A small farm in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of Colombia. Photo by Kristina Lyons.

The Anthropology and Environment Society has awarded its Junior Scholar Prize to Kristina Lyons

Congratulations to Science & Justice Professor Kristina Lyons!

Lyons, Assistant Professor of Feminist Science Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz was awarded the 2016 AES Junior Scholar award for the article “Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.- Colombia War on Drugs” is published in Cultural Anthropology (Volume 31, Number 1: 55-80) and accompanied in an interview.

The award is given annually to early-career scholars for an exemplary article in the area of environmental anthropology.

Abstract: How is life in a criminalized ecology in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of south- western Colombia? In what way does antinarcotics policy that aims to eradicate la mata que mata (the plant that kills) pursue peace through poison? Relatedly, how do people keep on cultivating a garden, caring for forest, or growing food when at any moment a crop-duster plane may pass overhead, indiscriminately spraying herbicides over entire landscapes? Since 2000, the U.S.–Colombian War on Drugs has relied on the militarized aerial fumigation of coca plants, coupled with alternative development interventions that aim to forcibly eradicate illicit livelihoods. Through ethnographic engagement with small farmers in the frontier department of Putumayo, the gateway to the country’s Amazon and a region that has been the focus of counternarcotic operations, this article explores the different possibilities and foreclosures for life and death that emerge in a tropical forest ecology under military duress. By following farmers, their material practices, and their life philosophies, I trace the ways in which human-soil relations come to potentiate forms of resistance to the violence and criminalization produced by militarized, growth-oriented development. Rather than productivity—one of the central elements of modern capitalist growth— the regenerative capacity of these ecologies relies on organic decay, impermanence, decomposition, and even fragility that complicates modernist bifurcations of living and dying, allowing, I argue, for ecological imaginaries and life processes that do not rely on productivity or growth to strive into existence.

(Image note: A small farm in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of Colombia. Photo by Kristina Lyons.)

Juana Alicia, “La Promesa de Loma Prieta” in the Oakes College Mural Room. Photo by Nolan Calisch for the Collective Museum, with permission.

Call for Action: UCSC community reaffirms commitment to shared #UCSCvalues

The UC Santa Cruz community is committed to social justice. It has rich ties among the arts, natural and social sciences, and humanities. Inquiries based on science-and-fact are supported in a robust natural world. This is our mission.

Read and Sign: a message from the UCSC community reaffirming our shared values

During a time when current political developments appear to threaten this shared mission, the UCSC community pledges to reaffirm their commitment to social justice. Read their message to support each other, their students, and mission.

 

Please share the statement. We invite your signature.

Statement Co-initiators:
  • Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness Dept. Humanities Division, UCSC
  • Karen Barad, Professor, Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness, and Co-director of the Science & Justice Research Center Graduate Training Program, Humanities Division, UCSC
  • Angela Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, Humanities Division, UCSC
  • Beth Shapiro, Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Genomics Institute and Physical and Biological Science Division, UCSC
  • Mark Diekhans, Technical Project Manager, Genomics Institute, Baskin School of Engineering, UCSC
  • John Pearse, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical and Biological Sciences Division, UCSC
  • Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center, Social Sciences Division, UCSC
  • Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Latin American and Latino Studies, Social Sciences Division, UCSC
  • Jennifer González, Professor, History of Arts and Visual Culture, Arts Division, UCSC
  • John Weber, Founding Director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Arts Division, UCSC,
  • Farnaz Fatemi, Lecturer in Writing, UCSC
  • Zia Isola, Director of the UCSC Genomics Institute Office of Diversity Programs and Co-Director of the UCSC Bridge to Doctorate Program, Baskin School of Engineering
  • Anne Callahan, Human Resources Manager, Humanities Division, Retired, Alumni Association Outstanding Staff Award, 2012, UCSC
  • Andrea Hesse, Academic Divisional Computing Director, Humanities Division, UCSC
  • Kimberly TallBear, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People, Technoscience, and Environment, University of Alberta. UCSC PhD 2005

(Image Note: Juana Alicia, “La Promesa de Loma Prieta” in the Oakes College Mural Room. Photo by Nolan Calisch for the Collective Museum, with permission.)

