EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEMS, STATES, AND SPECULATIONS

April 13, 2007
Introduction: 9.00 - 9.15
Panel 1: 9.15 - 11.45 - Experimental Systems

• Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  "Experimental Systems"
• Kim Fortun and Michael Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  "Experimenting with The Asthma Files"
• Paul Dourish, UC Irvine
  "The Virtual World and the Virtual Moment: The Expanding Experimental System of Information"
• Christopher Kelty, Rice University
  "Collective Technical Experiments: Free Software and its Modulations"

Discussant: Dominic Boyer, Cornell University

Lunch: 11.45 - 1.30

Panel 2: 1.30 - 4.00 - Experiment and its Worldly Figurations

• Sheena Nahm, UC Irvine
  "The 'Irreducible Vagueness' of Mental Health"
• Elta Smith, Harvard University
  "A World in a Grain of Rice"
• Sharon Traweek, UCLA
  "Global Futures Exchanges for Imploded Experimental Systems"
• Brian Wynne, Lancaster University
  "Ordering Experimental Contingency: Knowledge / Power and Externalization"

Discussant: Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic University

Coffee: 4.00 - 4.30

Panel 3: 4.30 - 7.00 - Experimental Representations, Socialities and Imaginaries

• Stefan Sperling, Harvard University
  "Making Democracy Work: Social Experiments German-style"
• Timothy Choy, Ohio State University
  "Hong Kong as Experiment"
• Rita Raley, UC Santa Barbara
  "Black Shoals: Speculative Capital and the Visualization of Finance"
• Gabriele Schwab, UC Irvine
  "Imaginary Ethnographies"

Discussant: Michael Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

April 14, 2007

Panel 4: 9.30 - 12.00 - Clinical Trials as Experimental Systems

• Jill Fisher, Arizona State University
  "Coming Soon to a Physician Near You: Medical Neo-liberalism and Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials"
• Joseph Dumit, UC Davis and Kaushik Sunder Rajan, UC Irvine
  "Biocapital, Surplus Health and Clinical Trials: Toward a Health Theory of Value"
• Melinda Cooper, University of East Anglia
  "Clinical Capital: Neo-Liberalism and the Will to Experiment (US and China)"
• Kristin Peterson, Michigan State University
  "The Trials of Tenofovir in Nigeria: Mobilizing Ethics, Markets, and Molecules"

Discussant: Daniel Moshenberg, George Washington University

Lunch: 12.00 - 2.00

Panel 5: 2.00 - 4.30 - Health, Biomedicine and the Neo-liberal Experiment

• Stacey Langwick, Cornell University
  "Moving Away from Traditional Medicine"
• Aihwa Ong, UC Berkeley
  "In a Turbulent Zone"
• Diane Nelson, Duke University
  "Instantiating Experimental State/s: Genocide, Life, and Duplicity in Guatemala"
• Vinh-Kim Nguyen, University of Montreal
  "Experimentality: Massive AIDS Intervention in Africa as Military-Therapeutic Complex"

Discussant: Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz

Discussion, wrap-up: 5.00 - 7.00
Led by:

• Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University
• George Marcus, UC Irvine