Feminist STS

 It shocks me that I used to be such a book worm and a writer growing up. However, lately I cannot express my words in writing but rather in silence.  I studied science in high school and also my first degree was the Bachelors of Science in Human Physiology, Genetics and Psychology. Having to integrate this science degree with Psychology gave me an awakening or rather it challenged me to ask myself if science is really a solution to everything or an end to everything. Science cannot solve all our problems. While science can help battle things such as diseases, hunger and poverty when used properly. It does not do so completely and automatically. It is evident that most scientists are born. Most of them start at a young age by exploring things around them, experimenting on how things work etc. through observation of the physical world. Yet, understanding how the physical world works solves no problem. For example, it is through science that we know that excersing can lower your...

 What  I have found most interesting in my book is how operation 'Gcina amanzi' Zulu for operation save water became such a controversial initiative that people in Soweto opposed it for so many reasons. Rent Boycotts and they ended up duging out pipes as a counter campaign that activists called 'Operation Vul'amanzi' (Zulu for ' let the water flow)'.  The question that I will like to focus on is how did an infrastructure upgrading project become the subject of such passionate protests? Today, in the post apartheid South Africa we have a number of protests and they all came in to being because of one protest against prototypes in Soweto, against water meters. The book subsequently follows the prepaid meter into the post apartheid era to examine its role in recurrent service delivery protests, as well as to consider what it reveals about the history of neoliberal policies in South Africa more generally.  The book further explains the rent boycotts that began i...

How reproduction became central to governing the economy My book is called the Economization of life , and it explores reproduction and population control through the lens of the economy, capitalism, fiscal policies, and GDP. It introduces us to John Maynard Keynes. Keynes is a Cambridge economist who helped to bring macroeconomy into the world through his 1936 text The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money text. The Keynesian revolution is believed to have brought the invention of new terminology and units of analysis in economics. His stance on microeconomic would help govern capitalism and ensure that it maximises employment and wealth while minimising crashes and suffering. The aim of the economy is to use fiscal policies to control inflation, bring down unemployment and stimulate investment and Keynes theory plans against poverty and prepares for war and uses state spent money to build infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and immigration.  Keynes considered eugeni...

 The key things I would want to discuss in my portion of the podcast are positionality and the influences of colonialism. With regards to positionality, there's the how and why the author marks people, other examples of it in science and the examples the author uses to highlight the importance of positionality. The author incorporates positionality, influenced by indigenous North American approaches, by 'marking' people in the way that they 'mark' themselves. This is done with the tribe or settler position placed in brackets after the first time their name is mentioned. The reason the author does it is because indigenous authors often acknowledge their own tribal contexts in the way that non-indigenous authors don't. The exclusion of settler positionalities further perpetuates Whiteness as the default. One of the examples that the author uses was from when they were collecting fish guts for research from fisherman, functioning under the assumption that it was wa...

With a world categorized by seemingly never-ending access to media and information, it’s important to strike a balance between producing content that can break through the void while maintaining information that is valuable to creators, thinkers, and activists across multiple generations. They are always looking for new ways to express themselves and share their ideas with the world. So how do I find that right balance of ingredients needed to incorporate the roles of Assisted Reproductive Technology in reproducing race and connecting it to the scholarship of Feminist STS AS WELL AS relating to the inputs of my co-podcasters? Well, I’d like to tackle it by prioritizing strategic omission and targeted audience engagement. Let’s talk about it.  Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are medical procedures that help couples conceive a child. These technologies have been around for several decades, and their use has become increasingly popular over the years. However, while ARTs hav...

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  This book by Antina von Schnitzler an anthropologist and assistant professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School. The book focuses in South Africa's "miracle transition" and how it has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. The author explores a controversial project to install prepaid water meters in Soweto. She follows engineers, utility officials, and local bureaucrats as they consider ways to prompt Sowetans to pay for water and she shows how local residents and activists wrestle with the constraints imposed by meters. Below is a time line of how electricity meter came about. DEMOCRACY'S INFRASTRUCTURE, APARTHEID DEBRIS   Von Schnitzler, A. 2016.  Democracy’s infrastructure : techno-politics and protest after apartheid. Princeton: Princeton University Press. JULY 2004.  One of the 1st large scale violent expressions of discontent in the post apartheid period, the protest...

  Thomas Robert Malthus ( 13 February 1766- 23 December 1834) was an English economist, cleric and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography. We will learn more about him as he contributed to populationism. His contributions were mostly on demopopulationism. In the past, population control has been used as a key measure needed to end Third World poverty, overcome starvation and stop environmental decay (Butler, 2010).  It has been contented that, women need to control their fertility through the use of contraceptives to manage large population growth. while controlling the rate in which women give birth through contraceptive. Contraceptives are not good for women as they have side effects. to mention a few disadvantages: mood swings, weight gain, headaches and migraine etc. be that as it may some women are empowered by using birth control. This gave women highly effective control over their fertility. Biopopulationism is evident in the Virginia Cent...

