Noémi Tousignant on Future Directions of STS in Africa

Noémi Tousignant (March 13, 2018): "Scholars seem to be growing more interested in experimentation as a technology of development. The idea of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are being extended to other types of development interventions that aren’t necessarily about science and tech. Experimental techniques if you will. So, shifting interests from STS to another group of scholars. Biometrics seems to be emerging quite strongly. I was just invited to a conference in Dakar on biometrics and registration from scholars that wouldn’t call themselves STS per say. Microdevices is also a new emergent topic. There was a recent special issue in Limn on development via microdevices. That also brings an STS to critical work on development along with older and historical interest in infrastructure. The whole infrastructure turn has brought an STS perspective to broader more political econ topics. Guillaume Lachenal and Aissatou Mbodj-Pouye co-edited a special issue on nostalgia and development and obviously technology looms large in that kind of work.