Past Events

May 4, 2021 | Book launch! Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement & Resistance (PM Press, 2021)

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On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:30pm–7:00pm, there was a University Forum to celebrate the launch of Counterpoints featuring original research from multiple campus contributors including SJRC’s Just Biomedicine research cluster and the No Place Like Home initiative.
A recording can be found on YouTube.
Grid with plant roots

Book cover for Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (PM Press)

Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (PM Press, forthcoming) brings together cartography, essays, illustrations, poetry, and more in order to depict gentrification and resistance struggles from across the San Francisco Bay Area and act as a roadmap to counter-hegemonic knowledge making and activism.

Learn More about Counterpoints.

About the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP) is a data visualization, critical cartography, and multimedia storytelling collective that documents displacement and resistance struggles on gentrifying landscapes. With chapters in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Los Angeles, the collective works with numerous community partners and housing justice networks in order to provide data, maps, stories, and tools for resisting displacement. AEMP has produced hundreds of maps, oral histories, and multimedia pieces, as well as dozens of community events and reports, and numerous academic and public facing articles, book chapters, and murals. AEMP’s work has been presented in a variety of venues, from art galleries and collectives to neighborhood block parties, from academic colloquia and conferences to community workshops and book fairs.

Erin McElroy is a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s AI Now Institute, researching the digital platforms and technologies used by landlords in order to surveil, evict, and racialize tenants. Erin is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and coeditor of its forthcoming atlas, Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance. Having earned a doctoral degree in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on the politics of space, race, and technology in and between postsocialist Romania and post-Cold War Silicon Valley, Erin is invested in transnational analyses and international solidarity organizing for housing, racial, and technological justice. To this end, Erin is a founding editor of the Radical Housing Journal, an open access transdisciplinary journal supporting the work of housing justice globally.

Adrienne Hall is a PhD student in Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her master’s degree in public health at San Francisco State University. Adrienne has been with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project since 2016, and she is a co-editor of the Health and Environmental Justice chapter of the Atlas.

Campus Contributors:

The Science & Justice Research Center’s Just Biomedicine research cluster, overseen by Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon with Katherine Weatherford Darling (University of Maine), contributed a chapter titled: ‘Just Biomedicine on Third Street? Health and Wealth Inequities in San Francisco’s Biotech Hub.’ This chapter examines the different visions for health and healthcare that have been imagined and practiced along the Third Street corridor. At the north end stands Mission Bay, a newly revitalized neighborhood centered around UCSF’s biomedical campus and a biotechnology ecosystem. Just three miles south along Third Street, however, stands Bayview-Hunters Point, which remains one of the city’s most marginalized communities, home to a disproportionate disease burden and struggling public health clinics. This project brings into view for public discussion the effects of the resulting financial and ideological investments in an imagined “future of medicine,” and how they are changing the political landscapes, built environments, and health of Bay Area residents right now.

Undergraduate and Graduate Student Researchers and Alumni: Wessede Barrett (Politics), Dennis Browe (Sociology), Emily Caramelli (Sociology Politics), Amy Coffin (Neuroscience, Philosophy), Hannah Finegold (Biology, Law & Society), Laura Lopez, Emma Mitchell-Sparke (Tufts University), Andy Murray (Sociology), Nikobi Petronelli (Feminist Studies).

The Transportation, Infrastructure, and Economy contribution by Kristin Miller (Sociology). 

Kristin Miller is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at UC Santa Cruz with a Designated Emphasis in Film & Digital Media, and has an MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU. Her research concerns the role of Silicon Valley futurism in reshaping the Bay Area, and she studies cities, environmentalism, and technology, with interests in science-fiction film and TV, and Utopian Studies.

The No Place Like Home project overseen by Sociology Professors Steve McKay and Miriam Greenberg contributed a visual summary and map from their large-scale study of the affordable housing crisis for Santa Cruz County tenants. The map helps amplify how the uneven geography and demography of the county is reflected in (and by) inequalities on critical issues such as rent burden, over-crowding, and forced moves and evictions. The survey results also provide a springboard for the study’s wider discussion of local and regional policy options in addressing the housing crisis, particularly for renters.

