Margarita Rayzberg

Jasanoff and Hilgartner present CompCoRe findings at Harvard’s STS Summer School

In a session on STS in the World, Jasanoff and Hilgartner discussed how country-specific social compacts express shared expectations of proper relations among citizens, the state, and experts, exploring how modern social compacts shaped national responses to the pandemic.

Tooze presents his new book, Shutdown, in conversation with Hilgartner and Jasanoff, moderated by Özgöde

Historian Adam Tooze (Columbia University) discussed his forthcoming book, Shutdown, at the first STS@Tea, a new series of occasional events co-organized by Harvard STS and CompCoRe. Using a critical macro-finance framework, he examined how the Federal Reserve’s emergency interventions in the US Treasury market in early 2020 made lockdowns possible throughout the world. Hilgartner and Jasanoff engaged with Tooze’s global perspective from a comparative STS perspective, arguing that the nation state was the key unit of analysis for understanding why many wealthy nations failed to control the virus. Despite their orthogonal perspectives, the consensus was that economic resources were necessary but not sufficient to manage the pandemic. The event was moderated by Özgöde.

Jasanoff speaks at opening night of Science Gallery Bengaluru exhibition

Sheila Jasanoff gave a keynote lecture titled “Control, Consensus, Chaos: The Global Response to the Pandemic” at the opening night of CONTAGION, an online exhibition that explores the transmission of emotions, behaviours and diseases. The lecture drew on CompCoRe findings and how they might inform our understanding of the human impacts of the pandemic. Science Gallery Bengaluru organized the exhibition.

Jasanoff advises NASEM on pandemic preparedness

Sheila Jasanoff spoke on “Social and Political Context of Preparedness” at the first meeting of the Influenza Public Health Interventions Committee at National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Her talk counseled the committee on priorities for analyzing the COVID-19 pandemic and related events. The committee is tasked with strengthening non-vaccine measures for seasonal and pandemic influenza.

Jasanoff speaks on Covid and migration to geographers at the University of Cologne

Sheila Jasanoff was the guest at a session of Amrita Datta’s Corona Conversations series on Mobility and Migration. She discussed the unequal impacts of the pandemic on working people under the title “Between the Virus and the Vaccine: The Comparative Politics of Public Health Sovereignty.”

Juraku and Sato discuss Fukushima and COVID-19 on KAIST podcast

STS scholars Kohta Juraku and Kyoko Sato, both on the CompCoRe Japan team, joined podcast host Scott Knowles and other STS scholars for a conversation about Covid and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster on 10th anniversary of the triple disaster.

Hilgartner, Hurlbut, and Jasanoff publish policy forum in Science

Stephen Hilgartner, Benjamin Hurlbut, and Sheila Jasanoff argue that US discourse about lack of trust in science needs to be reframed and show that treating political disagreements as being mainly about evidence undermines democracy. They also propose ways to build a more progressive politics of science.

Brazilian team publishes an analysis of vaccine politics in Brazil

The piece, which addresses disputes over the authorization and rollout of vaccines, appeared in Backchannels, the Society for Social Studies of Science blog. The post links anti-vaccine sentiment to political rupture between João Doria, São Paulo’s governor, and President Jair Bolsonaro.

All Teams Meeting #7 takes place on Zoom

CompCoRe held its seventh All Teams meeting. Participants presented updates on their countries and discussed national controversies surrounding vaccination.

Author: Margarita Rayzberg