Jessica Pourraz, visiting researcher at Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) is participating in orgainising a seminar series on Technological Globalization From Below Interdisciplinary STS Seminar 2021-2022, hosted by the CEPED (University of Paris/IRD) as part of the Global Research Institute of Paris (GRIP) activity. The seminars will be held monthly via an online platform in English.

In the first session, which will take place on October 27 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm CET (French time), they have invited Nathalie Jas (INRAE, IRISSO) for a presentation entitled “Erasing a chemical past? Governing obsolete pesticides in Africa”.

Register to get the access link and the monthly announcements of the seminars : 9qcs-technoglobelow – Framacalc

Seminar presentation
New technologies are entering daily lives and reshaping societies across the globe at an ever-increasing pace. While technological change has been largely analysed as stemming from Northern countries that industrialized first since the 18th and 19th century, this picture is not satisfying to explore the drivers and consequences of technological change in the context of the growing contribution of developing and emerging countries to the global economy. Surely, technologies originating from the global North are having a huge impact on societies in the global South, but analyses of technological change need to integrate other kinds of circulations (South-South and South-North, schematically), to develop a better understanding of the global world’s technological becoming. In order to understand the magnitude of this shift, we engage in a research programme that applies the framework of “globalization from below” to global markets of technology (Tarrius 2002; Mathews et al 2012; Choplin & Pliez 2018). The fundamental assumption guiding this research is that the development of technologies will take a path that is specific to societies from the Global South. The seminar’s sessions will document the social issues pertaining to technological expansion in developing and emerging contexts, based upon empirical research. By doing this, they will highlight the scientific and technological dynamism of the Global South countries, as well as the often devastating consequences of technological development for subalternized populations. Second, they will characterize technological globalization “from below”, through the formulation of analytical tools; they will therefore enrich the conception of technical expansion from an original standpoint, paying particular attention to processes of technological expansion in relation to developing contexts, where labour informality and resource-scarce innovation are major concerns. The seminar is interdisciplinary with a major “Science & Technology Studies” focus.