Donna Haraway, Richard Rorty, Isabelle Stengers in conversation on Whitehead and Science and Technology @ Stanford

A panel of eminent scholars came together to discuss Alfred Whitehead’s relevance to current issues in science studies, technoscience and pragmatism. Beginning with Isabelle Stengers’ recent work on “Penser avec Whitehead”, the panel discussed the role of Whithead’s ‘propositions’ for facilitating non-reductive modes of understanding ‘common matters of concern’ in the sciences. Stengers and Haraway…

Collaboration amongst philosophers, media theorists/practitioners and archaeologists @ MetaMedia

A wonderful meeting with intellectual buzz yesterday at MetaMedia Labs with Alison Wylie and the MetaMedia directors. Discussing the interface of intellectual property rights, digital interface and design, engagment with place beyond embodiment, and the future of academic collaboration, matters of new media served as a nodal point connecting thinkers and practitioners in the philosophy…

A Symmetrical Archaeology at Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), Sheffield, UK

The first installment of A Symmetrical Archaeology was organized as a full session at the TAG gathering in Sheffield, UK (December 19-21). Organized by Bjornar Olsen, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore – spearheaded by Chris – the session brought together an international and trans-disciplinary group of thinkers to present a Manifesto for Symmetry…

FieldWork

Returning from the ‘field’…some thoughts on what constitutes fieldwork. Such a pregnant term for the human sciences; replete with senses of: initiation, untowardness, difficulty, spontaneity, inauguration, maturation, practicum, discipline, validation, accreditation, as well as exoticism, travel, aristocratic pursuit and leisure. A process or ‘fielding’ of experience, ‘fieldwork’ plays an indispensable role in the training of…