Please join us for a STS/CSIS Food For Thought event with:

Dr. Sara Giordano

Assistant Professor

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, UC Davis

"'Labs of their own': Post/feminist tinkerings with Science"

Thursday, May 4th 12:15-2:15 pm  in the STS/CSIS Conference Room (SSH Building #1246)

As usual, we will pre-circulate a text which will be briefly introduced at the start of the session. The introduction will be followed by an hour or so of lively discussion about the text, so please come having read the paper in advance. Food and refreshments will be provided!

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP using the google form below. We will send a copy of the text a week before the event to those who register!

https://goo.gl/forms/Or6yDUbUVOPwkbxP2

Abstract:

This paper is an excerpt from a draft of the first chapter of my manuscript, "Labs of their own": Post/feminist tinkerings with Science. In Chapter 1, I show how the tinkerer is produced through reliance on democratic discourses as a new type of neoliberal scientist subject in need of greater access to the means of scientific knowledge production. Tinkerers form a group where inclusion is based on a naturalized discourse of passion for science. The group is further defined as disenfranchised from science. I suggest that the way these two defining group characteristics (natural belonging through desire for science and unfair exclusion from unfettered access to science) make use of minoritized democratic inclusion discourse through neoliberal multicultural colorblind and gender blind anti-racist, feminist politics that focuses on entrepreneurial capitalist inclusion as the end goal of democratic inclusion. I show how the idea of tinkering itself is already raced and gendered and embedded in US nationalist pride despite The Tinkerer’s post-racial/post-feminist global identity. This formation thereby obscures the continued role of racialized and gendered injustice in scientific knowledge making. I use analyses of community lab websites, ethnographic observations of these same labs and media reports to trace the emergence of the tinkerer.

Dr. Sara Giordano is an Assistant Professor with a specialty in feminist science studies. Dr. Giordano received a PhD in Neuroscience from Emory University in 2008. Dr. Giordano has worked as an ethics consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their research focuses on critical science literacy, the democratization of science and questions of scientific accountability more generally.