CfP: IJANTTI special issue on 3D Printing, Space Entrepreneurship and Advanced Battery Technology as Challenges to ANT

Calls for Papers (special): International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (IJANTTI)

Special Issue On: The Breakthroughs in Additive manufacturing (3D Printing), Space Entrepreneurship and Advanced Battery Technology as Challenges to Actor-Network Theory

Submission Due Date
9/15/2014

Guest Editors
Ivan Tchalakov, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Recommended Topics
Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• ANT (and related approaches) based case studies of additive (3D) manufacturing: key innovations and their actor-networks – the complex web between 3D computer aided design (3D scanning), 3D printing equipment and production of appropriate material to be used by the equipment; of emerging consumer oriented business models; 3D printing and biotechnologies – new perspectives in implant and replacement organs manufacturing and related legal, ethical, psychological and other issues.
• ANT (and related approaches) based case studies of space entrepreneurs, their companies and technologies they developed, and the emerging new ‘actor-world’ (space tourism, asteroid mining, colonization of Mars, Moon, and asteroids);
• ANT (and related approaches) based case studies on electric vehicles, advanced battery technology, smart energy storage and related issues;
• ANT-based methodology for responsible innovation: emerging technologies, divergent developmental paths, and possible socio-technical scenarios
• Elaboration and refinement of ANT key notions (heterogeneous community, sociotechnical network, script, flux, translation, intermediary and mediator, etc.) To better understand:

• Transition from large scale corporate-based innovation to smaller scale entrepreneurial-based innovation and related technological change (as exemplified by the case with space industry
• Transition from subtractive (cutting and drilling) to additive (3D) manufacturing and reconfiguration of related techno-economic networks, including the changes in underlying notions of ‘design’, of ‘materiality’ and ‘object’, etc.
• The possible disruptive changes in century old patterns of automotive industry and electric power
• Philosophical and methodological critique of ANT inspired by or relevant to the new developments in additive manufacturing, space industry, green energy production and use, etc. Essays examining the potential of some resent trends in philosophy are highly appreciated (such as Speculative Realism movement and especially G. Harman object-oriented ontology, Karen Barad’s agential realism, Isabelle Stengers’ Cosmopolitics, non-orthodox reading of Aristotelian Metaphysics of Bradshaw, Beere and some others, philosophy of Alain Badiou, etc).

CfP: Phenomenological Approaches to Media, Technology and Communication

Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Approaches to Media, Technology and Communication

2013 International Communication Association (ICA) Preconference

ICA Theory, Philosophy and Critique Division

17 June 2013, Birkbeck, University of London

Paper proposals are invited from a very wide range of perspectives, including but not limited to media history, media archaeology, audience studies, political theory, metaphysics, software studies, science and technology studies, digital aesthetics, cultural geography and urban studies. Though all proposals should relate in some way to phenomenological thinking, this should be interpreted broadly, ranging from core thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre to those with looser affiliations to phenomenology per se, for example Arendt, Bergson, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Garfinkel, Ingold, Latour, Whitehead and Harman.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Dr David Berry, Swansea University
• Professor Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London
• Professor Graham Harman, American University of Cairo
• Professor Lisa Parks, UC Santa Barbara
• Professor Paddy Scannell, University of Michigan

Please send an abstract (max 200 words) of your paper to both Scott Rodgers (s.rodgers@bbk.ac.uk) and Tim Markham (t.markham@bbk.ac.uk) by 20 November 2012. Authors will be informed regarding acceptance / rejection for the preconference no later than 20 December 2012.

CfP: Valuation Studies

See the call for papers here [PDF]. Here is the journal website: Valuation Studies. H/t CHARISMA.

Valuation  Studies  is  a  new  open  access  journal  connecting  several  vibrant research fields working  on the study  of valuation as a  social practice.  To engage scholars  with  various  backgrounds  and  orientations  in  discussions  about valuation, the journal  welcomes  papers  in different  forms,  including papers that use or  combine a variety of methods, from ethnographic accounts to quantitative appraisal to conceptual interpretation.

The  overall aim of the new open access journal Valuation Studies is to foster valuable conversations in a new transdisciplinary and emerging field relating to the  study of  valuation as a  social practice. The journal’s first issue  will be available in the first half of 2013.

The  journal will provide a space for the assessment and diffusion of research that  is  produced  at  the  interface  of  a  variety  of  approaches  from  several disciplines:  sociology,  economic  sociology,  science  and  technology  studies, organisation  and  management  studies,  social  and  cultural  anthropology, market  studies,  institutional  perspectives  in  economics,  accounting  studies, cultural geography, philosophy, and literary studies. The project  emerges out of  the  increasing  synergies between these  approaches  around one  particular ambit: valuation.

Editors:

Professor C-F Helgesson, Linköping University
Senior researcher Fabian Muniesa, Mines ParisTech

CfP on strategy and materiality

Call for Papers: BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT Special Issue on Strategizing Material & Materializing Strategy. The deadline for submission of papers is 30 January 2013. See the full call here [PDF].

