[Air-L] SSN Interdisciplinary Seminar: 'The participant in troubled times' with Christopher M. Kelty

[Thao Phan]

*'The Participant in Troubled Times' with Christopher M. Kelty (UCLA)*
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ssn-seminar-the-participant-in-troubled-times-with-christopher-m-kelty-tickets-107777708026


Please join us for this seminar hosted by the Deakin Science and Society
Network <https://scienceandsocietynetwork.deakin.edu.au/> (SSN).

*Title:*
The Participant in Troubled Times

*Date/time: *
Tuesday 23rd June, 10am - 11:00am (Australian Eastern Standard Time, GMT+10)

*Abstract:*
Christopher Kelty's new book The Participant (University of Chicago Press,
2019) is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation. It
argues that participation is a problem for liberal representative
democracy, and provides a genealogical account of how it has become central
to our contemporary understanding of democratic institutions, social
arrangements, platforms, algorithms, and infrastructures. Participation has
been formatted, proceduralized, scaled-up, and turned into a tool-kit in
the effort to spread it everywhere, and make it more effective. But at the
same time, we forsake the core experience of participation: the feeling of
being an instance of a collective---not a part of a whole, but the very
feeling of being a collective itself.

Through cases and vignettes, the book explores the tension inherent in
treating participation as either a fundamentally individual or as a group
phenomena; the opposition of participation and expertise, and the growth of
"experts in participation"; and the desire to "scale up" participation
through the proliferation of handbooks, sourcebooks, and tool kits that are
the precursors of the platforms and algorithms that saturate our world
today. It explores the idea of "contributory autonomy" and the desire to
make individuals into collectives; and it explores how the immediate,
affective feeling of participating should be understood as more than just a
fleeting satisfaction, but as a valuable ethical experience often revealed
through perplexity.

*About the speaker:*
Christopher M. Kelty is professor at the University of California, Los
Angeles. He has appointments in the Institute for Society and Genetics, the
department of Information Studies and the Department of Anthropology.
Research interests center on social theory and technology, the cultural
significance of information technology; the relationship of participation,
technology and the public sphere. He is the author of the book Two Bits:
The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008),
as well as numerous articles on open source and free software, including
its impact on education, nanotechnology, the life sciences; participation
as a political concept, open access in the academy, piracy, the history of
software, and many other inadvisably diverse topics

*Discussants:*
Timothy Neale is DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin
Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation and Deputy Convener of the
Deakin Science and Society Network.

Radhika Gorur is Associate Professor in Education at Deakin University and
a Director of the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies.

*Watch the seminar:*
Seminar will be available to stream on YouTube live. Access using the live
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAEindMn8_A

Date/time: Tuesday 23rd June, 10am - 11:00am (Australian Eastern Standard
Time, GMT+10)

Q&A with the speaker to follow. To send questions/participate in the chat,
you'll need to sign-in using a YouTube account.
<https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-comment-on-youtube?r=AU&IR=T>

The seminar will be recorded and available to watch on the SSN YouTube
channel <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYFQV_UFX9CLreqpNzanVA> after
the Livestream.

If you have any questions, please send to ssn-info at deakin.edu.au