  Music has formed a huge part of our lives over the years. We listen to music for enjoyment at times when we go through struggles, music seem to be an escape. We will look at how music was established making reference to the following podcast. https://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2022/10/jamaican-sound-system-a.jpg. The invention of Sound systems first came about in Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1940s. These sound system in Jamaica were created to bring financially deprived Jamaican communities together. at this time stamp 04:35 it was discussed how the Jamaican music was enhanced by technology. Because of the new technology in Jamaica parties became popular and the gatherings became larger because of Sound. For this reason the sound system got larger, and more powerful. ( The sound system was all the people that operated it, the owners, djs and engineers. Music came about because of sound system culture. Today, we have a lot of music genres and also people still gather toda...

POPULATION CONTROL AS SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND AS A TOOL TO ADDRESS SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS PLEASE USE THIS LINK TO VIEW MY PowerPoint ON POPULATION CONTROL  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10i-aqx5BVOVp_IorzOPTgvHGLqPgeqo2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113395136371513860847&rtpof=true&sd=true

 As the world's human population increases exponentially, at a rate so quickly that it doubled, going from 4 billion to 8 billion, in only the past 50 years, there have been many discussions around what that means in the long run and what should be done about it. One of the major responses is populationism, an ideology that agrees with population control and implementing population policies. More recently however, feminist scholars like Bhatia et al. (2020) say that the conservations of populationism are too globally focused and without enough recognition of the effects of populationism beyond reproductive health policies. To counter this, they have conceptualised multiple different motivations and manifestations of populationism.  The first one is demopopulationism which speaks to trying to achieve an optimal demographic distribution in a given group, potentially determined by a myriad of characteristics. The three key processes associated with this are the researching and re...

In our seminar this week, we deeply explored the topic of populationism. To frame my understanding, I used the reading: A feminist exploration of populationism: engaging in contemporary forms of population control .  I will begin by providing my understanding of populationism; secondly, i will address how my research interest ties into populationism and lastly, i will explore populationism through the creative work - What Happened to Monday.  In the late 20th century, population control had become a solution to what was understood as the global concern of overpopulation. This concern had become so widespread that the proposed solution of population control had received attention and financial support from powerful institutions globally. This threat had become so worrisome that it affected laws and policies of some countries and had even permeated through pop culture The use of the term populationism aims to bring attention to the various ways of discussing and comprehending th...

Have you ever thought about how much a life is worth? It might sound like a bit of a morbid question, but the answer to this question has far-reaching implications for our society. As interest in populationism has grown, that is the ideology that attributes social and ecological ills to human numbers. This ideology leverages left- and right-wing political strategies as well as the environment (Bahatia et. al., 2020) . Biopopulationism is a subset of populationism which I believe is a huge proponent of how technology assists in reproducing ideas of race.  One definition of biopopulationism that I found particularly interesting highlighted the role of technology and scientific advancements being sold as consumer products  (Bahatia et. al., 2020) . This ranges from reproductive surgeries like vasectomies to women's oral contraceptives like birth control. It alters how people engage with their reproduction, placing a very important emphasis on individuals’ desires, wants for famil...

 Hi, everyone. I'm Fidel Parks and I'm doing my Honours in Gender Studies in environmental feminisms and decolonial/indigenous conservation. My knowledge of and interest in the topics are fairly recent in that I was only exposed to them last year, at the end of my undergrad. I did my Bachelors of Science in Biology and Gender Studies. It was in a conservation biology course where I was taught both about the colonial history and the indigenous future of conservation and in a gender course where I was taught about the importance of gendered approaches in climate justice and thus the importance of environmental feminisms. While these courses overlapped slightly in content, they differed extremely in approach. Biology didn't care much for indigenous conservation beyond name-dropping and a few anecdotes whereas Gender Studies' focus on how women were more heavily affected didn't extend far enough to really explain in what ways participation in conservation, indigenous or...

For most of my life, I feel that people have been categorised into two categories. People who are interested in maths and science, and then there are people who are interested in art and music. Are you left brained or right brained? Do you support Western epistemic knowledge that is modern and based on empirical evidence and “rational” thought? Or do you support African epistemology that is more holistic, spiritistic and traditional? One thing that has always been certain is that science and the social sciences and technology and culture have always been positioned as two diametrically opposed conceptions. Every conception that is scientific and technological exists in a mutually exclusive space from what is traditional and cultural.  These contrasting and sometimes combative concepts are reminiscent of a subject that I am extremely passionate about. I am extremely passionate about the preservation of African languages, cultures, traditional practices, and knowledge systems. As I o...