The presentation schedule is now available for the InSIS Seminar Series: Anthropological Approaches to Technics.
Seminars will be held weekly in May on Tuesdays from week 2 of the Oxford University Trinity Term (3 May) 3pm-5pm in the Seminar Room, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN.
Speakers: Sam Kinsley (Exeter), Ludovic Coupaye (UCL), Lambros Malafouris (Oxford), Antonia Walford (UCL).
Series abstract: Anthropological Approaches to Technics
Anthropology has shown a productive if uneasy interest in the study of technics and techniques stretching back to the earliest pioneers of the field. Both material and social, magical and mundane, technology reaches through all spheres of any given society; this composite nature of technology has fascinated and puzzled researchers, and continues to do so.
A great variety of frameworks are available to understand how technics intersect with society at different scales, recruiting knowledge, bodies and materials in the process. In May we take stock by inviting scholars who, in one way or another, have developed inventive approaches to the study of technics. They present work that turns observations from the field into engaging and original accounts of people and the worlds they inhabit.
Series Schedule
3 May Sam Kinsley (Exeter), An Algorithmic Imaginary: Anticipation and Stupidity
10 May Ludovic Coupaye (UCL), From the Anthropology of Technics to the Anthropology of Technology: Theories, Methods and Questions
17 May Lambros Malafouris (Oxford), A Material Engagement Approach to the Study of Technological Change
24 May Antonia Walford (UCL), The Nature of Data: Getting Real About Digital Abstraction, Scientific Compaction, and Anthropological Comparison