Hosted by:

University Relations

Co-Sponsored by:

The Science & Justice Research Center, The UC Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation, The Humanities Institute, the Genomics Institute, and departments of Sociology and Feminist Studies.

April 30, 2021 | Book Launch! How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens

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On Friday, April 30, 2021 from 12:00pm–1:00pm PDT, S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Sociology Hillary Angelo, joined in conversation with Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Neil Brenner, and Claudio Benzecry to discuss and celebrate the launch of her book, How Green Became Good:Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens.

The book is available at: The University of Chicago Press (use discount code UCPSOC for 20% off)

About the Book and Conversationalists

Abstract greens

Book Cover for Hillary Angelo’s How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2021)

As projects like Manhattan’s High Line, Chicago’s 606, China’s eco-cities, and Ethiopia’s tree-planting efforts show, cities around the world are devoting serious resources to urban greening. Formerly neglected urban spaces and new high-end developments draw huge crowds thanks to the considerable efforts of city governments. But why are greening projects so widely taken up, and what good do they do? In How Green Became Good, Hillary Angelo uncovers the origins and meanings of the enduring appeal of urban green space, showing that city planners have long thought that creating green spaces would lead to social improvement. Turning to Germany’s Ruhr Valley (a region that, despite its ample open space, was “greened” with the addition of official parks and gardens), Angelo shows that greening is as much a social process as a physical one. She examines three moments in the Ruhr Valley’s urban history that inspired the creation of new green spaces: industrialization in the late nineteenth century, postwar democratic ideals of the 1960s, and industrial decline and economic renewal in the early 1990s. Across these distinct historical moments, Angelo shows that the impulse to bring nature into urban life has persistently arisen as a response to a host of social changes, and reveals an enduring conviction that green space will transform us into ideal inhabitants of ideal cities. Ultimately, however, she finds that the creation of urban green space is more about how we imagine social life than about the good it imparts. 

Hillary Angelo is Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliated with the SJRC at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Claudio Benzecry is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and the author of The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry (forthcoming 2021).

Neil Brenner is the Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Chicago. His most recent books are New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question (Oxford, 2019) and Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays (Bauwelt Fundamente, 2016), as well as the edited volume Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization (Jovis, 2014).

Robin Wagner-Pacifici is a University Professor affiliated with the Department of Sociology at The New School for Social Research. She is the author of a number of books, most recently What is an Event? (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End (2005).

April 7, 2021 | Book launch! Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes (U. Minn Press)

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Clear blood vile with red cap against yellow background

Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes. U Minn Press, March 2021.

On Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 5:30pm–7:00pm, there was a University Forum to celebrate the launch of Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes (U. Minn Press) by Assistant Professor of Sociology and Interim SJRC Director (fall 2020) James Doucet-Battle’s new book that challenges assumptions about race within diabetes research and delves into the issue through the lens of African American experience.

Learn more in this campus news article, “Uncovering the social factors lurking within diabetes risk.”

With opening remarks and general welcome by Science & Justice Research Center Founding Director and Professor of Sociology Jenny Reardon and introductions and moderation by Nancy Chen (Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean for Health, Wellbeing and Society), we aim to gather in the spirit of celebrating Sweetness in the Blood’s launch, broadening the discussion of race and risk, and supporting the work of the UC Santa Cruz Science & Justice Research Center.

Nancy Chen is Professor of Anthropology, Associate Dean for Health, Wellbeing and Society at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

James Doucet-Battle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. He applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities.

