Matching Items (9)
Description
This dissertation explores the megamachine, a prominent metaphor in American humanist and philosopher of technology, Lewis Mumford's Myth of the Machine series. The term refers critically to dynamic, regimented human capacities that drive scientific and technical innovation in society. Mumford's view of the nature of collectives focuses on qualities and patterns that emerge from the behavior of groups, societies, systems, and ecologies. It is my aim to reenergize key concepts about collective capacities drawn from Lewis Mumford's critique of historical and modern sociotechnical arrangements. I investigate the possibility of accessing those capacities through improved design for Technology Assessment (TA), formal practices that engage experts and lay citizens in the evaluation of complex scientific and technical issues.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
ContributorsGano, Gretchen (Author) / Guston, David (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Selin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Transitioning towards low-carbon energy systems requires participation from a diversity of organizations, governments, and actors. Yet it is still unclear who, when, how much, and what types of participation are needed to realize such transformations. I address this gap by analyzing the role of participation in energy transitions using interviews, participant observation, document analyses, and novel visualization approaches deployed in the USA and Mexican contexts. I offer a framework to explore how engagement in energy transitions unfolds over time and deploy the framework to 1) investigate the role of engagement in decreasing the consumption of gas and electricity at municipal and residential levels in 12 US communities during a three-year competition (2014-2017) organized by Georgetown University; and 2) assess the acceptance and longevity of solar projects that grant electricity access to rural and dispersed Indigenous Ralámuli communities in Chihuahua, México. I found that wider and deeper participation does not always secure lower energy consumption in the US case, which highlights the need to tailor participation for specific goals. Results from Ralámuli communities suggest that the benefits of participation reach a limit; that is, when high participation surpassed the budget (in the form of cash/money and time availability) of solar users, participation became detrimental to user satisfaction and technology acceptance. Lastly, the analysis of how participation occurred in solar home systems with longer longevity (more than five years of use) showed that maintenance and operation costs (e.g. battery replacements) are the greatest barriers to longevity, while knowledge and capacity building might be elements driving longer longevity. Recommendations include: (1) offering clear information in the user’s first language about the costs and maintenance of solar systems, (2) seeking ideas from solar users at the early stages of solar programs, and (3) reducing costs through understanding electricity needs and offering collective forms of ownership. My work expands the theoretical understanding of the role of participation in energy transitions and offers practical resources for practitioners and researchers to facilitate a critical reflection on how participation influences desirable outcomes in different contexts, including communities in the global North and South.
ContributorsMorales Guerrero, Jorge (Author) / Karwat, Darshan (Thesis advisor) / Breetz, Hanna (Committee member) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Effective collaboration and cooperation across difference are at the heart of present and future sustainability challenges and solutions. Collaboration among social groups (intragenerational), across time (intergenerational), and across species (interspecies) is each central to achieving sustainability transitions in the 21st century. In practice, there are three types of differences that limit collaboration and cooperation toward sustainability outcomes: differences among social groups, differences across time, and differences across species. Each of these differences have corresponding cognitive biases that challenge collaboration. Social cognitive biases challenge collaboration among social groups; temporal cognitive biases challenge collaboration across time; and anthropocentric cognitive biases challenge collaboration across species. In this work, I present three correctives to collaboration challenges spanning the social, temporal, and species cognitive biases through intervention-specific methods that build beyond traditional framings of empathy, toward social, futures, and ecological empathy. By re-theorizing empathy across these domains, I seek to construct a multidimensional theory of empathy for sustainability, and suggest methods to build it, to bridge differences among people, time horizons, and species for sustainability practice.
ContributorsLambert, Lauren Marie-Jasmine (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Tomblin, David (Committee member) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This research interconnects three case studies to examine survivability as a framework through which to explore historic, current, and future collaborations in the face of existential threats, social-ecological-technical uncertainty, and indeterminate futures. Leveraging archival research, document analysis, and ethnographic field work, this study focuses on artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s mid-20th-century construction of a nuclear fallout shelter, the COVID Tracking Project’s response work in the first year of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and three decades of future-facing scientific research performed at Biosphere 2. These cases demonstrate multidisciplinary collaborations across individual, organizational, and institutional configurations at local, national, and international scales in threat contexts spanning nuclear weapons, pandemics, and increasing climate catastrophe. Within each of the three cases, I examine protagonists’ collaborations within knowledge systems, their navigation of scientific disciplinary boundaries, their acknowledgement and negotiation of credibility and expertise, and how their engagements with these systems impact individual and collective survivability. By combining complex adaptive systems (CAS) framings with Science and Technology Studies concepts, I explore ways in which transformations of hierarchy and epistemological boundaries impact, and particularly increase, social-ecological-technical systems (SETS) survivability. Including notions of who and what systems deem worthy of protection, credibility, expertise and agency, imaginations, and how concepts of systems survivability operate, this work builds a conceptual scaffolding to better understand the dynamic workings of quests for survival in the 21st century.
