Wednesday, May 30, 2018 | The Crepe Place: 1134 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, CA 95062

(slideshare of presentation; begins about 10:55)

SJRC Director and Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon will discuss with us her new book, The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice & Knowledge After the Genome. Reardon’s research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine.

Science on Tap is designed to connect the Santa Cruz community to the latest research at U.C. Santa Cruz.  It is not exclusive for scientists and science majors and aims to appeal to all audiences. So come, grab a drink and meal, relax and hear some interesting cutting edge science that’s happening near you!

Science on Tap is generally on the last Wednesday of every month at the Crepe Place. Due to the popularity of these events, to ensure that you’ll have a seat, we highly recommend that you reserve a table by calling the Crepe Place at (831) 429-6994. More information can be found on their website at: http://thecrepeplace.com/.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the UC Santa Cruz.

Hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE).

The ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ Inaugural Gathering of Changemakers for Social and Environmental Justice

Tues-Thursday, May 15-17, 2018
(Recording)

The Right Livelihood Award—widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’—was established in 1980 to honor and support courageous people and organizations offering visionary and exemplary solutions to the root causes of global problems. In addition to presenting the annual award, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation also supports the work of its laureates, particularly those whose lives may be in danger due to the nature of their activities.

On Thursday May 17th, join SJRC Director Jenny Reardon from 9:50am – 11:20am in Social Sciences 2, room 179 for Caring for Prairies: A Conversation with Wes Jackson. Wes Jackson is founder and president emeritus of The Land Institute, a nonprofit science-based research organization working to develop an alternative to current destructive agricultural practices.

Co-Sponsored by the Science and Justice Research Center.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

4:00-6:00 PM

Engineering 2, room 599  (BitO poster) 

Bioengineering is an ascendant and elite field. Advocates of “open” bioengineering propose to expand the participants, methods and scope of practices & ideas for intervening in biology. Drawing on the perceived innovative successes of Silicon Valley, these advocates often promote analogies to computer and information technology to both frame and direct biological engineering’s development as a definitive technology of the twenty-first century. “Bioengineering in the Open” will explore the points of agreement and contention between different versions of “open” bioengineering, including what sources of inspiration and promise they find outside of biotechnology’s conventional borders.

Specifically, the event will compare the versions of “open” biotechnology espoused by a university-based bioengineer and a DIY biohacking collective. Drew Endy, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, promotes the development of standardized biological engineering through the open-source Registry of Standard Biological Parts, working with biological systems to make them more “engineerable.” Oakland-based DIY “biohacking” and citizen science collective Counter Culture Labs compares the innovative powers of community laboratories to the garages that birthed many Silicon Valley startups and emphasizes “democratizing” and “demystifying” biotechnology by taking it outside the ivory towers of universities and research laboratories.

The Science and Justice Working Group will bring these advocates of different visions of “open” bioengineering together to discuss common concerns of innovation, accessibility, and intellectual property. Politics of openness in bioengineering have clear justice implications, as they present cases for who should be allowed to contribute to and benefit from the biology of the future. By shaping bioengineering in the image of computer and information technology, these political visions adopt some familiar models of participation and regulation. This raises some concerns, however: What lessons do these bioengineering advocates take from the less desirable features and outcomes—demographic inequality, monopoly, and information insecurity, for example—of the information technology industry? And does the push to equate biological engineering with computer engineering eclipse features that are unique to working with biomatter, like the ethics or risks of intervening in life forms that grow, mutate, and reproduce?

This working group event aims to discuss the following questions:

• What ends (Knowledge production? Innovation? Profit? Ethics?) do advocates of “open bioengineering” expect it to better serve?
• What does approaching biology as a form of engineering accomplish? What distinguishes “open,” as opposed to “closed,” engineering? What other analogies and metaphors do we have for developing and understanding biotechnology?
• Who does “open” biotechnology help get involved and how? Who should have the right to participate in and benefit from bioengineering? What are the benefits that they receive from open biotechnology?
• What are the risks and responsibilities of “open” bioengineering, and how are they distributed? How does “open bioengineering” anticipate and mitigate its own potential for harm?

Event Host:

Andy Murray, Sociology PhD Candidate and SJRC Graduate Student Researcher

Participants:

Drew Endy, Associate Professor, Stanford University

Patrik D’haeseleer, Co-founder and Chair, Counter Culture Labs

Jenny Reardon, Professor and SJRC Director, UCSC

Co-Sponsored by the UCSC Departments of Biomolecular Engineering; Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and the UCSC Genomics Institute.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018, 3:30-5:30 PM, Humanities 1, Room 210

Responding, as researchers, to Earth Mastery that includes not only violent machines, but a violation of evidence and epistemes including the scientific episteme, requires accumulating and presenting evidence for existences that do not exist — at least, not in neoliberal discourses. In trying to research and support specific situations of Black environmental struggle in South Africa, I find myself standing with that which has no existence in conventional discourses: for a cliff that no longer exists; for molecules that have no existence in local knowledge; for people who have no existence in the mining companies, for the assassinated Bazooka Radebe, whose existence is now with the Ancestors, and with the soil he died to conserve. Environmental Humanities South had begun by asking a question about how to generate evidence in the geological Anthropocene. By the time our first three years had ticked by and we had encountered the Capitalocene, I had learned that a far more fundamental struggle has to be the focus of our work. What exists? Who exists? In what registers and modes? How do we take on the new conquistadors with their machines called Earth Masters, given that it is their owners’ logic that has come to define who exists and what exists and what can be ground to dust? How can scholarship contribute to the building of a broad-based environmental public? Presented as a dilemma tale, this talk sketches six moves toward an ecopolitics in South Africa, with the question: what else could be in this discussion?

Lesley Green | Fulbright Fellow, Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Cape Town; Director of Environmental Humanities South, Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town

Hosted by the IHR Race, Violence, Inequality and the Anthropocene Cluster.

Co-Sponsored by the Science and Justice Research Center and the Anthropology Department.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018, 11:30-1:30 PM, Humanities 1, Room 408

Reading Seminar on #ScienceMustFall and ABC of Plant Medicine: On Posing Cosmopolitical Questions

Email Kristina Lyons (krlyons@ucsc.edu) for the readings.

Lesley Green | Fulbright Fellow, Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Cape Town; Director of Environmental Humanities South, Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town

Hosted by the IHR Race, Violence, Inequality and the Anthropocene Cluster.

Co-Sponsored by the Science and Justice Research Center

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 4:00-5:30pm | SJRC’s Common Room (Oakes 231)

S&J welcomes Katharine Legun, (Sociology Lecturer and Researcher at the Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago NZ) to the Science & Justice community.

At this roundtable, we’ll hear from Katharine who will share an overview on her work in plants and aesthetic politics, farmers and intellectual property, and the ever shifting power structures in agri-food systems. More on Katharine’s fascinating work on how the vibrant botany of apples shapes orchard culture and market institutions can be found here and here.

​Katharine Legun holds a PhD in Sociology from UW-Madison and has worked in New Zealand since 2013. ​She has published in Economy and Society, Geoforum, and Environment and Planning A, and is currently co-editing the Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Her work considers more-than-human approaches to understanding economic and environmental practice, focusing particularly on the role of plants in shaping human agency within agriculture.

This will be a great chance for everyone to connect with the visitors of the Center, learn about their work and foster emerging collaborations! Interested in visiting Science & Justice? Visit our website for more information on the SJRC Visiting Scholar Program.