Article ID: CBB485499768

Thinking with attachments: Appreciating a generative analytic (December 2021)

unapi

Much current work in Science and Technology Studies inflects knowing with care. Analyses of the ethos of objectivity, and of the practices by which objectivity is crafted, have shown that knowing and caring cannot be thought apart from each other. Using case studies from our own work we analyse how, in the sociotechnical relationships that we study, knowing and caring are entangled through ‘attachments’. We appreciate – both in the sense of valuing or respecting and in the sense of evaluating or assessing – how the notion of ‘attachment’ invites re-imagining relations between the social and the technical, between knowers and objects known, and between sociotechnical work and the affective sensibilities that enable, and are brought to life by, such work. Our respective ethnographic engagements with dog-human relations, obesity surgery and dementia care demonstrate that it is agents’ diverse and shifting attachments to technologies and techniques that shape the ways in which bodies, knowledge and practices form. The affects that arise in this process, or so we claim in neo-pragmatist fashion, are not preconditions to, but rather the result of such practices of attachment; rather than a prerequisite, they are an effect of the work of attaching itself. Thinking with attachments recognizes how techno-scientific work builds and shapes passions, aesthetics and sensory experience, allowing us to trace how varied sensibilities to what constitutes ‘the good’ come to be and come to matter in practices of relating between humans, animals and things.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB485499768/

Similar Citations

Article Marres, Noortje; (June 2013)
Why political ontology must be experimentalized: On eco-show homes as devices of participation (/isis/citation/CBB539904307/)

Article Tone Druglitrø; (2022)
Procedural Care: Licensing Practices in Animal Research (/isis/citation/CBB143588294/)

Article Clémence Pinel; Barbara Prainsack; Christopher McKevitt; (April 2020)
Caring for data: Value creation in a data-intensive research laboratory (/isis/citation/CBB399588537/)

Article Alexandra Hillman; Joanna Latimer; (April 2019)
Somaticization, the making and unmaking of minded persons and the fabrication of dementia (/isis/citation/CBB034246323/)

Article Sebastián Rojas-Navarro; Francisco Moller-Domínguez; Samanta Alarcón-Arcos; María-Alejandra Energici; Nicolás Schöngut-Grollmus; (2022)
Care during exceptional times: results of the CUIDAR study on the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile (/isis/citation/CBB983603829/)

Article Marlene Tamanini; (2020)
Assisted reproduction: Brazilian heterosexual couples' testimonies on the care of specialists (/isis/citation/CBB903736402/)

Article Catalina Amigo-Jorquera; María José Guerrero-González; Jorgelina Sannazzaro; Anahí Urquiza-Gómez; (2019)
Does energy poverty have a female face in Chile? (/isis/citation/CBB520214421/)

Article Jakob Raffn; Frederik Lassen; (2021)
Politics of Nature: The board game (/isis/citation/CBB033346411/)

Article Christelle Gramaglia; François Mélard; (2019)
Looking for the Cosmopolitical Fish: Monitoring Marine Pollution with Anglers and Congers in the Gulf of Fos, Southern France (/isis/citation/CBB276214571/)

Article Annalisa Pelizza; (August 2021)
Identification as translation: The art of choosing the right spokespersons at the securitized border (/isis/citation/CBB561779418/)

Article Antti Silvast; Mikko J. Virtanen; (2023)
On Theory–Methods Packages in Science and Technology Studies (/isis/citation/CBB283295216/)

Authors & Contributors
Christopher McKevitt
María José Guerrero-González
Moats, David
Natali Valdez
Samanta Alarcón-Arcos
Mélard, François
Journals
Social Studies of Science
Science, Technology and Human Values
Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Science as Culture
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Publishers
Nordic Academic Press
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Actor-network theory
Care
Ethnography
Medicine
Case studies
People
Latour, Bruno
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
Places
Chile
Great Britain
Uruguay
Colombia
Sweden
Norway
Institutions
University of the Republic
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment