Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Empirical Study of Technological Improvisation

这个博士论文研究项目是对巴西即兴创作和技术生产之间关系的历史和民族志调查。它侧重于圣保罗的两个地点，一个是当代的公共工厂网络，另一个是20世纪70年代至80年代的电子工业，其目的是在全球南方关于创新的讨论日益增多的背景下，研究即兴创作的重新配置。这项工作将阐明通常被认为是尖端技术生产外围的做法如何被用来在不断变化的背景下重塑技术发展的主导模式，促进当前关于全球视角下创新的辩论，即兴创作作为一种技术和社会文化现象，以及技能和专业知识之间的关系。该项目的一个关键影响将是通过参与与修复，重新利用和创造技术相关的即兴技术技能的培养，扩大关于可持续和包容性技术的学术和公众讨论。它将通过关注面向社区的创新中心和协作方法，提高代表性不足的少数群体对STEM的参与。它还将为贸易、工业和社会政策领域的政府和非政府专业人士提供宝贵的材料。研究人员将进行参与者观察、深入采访以及媒体和档案研究，以了解即兴创作是如何被概念化的。fablab用户、前电子工人、技术活动家、市政代理人和政策制定者的使用和重视。研究人员有几个具体的目标。她将研究当全球企业创新逻辑与社会嵌入的即兴体验相遇时会发生什么;这将有助于为STS中的新兴文献做出贡献，挑战技术转让和扩散主义创新理论的典型中心到外围箭头。她还计划调查即兴创作的技术生产的两个背景下，一个在消费电子产品的开始，其中模拟设备的制造是在严格的保护主义;另一个专注于数字生产的新形式在全球化的新自由主义的时刻，这将提供一个富有成效的家谱思考即兴作为当代巴西的政治经济项目。她还建议将联合收割机人种学方法与强大的历史框架相结合，以便能够为技术研究提供文化层面，同时也促进了规模的讨论。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This doctoral dissertation research project is a historical and ethnographic investigation of the relationship between improvisation and technological production in Brazil. It focuses on two sites in Sao Paulo, a contemporary network of public fablabs and the 1970s-80s electronics industry, and its aim is to examine the reconfiguration of improvisation in the context of growing discussions about innovation from the global South. This work will shed light on how practices commonly considered peripheral to sophisticated technological production have been used to remake dominant models of technological development across changing contexts, contributing to current debates on innovation in a global perspective, improvisation as a technical and sociocultural phenomenon, and the relationship between skill and expertise. A key impact of this project will be to expand academic and public discussions about sustainable and inclusive technologies by attending to the cultivation of improvisational technical skills associated with fixing, repurposing, and creating technologies. It will serve to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM through its focus on community-oriented innovation hubs and collaborative methodologies. It will also provide valuable material for governmental and nongovernmental professionals working in the fields of trade, industrial, and social policy.The researcher will conduct participant observation, in-depth interviews, and media and archival research to understand how improvisation has been conceptualized, used, and valued by fablab users, former electronics workers, technoactivists, municipal agents, and policymakers. The researcher has several specific goals. She will examine what happens when global corporate logics of innovation meet socially embedded experiences of improvisation; this will facilitate contributing to an emergent literature in STS that challenges the typical center-to-periphery arrows of technology transfer and diffusionist innovation theories. She also plans to investigate practices of improvisation in two contexts of technological production, one at the beginning of consumer electronics, where the manufacturing of analog devices was under strict protectionism; the other focusing on new forms of digital production in the globalized neoliberal moment, which will provide a productive genealogy for thinking about improvisation as a contemporary political-economic project in Brazil. She also proposes to combine ethnographic approaches with a robust historical framework to be able to provide a cultural dimension to the study of technology while also advancing discussions of scale.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.