Gilroy and West. Obama, the future and "progress".

Had a supervision this morning and will be a busy few weeks ahead doing work, but couldn't not watch this recent video of Paul Gilroy in conversation with Cornel West, two true luminaries on the nebulous and endless issue that is race (my supervisor today equated sociological engagement with science and race to getting a golf ball lost in a bunker. You naively think you'll get back out but will end up lost forever in the abyss of cogitation.)

Gilroy and West in conversation (A still from the video linked to above.)

I often find myself lost in a swell of emotion listening to Barack Obama hooting his horn about one thing or another. I remember, as an undergraduate, lying awake in the middle of the night to see the final decision called before he accepted his victory. It was a massive deal for me, perhaps because it was such a big deal for my parents - especially my father whose own dad came to the UK from Jamaica in the fifties. What West had to say about Obama - "the black face of the American empire" - was very stirring indeed. It gives pause for very serious reflection about the mindlessness with which I admit I often find myself imbibing the quotidian leftist rhetoric; rhetoric about a man who - though still a symbol, still the personage who offered succour after Dubyah, still a voice unlike that I had ever heard - has opened up new cans, and been unable to close others.

It is the second question from the audience that is my other choice moment from the hour and half of refreshing discussion. An audience member enquires about the sharing of wealth, asks how on earth do the poor and the wealthy stop hating each other. She appends to this a note about the super rich who are in control of state apparatus. It's this question of money - the material - that I find so dark and alarming. I think Bauman does a good job of bringing more than a tinge of fatalism to the modernity we find ourselves in. Gilroy doesn't necessarily have that dark edge to him though the implication of this may seem so. I'm not sure that it is. Here is what he had to say:

"Is progress really the right word for the readjustments that are necessary to understand a future with less of everything that you have. I mean, there’s a certain kind of ironic invocation of this in the language the government uses to speak about austerity. We repair our shoes. We learn to cut patterns again to have clothes. We are going to reequip ourselves with the idea of thrift… All of these things of our future. 

A carbon democracy. A carbon lifestyle. 

… We’re not going to sit around until someone comes up with a technological fix of this life that can’t be fixed. We’re not going to give any ground to that fantasy. We have to develop a different practice and the practice is centred on asking people to see their lives in the overdeveloped world in the light of what lies outside it and I think that’s a different politics. 

I don’t think that’s a left politics at all actually."

Edinburgh value(s) symposium - Innogen

[edit 1/6/13: this post has been reposted over at the Postgraduate Forum on Genetics and Society]

The 'Dimensions of Value and Values in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies’ Symposium, held by Innogen at the University of Edinburgh was a two-day event with a diverse range of talks from academic working with the issue of value(s) in the wide arena of science and technology studies. During the second day, postgraduate students took the helm to discuss the intersections of value(s) in our own research. Day one saw a range of plenaries on research into specific sectors; metrics for analysis of life sciences; and the dynamics and dimensions of value. Professor Donald MacKenzie introduced us to the world of High Frequency Trading (HFT) in financial markets and the array of practices undertaken by stock traders. Interview data were illustrative of the complexity of values at work in the HFT arena. Along with more responsible trading, Mackenzie discussed the practice algo-sniffing (detecting the footprint of an algorithm used by an institutional investor then buying/selling ahead to make a profit). Here, then, there are questions not only about profit accumulation but of the moral terrain of HFT practices.

Lots of hills and alleyways. Beautiful city.

Nik Brown's talk on contradictions in values gave us an incite into the tensions inherent in any discussion of values. In many ways his talk fed into one of the broader themes emerging from the event. That is, how are we talk about value and values? Are they two separate things? Is the singular noun an allusion to specifically economic value, a Marxian exchange value? In opposition – if indeed the terms of value and values can be opposed – is the collective "values" the signifier of the non-economic, the moral or ethical tensions of something? Brown's amusing video of C'Elle menstrual stem cell banking illustrates the difficulty of understanding often contradictory value(s). How is something at once waste now recognised as a use value? Indeed, in the case of stem cells, can we always recognise use value? As Brown notes, a use value cannot be deferred, and yet some biobanked stem cells are sequestered because they might have use with the advent of new grafting and typing technologies.

Apparently Adam Smith died in Edinburgh. Who knew?

The second day of the symposium gave the postgraduate participants an opportunity to parse their own research through the lens of value(s). The valuation and evaluation processes at play in our various areas of investigation were diverse, though we were all able to recognise them in one form or another. With the assistance of academics from institutions as far away as Canada and Sweden, we attempted to locate practices of value-making in our own research, hitting upon epistemological issues always best unpicked by a group of minds rather than one.

This invitation to reflexivity was all the more fascinating because of the breadth of research being undertaken and the number of people doing so. Students based at universities as far as London made the journey up to Edinburgh to participate. It is, of course, always invaluable to meet other postgraduates working in the STS field. This is particularly true for discussing overarching conceptions like “value” that, whilst seemingly nebulous, are the avenue to recognising hidden links between apparently disparate areas of research. Sperm donation, the film industry, disabled body subjectivity, plant biodiversity – all of these topics being investigated by postgraduates at then event deal with value(s) and processes of (e)valuation.