Plenarvortrag I | Eröffnungsvortrag
Prof. Dr. Kim Fortun (Irvine/USA)
Late Industrial Anthropology: Methods, Infrastructure, Politics
“Late industrialism” articulates a way of thinking about productions of risk and vulnerability through the tight coupling of historically sedimented sociotechnical, political economic, eco-atmospheric and discursive systems. In this presentation, I’ll explicate how cultural anthropology is itself late industrial, with methodological, infrastructural and political implications. A key focus will be on ways calls for open science and data (across disciplines) both reflect and create critical possibilities — and risks — for cultural anthropology. My analysis extends from long running research on industrial disaster (fast and slow), on the informating of environmental politics and sciences, and on the design and use of digital infrastructure in research and politics. Across these threads of research, I’ve becoming increasingly invested in what I’ve come to think of as kaleidoscopics and collaborative hermeneutics – late industrial knowledge forms that encode and rely on cultural anthropology in demanding ways.
