{"title":"Affecting Infrastructures: Crafting and Weaving as Alternative Repairs","authors":"Fabiola Claus, Eliana Sánchez Aldana, Dimitris Papadapoulos","doi":"10.28968/cftt.v9i2.39206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v9i2.39206","url":null,"abstract":"As two traditional practices performed by rural communities in Colombia, crafting and weaving can be reframed as ontologies that embody alternative material orders and forms of repair. In this context, we explore two specific initiatives: the Crafted Empathy Chair developed by members of campesino social movements in Cauca and Nariño, and Interweaving Material Encounters, a series of collaborative spaces involving women from textile collectives from Chocó, Antioquia, and Bolivar. In the process of exploring these initiatives, we reflect on the role of nonhumans as technologies that allow our interlocutors to share their affect. In addition to discussing strategies for engaging in affective relations when dealing with the aftermath of war violence, we describe how these arrangements affect us as a part of the audience. Thus, we propose the term affecting infrastructure to conceptualize how crafting and weaving can foster everyday spaces and shared grounds for the emergence of emotional engagements as alternative modes of repair.","PeriodicalId":72536,"journal":{"name":"Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.)","volume":"80 13","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135726435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"STS Researchers as Technology: Multiple Positionalities as Interpretations of Participant Expectations and Agendas","authors":"Ashley Lewis","doi":"10.28968/cftt.v9i2.39335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v9i2.39335","url":null,"abstract":"Science and technology studies (STS) researchers integrated into interdisciplinary research projects learn important lessons of collaboration dynamics by analyzing the lived experience of the research participants. Previous approaches of STS researchers included laboratory studies and reimagining the collaborative process as a research method. However, previous research on interdisciplinary projects repeatedly cites recurring challenges, indicating that more sharing of this lived experience is needed. My autoethnography of an interdisciplinary project interrogates the various positionalities I embodied as research technologies. In adopting a feminist analytical approach, this paper forefronts emotional affect and interrogates technological labels of the social science researcher to understand power dynamics and interpret what is meant by “good science” across disciplines. These findings help us understand how individuals appraise interdisciplinarity, setting realistic expectations for addressing future interdisciplinary collaborations more deliberately. Lastly, I also consider the ethical considerations necessary to care for the ethnographer in interdisciplinary collaborations, as they are often caught in the crosshairs of the frustrations in collaborating.","PeriodicalId":72536,"journal":{"name":"Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.)","volume":"62 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135726473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Purity Is Not the Point: Chemical Toxicity, Childbearing, and Consumer Politics as Care.","authors":"Andrea Lilly Ford","doi":"10.28968/cftt.v6i1.32314","DOIUrl":"10.28968/cftt.v6i1.32314","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Environmental chemical toxicity evokes both individual action and relational interconnection. On the one hand, there is the diffusion of risk and harm through time and space, which complicates assigning fault, responsibility, or regulatory jurisdiction. On the other hand, toxicity begs the question of what individuals can do to feel a sense of agency and mitigate the damage done by daily necessities of living. I call this tension a double bind and suggest that it is mirrored by childbearing, arguing that childbearing offers a particularly compelling site for thinking through the possibilities and limits of consumer politics as a response to chemical toxicity. Childbearing and toxicity both disturb conventional ideas about individual actors in such a way that it makes the necessity of collective political action apparent even to those most invested in consumer politics. By building on new materialist philosophy and reproductive justice critiques of consumer choice, I consider both social and ontological problems with a politics based on individual agents. Ultimately, I argue that despite their flaws, consumer choices can be important acts of care alongside collective political action, and that childbearing can be a catalyst for ecological approaches to politics in which relations of responsibility and care are foregrounded.</p>","PeriodicalId":72536,"journal":{"name":"Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.)","volume":"6 1","pages":"1-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/8e/88/EMS174196.PMC7614496.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9415525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}