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential Election of Donald Trump: a Statement from the UCSC Science and Justice Research Center

 

 

Dear Science and Justice Friends, Colleagues, Allies and Communities,

Like many of you, all of us at SJRC have been reflecting, re-grouping and gearing up for action in light of the November 2016 US presidential election. We are re-committing to our core values and standing in solidarity with all those threatened by state sanctioned violence and repressive policies. We will work to empower and support students, staff, scholars and scientists through collaborative research and action:

  • We will oppose threats to defund science, the Environmental Protection Agency and other crucial regulatory agencies, healthcare programs, and sanctuary cities.
  • We will oppose the surveillance and targeting of professors (e.g. the Professor Watchlist) and climate scientists, Muslim communities (e.g. the “Muslim Registry”), undocumented immigrants, and community activists from diverse backgrounds and movements.
  • We will support sanctuary campuses and safe spaces at UCSC, defend academic freedom in and beyond universities, academic freedom, oppose censorship and provide a platform for the views and research of our affiliates to create broad impacts across multiple audiences.
  • We will continue to draw on our critical resources as feminist decolonial anti-racist science studies scholars to re-claim and enrich our commitments to objectivity, truth and social and environmental justice. In the face of “fake news”, climate denialism, new instantiations of eugenics, and all efforts to de-legitimize and de-fund science, we will fight for situated, robust and responsive inquiry and critical engagement. We will work to make our concepts/categories adequate for the present moment.
  • We will build a public archive of the dismantlement of knowledge production, critical regulatory institutions, and healthcare and environmental infrastructures. We will track the efforts afoot to dismantle the EPA, repeal the ACA and privatize Medicare, and the attacks made against individual scientists, institutions, and disciplines.
  • We will support our graduate and undergraduate students in pursuing “seedling” research and community action projects that can rapidly and flexibly respond to the problems, questions, and mobilizations that are most urgent.
  • We will fight against racism, white supremacy, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, ablism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and misogyny, and assaults on poor and historically marginalized people both here in the US and worldwide.
  • We will continue to work from a place of caring response-ability, mutual support and fierce solidarity.

President Napolitano, Chancellor Blumenthal and members of the California Legislature have made statements to affirm their commitments to inclusion and diversity, and in particular in support of undocumented members of our UC community. We offer our unqualified support for all undocumented communities in California, and in particular support the UC’s commitment to the privacy and civil rights of everyone in our community. We stand with these leaders, and we promise to hold ourselves accountable when our actions and policies fall short.

In solidarity,

Science and Justice Research Center leadership, staff and faculty-affiliates

#UCSCvalues

Kate Weatherford Darling, joins SJRC as Assistant Director of Research and Academic Programs

Katherine (Kate) Weatherford Darling is a sociologist working across the boundaries of the sociology of health, illness and disability, and feminist science studies. Kate is currently a Doctoral Candidate at UC San Francisco. She first joined the Science and Justice Research Center as a Visiting Scholar and a Graduate Student Researcher in 2015 and worked with the SJRC team to plan the Just Data? conference held May 2016 at UCSC.

Kate cares about bringing social justice and health inequalities to the center of discussions about the ethics and politics of biomedicine. Her research examines how chronic illness and complex disease are transformed by biomedical science and health policy in the U.S. In her forthcoming dissertation (2016), she asks what it means for HIV to be defined, managed and experienced as a chronic illness in U.S. healthcare and policy. She ethnographically traces how people living with HIV and their healthcare providers are navigating biomedical bureaucracies, grappling with new insurance markets and attempting to control healthcare costs. Adele Clarke, Janet Shim, Howard Pinderhughes and Jenny Reardon serve on her dissertation committee. She will be in residence at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland in Winter 2017 to extend her research into a book project.

Kate began her training in at UC Berkeley in the College of Natural Resources, where she studied Molecular Environmental Biology and volunteered at a feminist health clinic. She studied abroad in Santiago, Chile and then investigated the health effects of air pollution in New York City at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health.

While a graduate student, she collaborated on research projects at UCSF and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Through these collaborations, she has examined concepts of race/ethnicity in gene-environment interaction research, the history of race in genetics after World War II, and new frameworks for examining implicated values in biomedical research. Information on her current papers and upcoming presentations are available on academia.edu and Twitter @kwdetal.

Kate grew up in Santa Cruz County and lives in San Francisco with her family. She enjoys swimming, hiking, camping, gardening and making beer. Her parents are very proud UCSC alumni.

book

Call for Undergraduate Individual Study (2016-2017)

 

The SJRC will host up to 4 Individual Study students to collaborate on research papers and proposals as well as Center events and programming for the academic year. Students can also work on senior thesis projects related to Center Themes (Genomics, Data Justice, Climate Justice) and/or assist SJRC Graduate Training Program Fellows in planning and organizing events. The Individual Study course, can range from 2-5 units, be independent or group and will include directed readings, guided independent and collaborative research and project planning.

