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Article ID: CBB706944186

Island Imaginaries: Introduction to a Special Section (2021)

Mascha Gugganig (Author)
Nina Klimburg-Witjes (Author)

Science as Culture
Volume: 30
Issue: 3
Pages: 321-341
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1939294

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1939294

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Colonial empires, scientists, philanthropists and Hollywood studios have long sustained an image of islands as remote places with unique ecologies and cultures, experimental labs, or loci of escapism. The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have contributed to a predominant view of islands as both exceptional spaces and testbeds to be scaled up onto continental or planetary levels. Likewise, the metaphor of the island is foundational to Western thought yet has been less explored in the context of scientific processes and technology development. Bringing together science and technology studies (STS) with critical Island Studies and related fields, this special section expands upon the spatial dimension of sociotechnical imaginaries to consider islands and their imaginations as both preexisting and channeling visions of science and technology. The introduced concept of Island Imaginaries captures the mutual constitution of island visions and their materialization in scientific, technological and technocratic endeavors that are imagined and pursued by scientific communities, policymakers, and other social collectives. Such an approach explores the co-constitutive dynamic of islands as sites for the foundation of technoscientific knowledge regimes, and the concomitant rendering of islands as conducive places for discovery and experimentation. The special section offers empirical case studies with insights into islands as synecdoche for larger wholes (the Earth), as experimental and exceptional sites for trialing business creation and political orders (in Singapore, and for Asia), and as variously interpreted laboratory paradise (of Hawai‘i). Further research themes for STS are suggested in the Conclusion.

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Includes Series Articles

Article Claire Isabel Webb (2021) Gaze-scaling: Planets as Islands in Exobiologists’ Imaginaries. Science as Culture (pp. 391-415). unapi

Article Brice Laurent; Liliana Doganova; Clément Gasull; Fabian Muniesa (2021) The Test Bed Island: Tech Business Experimentalism and Exception in Singapore. Science as Culture (pp. 367-390). unapi

Article Mascha Gugganig (2021) Hawaiʻi as a Laboratory Paradise: Divergent Sociotechnical Island Imaginaries. Science as Culture (pp. 342-366). unapi

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