Edward T. Hawthorne founder and managing partner of CE3 Solutions, LLC, serves as Chief Administrative Officer.  Prior to CE3 Solutions, Hawthorne had a 33 year career with Bank of America holding various senior executive positions covering technology, operational risk, and customer servicing worldwide. He is currently Vice Chairman of the board for the Diabetes Leadership Council, and serves on the Emeritus Council for the American Diabetes Association, and the board of directors for Children with Diabetes. He is also past Chairman of the National Board of Directors for the American Diabetes Association.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her 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. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

Co-Sponsored by University Relations, the Science & Justice Research Center, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Sociology Department.

Spring Science & Justice Writing Together

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Writing Together sessions will take place during Spring 2021 quarter on Thursdays, 10 – 12noon!

Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99790295741

Meeting ID: 997 9029 5741; PW: 246

Wanting to establish a regular writing routine exploring science and justice?

Beginning, Thursday April 1st, join SJRC scholars every Thursday of spring term from 10:00am-12noon for open writing sessions! Open to all students, faculty, researchers, staff, and visiting scholars.

We will continue to schedule quarterly writing sessions based on interest and availability.

For more information or to express interest contact SJRC Graduate Student Researcher Dennis Browe (sociology) with your spring availability.

March 9, 2021 | V is For Veracity: a University Forum

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On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 5:30pm–7:00pm PST, there was a University Forum featuring SJRC Founding Director and Professor of Sociology Jenny Reardon with introductions and Q&A moderation by Assistant Professor of Sociology James Doucet-Battle.

A recording is available on YouTube.

Learn More

Co-Sponsored by University Relations, the Science & Justice Research Center, the Institute for Social Transformation, and the Sociology Department.

Feb 24, 2021 | Works-in-Progress with Tamara Pico

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On Wednesday, February 24, 2021 (4:00 PM – 5:30 PM) SJRC welcomed scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This was a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work. At this session, we heard from Science & Justice affiliate, postdoctoral scholar, and incoming Assistant Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences Tamara Pico who discussed her interests in understanding how practices in 19th century early U.S. geology continue to shape the culture and values in geoscience today. In this research, Tamara asks how modern fieldwork mimic 19th century practices in geology, rooted in imperialism and colonialism. In addition, Tamara explores the role of scientific racism in shaping geology as a discipline, exposing foundational U.S. geologists’ involvement in studies of racial typology.

Read this Scientific American article: The Darker Side of John Wesley Powell.

More on Tamara’s work can be found at: https://tamarapico.github.io//.

Rapporteur Report by Dennis Browe

We are delighted to welcome our new Science & Justice affiliate, Tamara Pico! Dr. Pico is a postdoctoral scholar and incoming Assistant Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences who researches ice sheets, landscapes, and the social cultural histories of the geosciences. While completing her PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, she also focused on a secondary field in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, making her fit right into our culture here of fostering transdisciplinary conversations and projects centered around justice and the sciences.

At her Works-in-Progress talk on February 24, 2021, titled “Linking Past to Present in a Postcolonial Field Science: Towards Critical Studies in US Geology,” Dr. Pico discussed the ways in which scientific racism was embedded in 19th century early U.S. geology (during the founding of the discipline) and how many of these assumptions and practices continue to shape the culture and values of geoscience today. Beginning with the story of John Wesley Powell, who led the 1869 Powell Expedition—the first U.S. government-sponsored expedition through the Colorado River into the grand canyon—Dr. Pico described how racist ideologies shaped the work of major figures in the field. For example, Powell wrote about finding ways to prove the inferior, “barbaric” status of the Ute people inhabiting the canyonlands and indigenous peoples more broadly, and wrote government reports recommending Native American assimilation.

After offering further examples of the racist assumptions baked into the work of leading early geologists, Dr. Pico discussed how these assumptions motivated earth system studies — they are not peripheral to the field but have always been a core part of studying the earth system. She then asked: What parts of those practices from 19th century geology do geoscientists still have and use today? Through “Linking past to present in a postcolonial field science,” she discussed some ways these early frameworks of scientific racism still show up today: 1) through concepts of “the outdoors” and undergraduate recruitment; and 2) through the absence of historical knowledge of the field’s original links to racism, imperialism, and colonialism in standard undergraduate geology programs.