ContributorsWasserman, Sherri (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity, and cities are likely to experience many of the most dangerous effects of climate change. One way that cities aim to adapt to become more resilient to climate change is through the provision of locally produced ecosystem services: the benefits that people get from nature. In cities, these ecosystem services are provided by diverse forms of urban ecological infrastructure (UEI): all parts of a city that include ecological structure and function. While there is a growing body of research touting the multifunctionality of UEI and an increasing number of cities implementing UEI plans, there remain important gaps in understanding how UEI features perform at providing ecosystem services and how the local social-ecological-technological context affects the efficacy of UEI solutions. Inspired by the need for cities to adapt to become more resilient to climate change, this dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand how diverse UEI features and their ecosystem services are perceived, provided, and prioritized for current and future climate resilience. The second chapter explores how a diverse group of local actors in Valdivia, Chile perceives the city’s urban wetlands and identifies common trade-offs in the perceived importance of different ecosystem services from the wetlands. The third chapter demonstrates species-level differences and trade-offs between common street trees in Phoenix, Arizona in their ability to provide the ecosystem services of both local climate regulation and stormwater regulation. The fourth chapter compares how participatory scenarios from nine cities across the United States and Latin America vary in the degree to which they incorporate UEI and ecosystem services into future visions. The fifth chapter returns focus to Phoenix and illustrates dominant perspectives on the prioritization of ecosystem services for achieving climate resilience and how those priorities change across temporal scales. The dissertation concludes with a synthesis of the previous chapters and suggestions for future urban ecosystem services research. Combined, this dissertation advances understanding of ecosystem services from UEI and highlights the importance of considering trade-offs among UEI features in order help achieve more just, verdant, and resilient urban futures.
ContributorsElser, Stephen Robert (Author) / Grimm, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Cook, Elizabeth (Committee member) / McPhillips, Lauren (Committee member) / York, Abigail (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The governance of natural resources often gets implicitly or explicitly shaped by the knowledge systems that are invoked for making decisions. These knowledge systems reflect the underlying notions of how human-nature relationships are conceived and operationalized by different stakeholders in the governance system. Conflicts in the science-policy interface in environmental governance arise when specific conceptions of nature dominate over other ways of knowing, when stakeholders with representing different knowledge systems have disproportionate degrees of influence in policymaking spaces, or when certain stakeholders are deracinated from their resources and long-held knowledge traditions. This dissertation examines the epistemic conflicts that exist in the Indian forestry that have led to a situation of policy stalemate in the governance system and continue to perpetuate colonial systems of scientific forestry and marginalize local knowledge traditions. To do so, this dissertation analyzes three datasets to understand the extent and consequences of this conflict in the forestry sciences in Indian academia. First, scientific discourses on the Indian Forest Rights Act are examined to understand the normative and epistemic practices that lead to differences in perspectives and scientific positions on forest governance. Second, the forest policy literature is analyzed using bibliometrics techniques to identify the intellectual and social silos in forestry sciences in India. Third, interview data from Indian forest scientists is analyzed to understand the inequalities within the science-policy interface in Indian forestry and how these perpetuate colonial legacies of forestry science. This dissertation concludes with recommendations and future pathways for knowledge integration and policy deliberations to make more decolonial, inclusive, and sustainable policies in Indian forestry.
ContributorsBisht, Vanya (Author) / Chhetri, Nalini (Thesis advisor) / Fisher, Erik (Thesis advisor) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Images are ubiquitous in communicating complex information about the future. From political messages to extreme weather warnings, they generate understanding, incite action, and inform expectations with real impact today. The future has come into sharp focus in recent years. Issues like climate change, gene editing, and smart cities are pushing policy makers, scientists, and designers to rethink how society plans and prepares for tomorrow. While academic and practice communities have increasingly turned their gaze toward the future, little attention is paid to how it is depicted and even less to the role visualization technologies play in depicting it. Visualization technologies are those that transform non-visual information into 2D or 3D imagery and generate depictions of certain phenomena, real or perceived. This research helps to fill this gap by examining the role visualization technologies play in how individuals know and make decisions about the future.
