<div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Colleagues:</div><div><br></div><div>We invite you to submit an abstract to our <a href="https://www.xcdsystem.com/4sonline/abstract/abstract.cfm">Open Panel</a> at the next 4S Annual Meeting in Toronto. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Title: </b>TECHNOLOGICAL FRONTIERS OF BODY AND LAND</div><div><div style="clear:left;padding-top:15px;overflow:overlay"><b>ID</b> # 38</div><div style="clear:left;padding-top:15px;overflow:overlay"><div><b>Deadline: </b>April 30, 2026</div><div><b>Organizers: </b>J. Lee Crandall, UC Berkeley (Geography); Ajung Ryoo, UC Berkeley (Anthropology)</div></div>
<div style="clear:left;padding-top:15px;overflow:overlay"><b>Session Description</b><br>
<span class="gmail-user-input"><p><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-a66509a2-7fff-2733-7f16-93e9dfeb4fe8">In
this open panel, we seek to critically explore the concurrent forms and
formations of technological “frontierism” on land and body. We will
analyze the evolving role of technopower and technological
experimentation on the long duree of frontierism as connected with
settler colonialism. The technological frontier has long had
implications on land and lives, including ontological questions
concerning nature and the human. Re-mobilizing Frederick Jackson
Turner’s “frontier thesis” (1920), we posit that the frontier has always
been technologically mediated in various forms of conquest and
dispossession, enacting a strategic emptying-out of land through the
“elimination of the native” (Wolfe, 2006). This process opens up a
so-called blank slate on which a privileged group of “technologically
advanced” settlers can remake the land and, in so doing, remake and
cultivate themselves and future populations. Turner’s thesis remains
highly relevant considering the confluence of Silicon Valley and the US
federal government’s recent call to “reopen the frontier” to build new
high-tech “freedom cities,” claiming to revitalize the American dream.
Technological frontier imaginaries extend beyond Westward expansionism
and Manifest Destiny, and bring curious political convergences of
reactionary conservative and technologically progressive Silicon Valley
mindsets toward jurisdiction-shopping and the acquisition of new
territories (e.g. charter cities, network states) on which to experiment
with new AI/drone/military/bio technologies. These efforts aim to
contest and supersede not only the limits of economic and urban growth,
but also limits of the body and life, by developing new eugenic and
life-extending technologies. This interdisciplinary panel traces the
“nexus[es] of power” (Ginsburg & Rapp 1995), “global assemblages”
(Ong & Collier 2005) and mediating “surrounds” (Landecker 2016) that
configure the concurrent technological frontiers, and questions the new
ontological conditions and implications created by them (Haraway 1991).</span></p>
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<div style="clear:left;padding-top:15px;overflow:overlay"><b>Extra Details:</b><br>
<span class="gmail-user-input"><p><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-3c4ab022-7fff-1585-ab0a-f0c237602406">While
Silicon Valley frontier logics are often centered on the United States,
we are interested in submissions that consider technological frontiers
of the body and land transnationally, taking into account the geographic
specificities of legal, regulatory, political, and spatial constraints
and affordances. Relevant paper topics might include, but are not
limited to, research on: case studies of new-tech cities and
technological frontiers; transhumanism, gene-editing, and technological
experimentation on/for longevity; projects on space flight and space
infrastructure.</span></p>
<p><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-9be59aa5-7fff-7747-c41d-67ea0ab027c2">We
are particularly interested in cultivating an inter/multidisciplinary
panel. While much work has been done independently in the fields of
geography, urban studies, anthropology, and feminist STS on geographic
and bodily frontiers, fewer research has brought these trajectories
together with multi/interdisciplinary perspectives. We see this
cross-disciplinary conversation through an STS lens as the panel’s
primary affordance, which will offer a unique contribution to our
respective disciplinary fields.</span></p><p>Please reach out to me with any questions, and we look forward to your submission. </p></span></div></div><div>All Best,</div><div>Lee</div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div style="margin-left:0pt"><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);margin-left:0pt"><font color="#000000" face="arial, sans-serif">Jillian (Lee) Crandall (they/them)</font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);margin-left:0pt"><font color="#000000" face="arial, sans-serif"><a href="https://geography.berkeley.edu/jillian-crandall" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">PhD Student</a>, Department of Geography</font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);margin-left:0pt"><div><font color="#000000" face="arial, sans-serif">University of California, Berkeley</font></div><div><i>Recent Publication</i>: Crandall, J. (2025). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peg.2024.100028" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Plotting cryptoeconomic imaginaries and counterplotting the network state</a>. Progress in Economic Geography, 3(1).</div></div></div></div></div></div>