Interested in the Intersections of Science and Justice?

Want to Develop Collaborative Research or Public Events?  

 

Available Fall 2016

Just Data – assist in editing and analyzing transcripts from the Just Data meeting.

Diversity and Equity in STEM – assist with research on current individual and institutional leaders, model programs within the UC system and beyond, conduct a literature review on best practices, available curricula or training modules, assist with conducting informational interviews with key institutional leaders in the field

Third Street Project – assist with research on current community organizations and past story-telling or history exhibits in Bay View Hunter’s Point, conduct historical research on key buildings and institutions along the Third St. corridor (e.g. Genentech Hall, UCSF Mission Bay Complex, Illumina, Bay View Opera House, South East Health Clinic, New Generations Clinic, Building 80 at SFGH), assist in developing interview protocol and media release for digital story-telling and photo-voice project, conduct research on the history of labor relations at UCSF and UC Medical Centers, assist in creating a web-presence for the Third St. Collaborative.

 

Available Winter / Spring 2017

Fair Healthcare Pricing Project – help with assembling a literature review on healthcare pricing, financial literacy and medical debt in the U.S., conduct historical research on the Orphan Drug Act, assist in developing a pilot interview-based research protocol.

Find ways undergraduates can get involved in Science and Justice research. Apply no later than the Monday of Week 1 and email a writing sample to scijust@ucsc.edu.

SJTP fellow awarded AAUW fellowship

Congratulations to Science and Justice Training Program Fellow and past Graduate Student Researcher, Lizzy Hare (Anthropology), for being awarded a 2016-2017 fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

Read the full story here.

More on Lizzy’s research can be found here.

Job Announcement: SJRC Assistant Director

UC Santa Cruz: Assistant Director of Research and Academic Programs

(Job# JPF00358-16T)

Oakes AD Advertisement

The Science and Justice Research Center (SJRC), affiliated with the Department of Sociology, at the University of California, Santa Cruz is pleased to announce an Assistant Director of Research and Academic Programs position.

The SJRC brings together faculty and graduate students from across all divisions of the University to address contemporary problems that entangle questions of science and knowledge with those of ethics and justice. Reporting to the Director, the Assistant Director (AD) will contribute to SJRC’s efforts to foster a new domain of research, teaching and institution building in science and justice. Possible related areas of research and teaching might include biodata and society, ecology and justice, environmental modeling and environmental politics, and technoscience and difference. The AD will:

  • develop the Center’s research profile through grant-writing and building research programs that reflect the Center’s research foci
  • develop the Center’s public profile
  • develop and teach up to two classes per academic year and help implement the Science and Justice Graduate Training program curriculum
  • develop collaborations with affiliated researchers, Centers, and Institutes both on and off-campus
  • publish or present one academic article annually.

Basic Qualifications: Ph.D. or foreign equivalent degree in Science and Technology Studies or closely allied field, expected to be conferred by April 1, 2017. Demonstrated record of research, teaching and grant writing in higher education.

Preferred Qualifications: Evidence of developed research profile or trajectory sufficient to meet the job responsibilities; demonstrated experience in institution-building e.g. developing institutional linkages and forging consensus; capacity to develop long-term visions including three-year plans for fundraising and academic output; training in a field of science or engineering; demonstration of interdisciplinary collaboration; demonstration of national and international leadership potential; experience working with social media platforms.

To Apply: Applications accepted via the UCSC Academic Recruit online system must include letter of application, curriculum vitae, three reference letters*, sample of published material, sample of a submitted grant proposal, statement of teaching pedagogy, and sample of course syllabus in area of research. Optional: applicants are invited to submit a statement addressing past and/or potential contributions to diversity through research, teaching, and/or service. Optional: evidence of teaching excellence, provide a link in your curriculum vitae or letter of application to an audio/video of a public presentation in digital format. Materials must be submitted in PDF format unless stated otherwise.

To apply, visit: https://recruit.ucsc.edu/apply/JPF00358

POSITION AVAILABLE: July 1, 2016; with the academic year beginning September 17, 2016. Initial review date is May 20, 2016.

For more information about this recruitment, visit: http://apo.ucsc.edu/academic_employment/jobs/JPF00358-16T.pdf or contact scijust@ucsc.edu. Please refer to Position #JPF00358-16T in all correspondence.

For more information about this position, please see the Job Description.