This study draws from three phases of research set in the context of urban development, where images of the future are generated by architects and circulated by built environment professionals to affect client and public decision-making. I begin with a systematic review of professional design literature to identify norms related to visualization. I then conduct in-depth interviews with expert architects to draw out how visualization technologies are used to influence client decision-making. I dive into how different tools manage the future and generate different forms of certainty, uncertainty, persuasion, and risk. Complementing the review and interviews is a case study on ASU at Mesa City Center, a development project aimed at revitalizing downtown Mesa, Arizona. Analysis highlights how project-specific visual tools affect decision-making and the role that client imagination and inference play in understanding and preference. This research unpacks the social, technical, and emotional knowledge embedded in visualization technologies and reveals how they affect decision-making. Information about the future is uniquely mediated by each technology with decision-making bound up in larger sociopolitical processes aimed at reducing uncertainty, building trust, and managing expectations. This suggests that the visual tools we use to depict the future are much more dynamic and influential than they are given credit for.
This study draws from three phases of research set in the context of urban development, where images of the future are generated by architects and circulated by built environment professionals to affect client and public decision-making. I begin with a systematic review of professional design literature to identify norms related to visualization. I then conduct in-depth interviews with expert architects to draw out how visualization technologies are used to influence client decision-making. I dive into how different tools manage the future and generate different forms of certainty, uncertainty, persuasion, and risk. Complementing the review and interviews is a case study on ASU at Mesa City Center, a development project aimed at revitalizing downtown Mesa, Arizona. Analysis highlights how project-specific visual tools affect decision-making and the role that client imagination and inference play in understanding and preference. This research unpacks the social, technical, and emotional knowledge embedded in visualization technologies and reveals how they affect decision-making. Information about the future is uniquely mediated by each technology with decision-making bound up in larger sociopolitical processes aimed at reducing uncertainty, building trust, and managing expectations. This suggests that the visual tools we use to depict the future are much more dynamic and influential than they are given credit for.
ContributorsSelkirk, Kaethe (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Wylie, Ruth (Committee member) / Boradkar, Prasad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation focuses on water security in terms of sustaining socio-economic development, livelihoods, and human well-being. Using the double exposure framework, I analyze the combined effect of climate change and economic development on water security in the Philippines. There is a need to examine how the combination of these two processes aggravate existing inequalities related to water security among different groups of people, and also analyze how these two processes can combine to increase stakeholders’ vulnerability to water-related shocks and stresses. The Philippines has been rated as one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change due to its exposure to extreme climate events and sea level rise. At the same time, the Philippines is currently undergoing an economic transition from a predominantly agricultural country to one where industry and services play a larger role. This dissertation zeroes in on the water security of municipalities in the Philippines, which were sorted into different syndromes based on a combination of their risk to future hydro-climatic changes and economic growth trends. Four syndromes which covered 73% of the population then emerged. By comparing five case study municipalities drawn from these four syndromes, I offer insights into how different combinations of climatic and economic factors can impact water security, and which combination could have the lowest water security in the future. Through analyzing the results of focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, I also explore the variation of perceptions and collaborative strategies of stakeholders regarding their current and future water security. While each municipality had different climate and economic vulnerabilities, they shared largely similar water security perceptions and used the same strategies.
ContributorsLorenzo, Theresa Marie (Author) / Kinzig, Ann (Thesis advisor) / David, Carlos Primo (Committee member) / Perrings, Charles (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Selin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The Future of Wastewater Sensing workshop is part of a collaboration between Arizona State University Center for Nanotechnology in Society in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Security, LC Nano, and the Nano-enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Systems NSF Engineering Research Center. The Future of Wastewater Sensing workshop explores how technologies for studying, monitoring, and mining wastewater and sewage sludge might develop in the future, and what consequences may ensue for public health, law enforcement, private industry, regulations and society at large. The workshop pays particular attention to how wastewater sensing (and accompanying research, technologies, and applications) can be innovated, regulated, and used to maximize societal benefit and minimize the risk of adverse outcomes, when addressing critical social and environmental challenges.
ContributorsWithycombe Keeler, Lauren (Researcher) / Halden, Rolf (Researcher) / Selin, Cynthia (Researcher) / Center for Nanotechnology in Society (Contributor)
Created2015-11-01