies in the field fund and support research of this sorts
 * o Austrian National Bank supports research on this
 * o National and International Associations on Ambient Assisted Living (AAL Austria)


 * Project Hopping – Project 3 **


 * Topical Area **


 * Caring Infrastructures, Infrastructures of Care |**

THIS IS HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL – I JUST CAME UP WITH THIS IDEA WED 10PM AND REPLACED AN OLD ONE WITH THIS. AND STILL NEED TO THINK THIS THROUGH MUCH MORE THOROUGHLY.

This project follows an experimental approach for relating with and re-appropriating of infrastructures. The key question is how care can be re-conceptualized as a means for developing bottom-up modes of maintenance and re-appropriation of infrastructure as to facilitate a deliberation of communities through their interaction with said infrastructures.

The approach is collaboration with a small community, as they engage materially, epistemologically and ontologically with the infrastructures that partake in making up said community and connects it to its environment.

A neighborhood improvement group will be followed in its constitution, as it starts re-modificating its own community along its infrastructures (in a broad, yet to be specified definition). As such it invents also itself, its memberships, as well as its relations to its environment. The question is how "care" can be utilized to support a deliberative, inclusive character in this endeavor that is fine-tuned to the marginalizing potentials of such endeavor, as well as support an emergent, continuous relationship of "care" with the infrastructures themselves, as they get internalized in the communities conceptions of itself. Caring for the infrastructure becomes through that communital-self-care – and thus potentially supportive of a deliberative organization, maintenance and re-development of infrastructures (and the communities). The dangers are obviously an over-romanization of care, but also the potentially harsh reaction to those who do "harm" to said infrastructures. These questions must be explicitly addressed in this study.


 * Data Sets **

__Ethnographic Particpation__ A lot of this is, for me, still out in the open and unclear besides the obvious candidates
 * Interviews
 * Workshops and "engagement events"
 * Outreach activities for mobilization
 * A method (adapted) similar to what DiSalvo and LeDantec describe in "infrastructuring"

There would be the necessity for a means to be critically reflexive of potentially exclusive effects I will definitely need to research further already tested means of engagement Means for documentation could include (besides research diaries): website, social media, conferences, news and media outreach, etc.


 * Social Theoretical Questions **

A broad array, from public engagement, to care theories, beyond that also, and particularly: - how robust are infrastructures, what changes when this mode is introduced? (also re disaster, stress events, etc.) - how is this transformative for the built fabric of the community (be it the urban fabric or a small rural town) - the role of infrastructures in connecting multiple communities with each other, and how this is interconnected with communal identity and membership? - Questions around membership formation, exclusion and inclusion - how could this be transformative also in environmental regards (relationship between nature and community and its members)? The same for sustainability in this context - Economic re-organization in backdrop of this re-modeling of infrastructures bottom-up? - What kinds of knowledge are mobilized in order to realize the remodeling? Are there other forms and formats of knowledge production in such settings? How is knowledge traditionalized here? What kinds of expertise (beyond traditional forms) emerge? How is knowledge exchange and traded within the community and with neighboring/interconnected communities? - What are political consequences, hurdles, etc. of such a model? (plus many more – I think a lot depends on how this would play out)


 * Why now? **

PE is an old-time favorite and there is a substantial interest in the topic. Also, infrastructures and their maintenance are a constantly recurrent issue for communities and states There is an emergent hot fuzz created around infrastructures (its a topic everyone loves and wants to fund) It holds the potential to incorporate new modes of dealing with environmental and sustainability questions In respect to the newly emerging projects around "smart cities", this would be an opportunity to implement such a project


 * How Prepared? **

- As this is a fresh idea, i am not quite sure... But: - I had already some encounters with literature on STS and the CIty - I am quite familiar on literature dealing with PE and beyond, and have a critical perspective on it, so I am very aware of the critical limits of such an endeavor (which I can not address in this initial sketch) - I love to work in an more engaged way and //in situ//

- How to actually pull this off? - Clear limitations of the concept as it is right now - Unfamiliarity with potential technical aspects - the need for setting up completely new alliances I have no access to - ethical constraints that can be highly problematic - resource intensive, requires extreme political support that can strongly impact my research - a lot of hard to control forces - my own interests could collide with community interests - geographic and time constraints - ideological constraints - I am an academic from an working class family and thus have strong blind spots that will limit the scope of the effort in substantial ways - I am another male who comes into a community and promises that I am going to make everything better - The power of expertise, here is it again!
 * Bias **


 * Fields of work? **

- Advocacy for communities - state work (communal development) - EU, UN, etc. - academia - Disaster management, if the project is iterated towards "infrastructures in stress" - "Engagement Expert" (what I don't want to be)


 * Funding **

If I want to do this, funding would be only one problem, political support would be another, either from polity or communities or activist groups. I am not quite sure if traditional funding schemes would apply here and I honestly would need someone to help me here. I know that the EU has some calls for PE exercises, as municipals and ministries have (I pointed to the major ones above). Another strategy is to get on board with existing neighborhood development initiatives and utilize their funding (be it state organized or bottom up) I looked at NSF and EC funds but could not find any that would be supportive of such an initiative from an researcher perspective (left alone the IRB issues!). Another strategy here is to apply for fundings for said neighborhood improvement funds, where there are several on state, national and municipal levels, as well as from the EU, but require different conditions to be met, that I am not sure I could meet.