SFB 1187 ›Medien der Kooperation‹ an der Universität Siegen
Abendvortrag Werkstatt Praxistheorie – Monika Büscher: „Infrastructuring a Mobile Utopia of Radically Reflexive Resilience“
Wednesday, 25. October 2017, 18:00 Uhr

Infrastructuring a Mobile Utopia of Radically Reflexive Resilience

Since the 1992 Earth Summit, more than 4.4 billion people or 64% of the world’s population have been affected by disasters, and the number of ‘loss events’ has more than doubled (UNISDR 2012, Munich RE 2017). Resilience concepts respond to these pressures. However, the meanings, policies, and practices of resilience are ambiguous, enacting neoliberal devolution of risks and individualisation of responsibility, as well as new forms of relational resilience with ambitions for ‘respectful reciprocity, self-governance, improvisation and mutual aid’ (Crawford et al 2013:6). Digital technologies and novel platforms for ‘crisis mapping’ are a perspicuous site for an investigation of how such ideas of resilience are pursued, contested, and practically accomplished across sometimes globally distributed networks of actors. A particularly interesting aspect of this work are practices of ‘infrastructuring’ ‘mobile utopia’ of radically reflexive resilience. In this paper, I explore how almost all variations of resilience have a utopian dimension in that they envisage a way to ‘build back better’ or respond to risks preventatively, and how they require the mobilisation of ideas, people, and resources. I ‘mobilise’ utopia as a method for speculative sociology, following Levitas (2013) to critically unearth dynamics of mediating disasters and responses to them, to reflect on what it means to be resiliently human, and to describe the making of resilient socio-technical futures for, by and with diverse collectives. I explore what it might mean to ‘get relational’ and how forms of ‘reflexive doubt’ (Beck 1997, Cash 2016) and radical reflexivity (Pollner 1991) might support ‘good’ resilience.

Bio
Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. She is Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research. Her research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’ with a focus on IT ethics and risk governance. Her interdisciplinary, experimental, engaged public sociology explores and shapes socio-technical futures. She currently leads research on the informationalization of risk governance, exploring opportunities and challenges in national and international projects (BRIDGE, SecInCoRe). Her theoretical orientation builds on mobilities research, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, science and technology studies, feminist and non-representational theory, and design research. She has published many articles and books, including Ethnograpies of Diagnostic Work, Mobile Methods and Design Research. Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate for her work in participatory design from Roskilde University, Denmark. She edits the book series Changing Mobilities (Routledge) with Peter Adey.

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Schwerpunkt der Werkstatt Praxistheorie für das Jahr 2017 sind „Medienpraktiken der Delegation“ und hierbei insbesondere Fragen der „Skills“, der Aktenführung und der Erzeugung von Handlungsprogrammen.

Medienpraktiken der Delegation beginnen mit der Verlagerung von Operationsketten, mithin bei den elementaren Formen des Werkzeug- und Instrumentengebrauchs. Sie benötigen die Ausbildung spezifischer Fertigkeiten und Fähigkeiten bzw. Skills, die als Voraussetzungen von praktischen Vollzügen in der wissenschafts-, medien- und technikhistorischen Forschung mehr und mehr in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses gerückt sind.

Ausgehend von den interkorporeal verfassten Medienpraktiken der Delegation nimmt die Werkstatt Praxistheorie diejenigen Praktiken in den Blick, mit denen bereits unter einer kleinen Menge von Akteuren die Regeln gemeinsamer Prozeduren hergestellt werden.

Veranstaltungsort

Universität Siegen
Campus Herrengarten
Raum AH 217/18
Herrengarten 3
57072 Siegen