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。它聚焦于圣保罗的两个地点，一个是公共实验室的当代网络，另一个是20世纪70-80年代的电子行业，目的是在有关来自全球南方的创新的讨论日益增多的背景下，考察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的边缘做法如何被用来在不断变化的环境中重塑技术发展的主导模式，从而促进当前关于全球视角下的创新、作为一种技术和社会文化现象的即兴创作以及技能和专门知识之间的关系的辩论。该项目的一个关键影响将是通过关注与固定、改变用途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共讨论。它将有助于通过侧重于以社区为导向的创新中心和协作方法，增加代表不足的少数群体在科技、经济、技术和经济领域的参与。研究人员将进行参与者观察、深度采访以及媒体和档案研究，以了解即兴表演是如何被fablab用户、前电子工人、技术活动家、市政机构和政策制定者概念化、使用和重视的。这位研究人员有几个具体的目标。她将研究当全球企业的创新逻辑遇到社会嵌入的即兴经验时会发生什么；这将有助于为STS的新兴文献做出贡献，挑战技术转移和扩散主义创新理论的典型中心到外围箭头。她还计划在技术生产的两个背景下调查即兴创作的做法，一个是在消费电子产品诞生之初，模拟设备的制造受到严格的保护主义；另一个是关注全球化新自由主义时期的数字生产的新形式，这将为将即兴创作作为巴西当代政治经济项目提供一个富有成效的谱系。她还建议将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维度，同时推动规模的讨论。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.