The British Journal of Management is pleased to announce a special issue focused on strategizing material and materializing  strategy. Grounded in practice-based views of strategy,  this special issue will explore material practices associated with  strategizing: How are objects, artifacts, tools and other material resources used by practitioners to shape and enact organizational strategy?

Through research on the practice of strategy, scholars have already begun to explore material objects and strategy tools. One emerging stream of research explores how material objects, including the participants’ physical bodies, are used in strategizing. (…) A  second stream of research has investigated the role of strategy tools in materializing  strategy. (…) However, much more work  is  needed to advance this agenda, which is the purpose of this special issue.

Example topics

We  welcome  empirical  papers that provide new insight on strategizing material and materializing strategy. While organization scholars have traditionally privileged discourse (talk and text) as the empirical basis for their research findings, a growing number are turning their attention toward socio-materiality, which refers to the “inherent inseparability” of social and material aspects of organizational work (Orlikowski, 2008, p. 434). Sometimes material objects are treated as actors (e.g. Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987) or material objects and actors as entangled bundles (e.g. Leonardi,  2011). We invite diverse research methods, both qualitative and quantitative. We are open to innovative approaches, including action research, cognitive mapping, conversation analysis, video ethnography, simulation, and mixed-methods.

Relevant questions include:
•    How do managers use materials and tools to shape strategic processes and decisions?
•    What roles do different types of strategists play in creating, diffusing and/or using strategic materials and tools?
•    How does materiality constrain and/or enhance strategy practice?
•    How are participants’ physical bodies a resource and constraint for strategizing?
•    How do materials and tools gain legitimacy? How are they diffused within and  beyond organizations?
•    What types of materials and tools are used to shape the strategy process? How do they shape the strategy process?
•    What are the dynamics between strategy materials and strategy tools?
•    What are the dynamics between strategizing materials or tools and other elements of strategy practice (e.g. affect and emotion)?

Guest Editors: 

Stéphanie Dameron, Université Paris-Dauphine, France
Jane Lê, University of Sydney, Australia
Curtis LeBaron, Brigham Young University, USA

CfP: Empirical Philosophy of Science

Call for Papers: Empirical Philosophy of Science – Qualitative Methods, Sandbjerg, Denmark,  March 21-23, 2012 – workshop organised by Center for Science Studies, Aarhus University. Extended Deadline: December 2, 2011.

The workshop seeks to explore the benefits and challenges of an empirical philosophy of science: What do philosophers gain from empirical work? How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts? How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research? What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach? What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work?

Keynote Speakers:

• Nancy Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Lisa Osbeck, University of West Georgia
• Erika Mansnerus, London School of Economics
• Hauke Riesch, Imperial College London

CfP: Knowledge in a Box

The tobacco association aside, I love the idea of this conference: Knowledge in a Box: How Mundane Things Shape Knowledge Production, July 26-29, 2012; to take place at a renovated tobacco warehouse (the tobacco museum) in Kavala, northern Greece.

We invite proposals from scholars in the history of science, technology, and medicine, science and technology studies, the humanities, visual and performing arts, museum and cultural studies and other related disciplines for a workshop on the uses and meanings of mundane things such as boxes, packages, bottles, and vials in shaping knowledge production. In keeping with the conference theme, we are asking contributors to include specific references to the ways in which boxes have played a role—commercial, epistemic or otherwise—in their own particular disciplinary frameworks.

Update: here is a direct link to the conference website: KNOWLEDGE IN A BOX : How mundane things shape knowledge production, with  the programme, abstracts, list of attendees etc.

CfP: ANT beyond the Laboratory

Call for papers by the journal Qualitative Sociology (hat tip Installing (Social) Order):

“Reassembling Ethnography: ANT beyond the Laboratory”

Deadline for Submissions: 31 March 2012.

Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) was literally developed in the laboratory, but it is an approach that proclaims usefulness to all arenas of social life. In recent years, ANT has been actively taken up in neighboring fields, such as Anthropology and Geography, but has only experienced slow and uneven interest within sociology. An upcoming edition of Qualitative Sociology aims to discuss ANT in relation to sociological ethnographic and qualitative methodologies. ANT’s call to ‘follow actors,’ its principle of symmetry, and its skepticism toward taken-for-granted categories in some way harkens to revered sociological traditions of ethnography, but at the same time challenges some of our existing conceptualizations and traditions of ethnographic research. This Special Issue brings together cutting-edge empirical articles that deploy/expand and dialogue with ANT’s ‘sociology of associations’ in various arenas of the social world.

The edition will be published in 2013. Edition articles will explore the usefulness of ANT as a method and as a theory to inform qualitative research, and ethnography in particular. We are interested in articles that will examine how ANT enriches our theoretical and empirical understandings of social phenomena, beyond its familiar domains in science and technology. Contributions are welcomed on a range of themes. The list below is not meant to be exhaustive and we encourage contributors to be creative in their application and engagement with ANT.