During the question & answer session, the conversation took a number of turns, illustrating the importance of beginning to build a historical knowledge base to educate those entering the discipline. Participants discussed geology’s understanding of and approach to climate change; the field’s deep ties to the oil industry; the literal clothes and outfits worn by geoscientists conducting fieldwork; and conducting research projects in conjunction with local communities as full research partners and beneficiaries of the knowledge created. The meeting ended with a  provocative question: to shift training practices in the geosciences, is it enough to simply include the racist and masculinist history of the field when teaching undergraduates, or might there be a need to more fundamentally shift geological and ontological ways of knowing the earth’s materiality and its systems? After the participants offered multiple perspectives on this question, Dr. Pico remarked that she is inspired by the many ways that people know and can sense the earth, which she believes that geologists are now starting to grapple with more seriously.

Dr. Pico is currently collaborating on a project related to training geoscientists: GeoContext

Winter Science & Justice Writing Together

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Writing Together sessions will take place during winter 2021 quarter on Thursdays, 10 – 12noon!

Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99790295741?pwd=NXk4OWlMeWVnZ3JQYi95UzRrdlBpUT09

Meeting ID: 997 9029 5741; PW: 246

Wanting to establish a regular writing routine exploring science and justice?

Beginning, Thursday January 21st, join SJRC scholars during winter term for open writing sessions! Open to all students, faculty, researchers, staff, and visiting scholars.

We will continue to schedule quarterly writing sessions based on interest and availability.

For more information or to express interest contact SJRC Graduate Student Researcher Dennis Browe (sociology).

October 28, 2020 | Works-in-Progress with Guthman, Fairbairn, Reisman

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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Zoom link

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work.

At this session, we will hear from Professor of Social Sciences Julie Guthman, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Madeleine Fairbairn and Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), Emily Reisman who will be discussing their research on the emerging Silicon Valley-based agri-food tech sector and its aspirations to address the major challenges of food systems.

More information can be found at: https://afterproject.sites.ucsc.edu/.

 

Rapporteur’s Report

By Dennis Browe

During this Works in Progress talk, Science & Justice colleagues Julie Guthman, Madeleine Fairbairn, and Emily Reisman showcased their work: The UC AFTeR Project: A California Agri-Food Technology Research Collaboration. The project inquires into Silicon Valley’s imaginaries and projects that make grand promises for a technologically advanced future of food production, distribution, and consumption, asking what problems they aim to solve and what kind of food system futures they envision. Importantly, this project also focuses on highlighting the material processes that otherwise become black-boxed and hidden from public view during Food Tech and Ag Tech endeavors.

For example, Guthman offered examples of website advertising by some of these companies, which feature cartoonishly simple depictions of what are actually hyper-complex biotechnology processes which bring alternative proteins into being (hundreds of these alternative proteins are currently being developed and brought to market). She noted that while many of these agri-food technologies might make a positive impact in food systems, there remain real, unanswered questions about what bringing these alternative proteins to scale might look like ecologically.

Reisman focused on how burgeoning agri-food tech gets linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, paying particular attention to the Silicon Valley narrative about needing to invest in innovation, through two technologies of automation and supply chains. She noted how issues of politics and labor similarly become obfuscated through the innovation narrative, such that innovation through digitization as a crisis response tool becomes an unquestioned public good. Yet, Reisman noted, the unproven assumption in this narrative is that new technologies, despite being designed for vastly different purposes than public health or crisis response, will naturally flow toward these purposes – and that can be misleading if not dangerous. Instead, the AFTeR Project aims to spark open dialogue on the specific ways in which innovative agri-food technologies might – and might not – be able to contribute to COVID-19-focused public health responses.

