“Getting Ahead? Embodied Technologies, Democracy, and Inequality in the 21st Century.”
Charis Thompson
Chancellor’s Professor
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies
Center for Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society
University of California, Berkeley
Thursday, 24 March 2016
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
IBLC 182
Abstract:
Thompson’s talk looks at biometrics, egg freezing, gene editing, and bio-wearables, and compare and contrast elites’ and less privileged users’ interactions with these embodied technologies. She considers how these technologies both naturalize and trouble the idea of meritocratic elites. She draws on STS, history of science, and on feminist, critical race, and disability scholarship to make the argument that the study of embodied technologies shows us that technical inequality—and consequently, substantive political inequality—has been growing alongside recent increases in income inequality.
Charis Thompson is the author of Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies (MIT Press, 2005) and Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013). The former book won the 2007 Rachel Carson Award from the Society for the Social Studies of Science. She is a frequent contributor to public discourse and policy discussions on biotechnology, most recently on CRISPR technology and human germline genetic engineering.