[Air-L] Video & STS: Methodologies and Methods (CALL FOR ABSTRACTS for a track at EASST 2010, Trento, Italy)

[Yuwei Lin]

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit an abstract to the track on "Video &
STS: Methodologies and Methods" to be held at the EASST 2010 conference.

Please find a call for abstracts below.

The deadline for abstract submissions is March 15, 2010, 23:59:59 CET

Abstract should be submitted through the system:
http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010/abstract-submission

Look forward to meeting you in Italy in September!

Best wishes,
Yuwei Lin and Christian Greiffenhagen

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CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
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TRACK 10. VIDEO & STS: METHODOLOGIES AND METHODS

http://events.unitn.it/sites/events.unitn.it/files/EASST_010_Track_10.pdf


Despite the rapid technical developments and a general turn to the visual
in the social sciences, video methodologies and methods are still not
widely adopted for science and technologies studies (STS). Most researchers
continue to rely on ‘traditional’ ethnographic or other qualitative
research methods using other means, such as talk or writing.


However, as the recent variety of video-based studies have shown, video
technologies clearly offer exciting possibilities of capturing the dynamics
and complexities in the field. As Macbeth (1990, p. 191) put it: “As a
matter of faithfulness to the texture, temporal shape and material detail
of the scenes they record, the video of filmic record provides remarkably
uninterpreted renderings of the field.”1 But the reality of current STS
seems to suggest otherwise. Why are video methodologies and methods not
[yet] widely adopted in STS?


This panel will contribute to the conference theme of “methodological
approaches for investigating scientific and technological practices”. It is
devised to explore to what extent video methodologies and methods can help
capture and examine the socio-material practice and performance which are
so central to the recent pragmatic and practice-based turn in STS since
late 70s. We are especially interested in answering the following questions:

    * How are video methodologies and methods applied in different types of
STS research?

    * What are the challenges of applying video-based methods in STS-like
research (e.g., nuisances of using video technologies, field workers’
informed consent, interaction with the field workers, ethics of publishing
video data)?

    * What are the solutions to socio-ethical issues in the employment of
video methods?

    * What are the implications of video-based methods to STS research?

    *  Is it possible to capture ‘where the action is’ on video, or is
scientific and technological work too distributed, both spatially and
temporally, to allow such capture?


Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted by March 15 at:

http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010/abstract-submission



-- 
Yuwei Lin | yuwei at ylin dot org
http://www.ylin.org