Fairbairn then critically analyzed what she referred to as “the major communicative genre of this Silicon Valley culture: the pitch,” to see what it can tell us about Silicon Valley’s foray into agri-food technologies. The pitch has at least four required components: the problem, the solution, the market, and the business plan. One of their findings upon analyzing dozens of agri-food tech pitches is that while many pitches promise to help solve a grand problem – such as global hunger or climate change – through disruptive technological innovation, these agri-food tech startups almost always end up losing their ‘world-changing’ potential as they grapple with the real-world economic, cultural, and material configuration of food and agriculture. These startups tend to reintegrate into standard business plans, as they are required to work with large corporations to bring their ideas to fruition.

Guthman, Fairbairn, and Reisman continue to present their work and findings in numerous venues, sparking needed conversation about the content and effects of these Silicon Valley agri-food tech imaginaries and how these projects will help shape industrial food systems for years to come. This project keeps vital questions front-and-center so that issues of politics, labor, ecology, and justice do not become invisibilized within the magical silver-bullet style of outcomes advertised – the grand promises made – by agri-food tech.

Fall Science & Justice Writing Together

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Thursday’s 9:00AM-11:00AM PST

(Zoom link) Meeting ID: 949 2647 3182; Passcode: 075587

Wanting to establish a regular writing routine exploring science and justice? Beginning October 22, join SJRC scholars every Thursday of fall term from 9:00AM-11:00AM for open writing sessions! Engage in six 25-minute writing sessions (with a 5 minute break in between). Open to all students, faculty, researchers, staff, and visiting scholars.

We will continue to schedule quarterly writing sessions based on interest and availability. For more information or to express interest for Winter 2021 (including days/times of the week that work for you), please contact SJRC Graduate Student Researcher Dennis Browe (sociology).

October 14, 2020 | Meet & Greet

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On Wednesday, October 14, 2020, Zoom Registration, SJRC hosted a beginning of term social hour. In addition to a chance to celebrate the new academic year and enjoy each other’s company, we welcomed new members of our community, and welcomed back others.
The SJRC annual Meet & Greet is a great chance for everyone to meet and foster emerging collaborations! Attendees were highly encouraged to bring and share their objects of study as it is a fun and helpful way to find intersecting areas of interest. Some previous objects shared have been: soil samples, a piece of the Berlin wall, bamboo, newly launched books, a stick, human blood, a human liver, and food.

Joining us for this was our 10th anniversary cohort of Science & Justice Training Program graduate fellows: Jonas Oppenheimer (Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics), and Jenny Pensky (Earth & Planetary Sciences) who will be available to discuss their project exploring the relationships between “invasive” plants, botanical gardens, and colonialism.

Also joining us were graduate and undergraduate student interns in the Pandemicene Project and Theorizing Race After Race groups who have co-created a zine, and podcast series, based on interviews with SJRC’s robust network of local and international public health experts, scholars, and practitioners. Each new episode airs Sunday evenings, 6:30 – 7 pm, on KZSC Santa Cruz.

We also welcomed new affiliates Kathleen Gutierrez (History) who broadly centers plant species and the plant sciences in modern Philippine and Southeast Asian history; and Tamara Pico (Earth and Planetary Sciences) who explores how social conventions and cultural practices affect women and underrepresented minorities in the geosciences, Tamara will teach on topics related to the geosciences, feminist science studies and the social studies of science.

We took time to celebrate the recent release of Madeleine Fairbairn’s book Fields of Gold, Financing the Global Land Rush, Lesley Green’s book Rock | Water | Life: Ecology and Humanities for a Decolonising South Africa and micha cardenas’ augmented reality game, Sin Sol (No Sun). As well as the forthcoming launches of Feminist Studies graduate Erin McElroy’s Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance that includes a chapter from our Just Biomedicine research cluster titled ‘Just Biomedicine on Third Street? Health and Wealth Inequities in SF’s Biotech Hub’; Sociology Assistant Professor Hillary Angelo’s new book, How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens; and James Doucet-Battle’s launch of Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes.

Faculty interested in science and justice who want to learn more about SJRC, or would like to affiliate with Science & Justice are highly encouraged to be in contact with Colleen Stone or a project leader.