• Civil Society and civic associations
• Cities and urban life
• Policy-making and statecraft
• Sociology of knowledge
• Race, ethnicity, gender, and class identities
• Politics and social movements
• Inequality and stratification

In keeping with the tradition of Qualitative Sociology, we seek theoretically-rich, high-quality empirical studies that will push us to reflect on the limits of ANT, and devise ways to harness its benefits.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

The Special Issue will be edited by Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Diana Graizbord, and Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Brown University). The Editors welcome contributions engaged from doctoral or early career to established academics. The papers will undergo the usual peer-review procedure as established by QS.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2012 submitted directly to the journal.

Word Limits: 10,000 words (maximum) including bibliography

Queries:

• Gianpaolo Baiocchi (Gianpaolo_Baiocchi@Brown.edu)
• Diana Graizbord (Diana_Graizbord@Brown.edu)
• Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Michael_Rodriguez@Brown .edu)

Full submission instructions are available on the QS website (http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/journal/11133), on the ‘Instructions for Authors’ page. All manuscripts will be subject to the normal double-blind peer review process, but potential authors are welcome to discuss their ideas in advance with the Editors.

Philosophy and social computing

Call for papers: abstract submission deadline extended to 28 February 2011 for the “Social Computing” track at the First International Conference of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) to take place at Aarhus University on 4-6 July 2011. Conference Theme: “The Computational Turn: Past, Presents, Futures?”

Up to six bursaries of $500.00 available. More info here.

The track addresses, but is not limited to, the following topics:

– Notions of the social used and/or enforced in social computing

– Notions of computing used in social computing

– Epistemological and ethical consequences of distributed modes of knowledge creation and distribution in social computing

– Philosophical implications of sociality in social networking sites (e.g. identity, privacy, social structures, etc.)

– How can trust in social computing be conceived? What are the differences and similarities between notions of trust e.g. in multi-agent systems, social networking sites, recommender systems, etc.? What are the differences and similarities between trust online and offline?

– Forming of individual existence in relation to social computing

– Epistemically and ethically responsible behavior with respect to social software and how it can be supported

– Computational models of social networks

– Consequences of social computing for extended social cognition

Imagining Business 2

Submission deadline extended to 15 January 2011 for the 2nd EIASM Workshop on Imagining Business, focusing on “VISUALS & PERFORMATIVITY: RESEARCHING BEYOND TEXT,” to take place in Segovia, Spain, 19-20 May 2011.

Following the success of the 1st Imagining Business Workshop in Oxford, 2008, this second event seeks to examine ideas and approaches which go beyond a focus upon text in order to explore the impact of images, pictures, signs, sounds and passions on the process of organizing. A process which also goes beyond traditional ideas of business and into many areas of our lives.

By bringing together academics from a wide range of disciplines and approaches (e.g. organizational theory, accounting, anthropology, geography, art, sociology, communication studies, architecture, philosophy, social studies of technology, etc…), this event will provide an arena in which to discuss and debate different ways of imagining the complex process of organizing.

Special Guest Speakers are:

• Mario Biagioli – Harvard University – History of science
• Jacques Fontanille – Université de Limoges – Semiotics
• Nigel Thrift (TBC)- University of Warwick – Geography

The Organising Committee members are Paolo Quattrone – IE Business School, François-Régis Puyou – Audencia, Nantes School of Management and Chris Mclean – Manchester Business School.

CfP: Development through ANT

Call for Papers: Understanding Development Through Actor-Network Theory

[reposted from CoPEH-Canada]

This is a call for papers on use of actor-network theory in development studies, with an initial deadline for abstracts of 10 January 2011.

Actor-network theory has emerged over the past twenty years as a major conceptual force in social science. To date, though, it has hardly been applied within development studies. Yet the potential for ANT in the study of development has never appeared greater. The growing recognition of agency, process and relations among all development actors. The greater use of networks of individuals and organisations to deliver development. The increasing role played by technology in development processes. All these point to a prospective value of actor-network theory in helping us understand development today.

We are therefore organising a workshop and journal special issue to bring together new work applying actor-network theory in international development research. Our aim is to explore the extent to which ANT can improve our understanding of development.

At this initial stage, we wish to retain as broad a scope as possible for papers; from the more conceptual to the more practical; from those engaging with the overall ANT project to those which apply particular tools and sub-concepts; and from those which value ANT to those which critique its application in development. In all cases, we will be looking for some reflection on the contribution that ANT can make.

The following timeline will be observed:

– 10 January 2011 – prospective authors to submit an abstract of 200-400 words outlining their proposed paper to: ant4dev@gmail.com

– 1 February 2011 – authors to be notified of response to abstract

– 31 May 2011 – draft papers due (7,000-9,000 words), and workshop rapporteurs appointed

– 30 June 2011 – workshop in London for presentation and discussion of papers

– 30 Sept 2011 – finalised papers due

Some travel funding will be made available for attendance at the London workshop. Papers will still be considered from those who are unable to attend the workshop.

We will collate a selection of submitted papers for publication as a special issue in one of the leading development studies journals. Selected papers will be subject to further review in line with journal submission procedures.

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, do please ask.

Richard Heeks (IDPM, University of Manchester, UK) & Shirin Madon (DESTIN, LSE, UK); Email: ant4dev@gmail.com

Call URL: http://bit.ly/ANT4DCall