CfP: "Understanding Techno-security" der EASST in Torun (Polen)

CFP: Understanding Techno-security: on pre-emption, situational awareness and technological superiority (Torun, 17.-19.09.2014)

 Track: EASST Conference (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology),
Convenor: Jutta Weber (University Paderborn), Katrin M. Kämpf (University Paderborn)

Security has been described as today’s ontotheology: We are afraid of orphaned suitcases, ‘suspicious’ people on our airplane, or being robbed on the way home. In the course of broad political, socioeconomic, and technological changes, security has gained a central place in Western societies which are preoccupied with their future(s). Risk discourses are increasingly enlarged adding more awareness to probable resources of risk. They do not only address health, natural, and technological disasters, but terrorism, organized crime and illegalized immigration. While security was traditionally achieved primarily via the empirical identification and assessment of threats framed by a causal logic, it is now reconfigured in the logic of predictive maximum techno-security. The shift of security from a proactive to a preventive mode in which every thinkable event is imagined in order to preempt or pre-mediate it, coincides with a desire for technological superiority and situational awareness, bearing affinities with the contemporary military logic of security. Mapping our world as completely as possible seems to be characteristic of a new culture of techno-security, as all kinds of information are crowd sourced and proliferated. The track aims at discussing the security-technology nexus, the role of precautionary risk management, the desire for a near monopoly of space and information, and the relation of civil and military security. http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easst/easst2014/panels.php5?PanelID=3181

The call for papers is open and closes Friday 9 May 2014. All proposals must be made to specific tracks (including the Open track) via the ‘Propose a paper’ link found beneath the track abstract on that track’s webpage. Proposals should consist of:

• a paper title

• authors/co-authors

• a long abstract of fewer than 250 words.

Your abstract should make clear how the paper addresses STS concerns and approaches (either generally and / or specifically in relation to a particular track). It should also make clear the type of empirical data (if any) that it will draw on. You do NOT need to be a current member of EASST to propose a paper (but you will need to provide us with contact details as part of the process). General Information: The next EASST conference will be held from 17th to 19th September 2014 in Torun in Poland. The theme for the conference is ‘Situating Solidarities: social challenges for science and technology studies’. More details are available: http://easst.net/?page_id=295