Knowledge in a Box. Greece, July 2012

[David Pantalony]

Dear RASI colleagues

Katey Anderson of York wanted to inform you all about the upcoming symposium "Knowledge in a Box." See below. Looks good! 

CFP: Knowledge in a Box

We invite proposals from scholars in the history of science, technology, and

medicine, science and technology studies, the humanities, visual and performing

arts, museum and cultural studies and other related disciplines for a workshop

on the uses and meanings of mundane things such as boxes, packages, bottles,

and vials in shaping knowledge production. In keeping with the conference

theme, we are asking contributors to include specific references to the ways in

which boxes have played a role—commercial, epistemic or otherwise—in their own

particular disciplinary frameworks.

Boxes have always supported the significance of the objects they contained,

allowing specific activities to arise. In the hands of natural historians and

collectors, boxes functioned as a means of organizing their knowledge

throughout the eighteenth century. They formed the material bases of the

cabinet or established collection and accompanied the collector from the

initial gathering of natural specimens to their final display. As 'knowledge

chests' or 'magazining

tools' the history of box-like containers also go back to book printing and the

typographical culture. The artists’ boxes of the early nineteenth century were

used to store the paraphernalia of a new fashionable trend. In the late

nineteenth century the box became the pharmacist’s laboratory and a device for

standardizing and controlling dosage of oral remedies. In the twentieth century

radiotherapy the box was elevated to a multifunctional tool working as a memory

aid to forgetful patients or as “knowledge package” that predetermined dosages,

included equipment, and ready-made radium applicators.

Focusing on medicine, boxes have played a crucial role since the eighteenth

century when doctors ought to bring instruments to their patient’s house for

surgical or obstetrical interventions. In modern operating rooms boxes organize

the workflow and build an essential

part of the aseptical regime. Late twentieth century biomedical scientists store

tissue samples in large-scale biobanks, where samples contained in straws are

placed in vials, then the vials in boxes which in turn are stacked up in

"elevators". This storage system facilitates retrieval with barcodes, indexing

each individual sample so that additional variables can be retrieved from a

database. Thus the container and its content are tied up in a close epistemic

and material relationship.

As it is usually the case the box embodies the knowledge that goes into the

chemical laboratory and its function; it classifies objects into collections of

natural history; it meaningfully orders letters in a printer’s composition or

painting equipment for the artist’

convenience; it standardizes pharmaceutical dosage forms and allows pharmacists

to control the production and consumption of their remedies; in the commercial

world it misleads or informs customers; it persuades consumers for the

integrity of the product that they enclose; it hides the identity of the

object(s) that contains, it shapes professional identities and is essential for

mobilizing, transporting, accumulating and circulating materials and the

knowledge

they produce and embody.

Furthermore, if we do understand matter and materiality not as given, solid,

continuous, and stable but rather as something being done, performed, shaped

and embedded in practices, then we should examine closer how bottles and boxes

themselves materialize differently in a

set of diverse practices. How do they change their ontologies by migrating from

the kitchen to the laboratory, from the workshop to the operating room?

We welcome innovative understandings of the role that boxes and containers have

played historically and continue to play in technology, medicine, and science.

We see the workshop as contributing to an ongoing interest in science and

technology studies on the importance of mundane things in scientific practice

and technological innovations.

Dates:

July 26-29, 2012

Submission guidelines:

Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2012

Please submit a 300-words abstract along with your name, institutional

affiliation, email and phone number as a word or pdf attachment to the

organizers of the conference

Proposals will be reviewed and notification of the outcome will be made in

February 15, 2012. We are pursuing publication outlets for selected papers from

the workshop. Therefore we expect full papers from those that will participate

by May 30, 2012. Details will be provided after notification.

Conference registration fee: 50 euros

Place:

The venue of the conference is a wonderful tobacco warehouse renovated to host

the tobacco museum of the city of Kavala in northern Greece.

Contact info:

For further information please contact the organizers:

Susanne Bauer sba...@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Maria Rentetzi mren...@vt.edu

Martina Schlünder m.schl...@gmx.de