On 25 May, we are delighted to host Steve Hinchliffe from the University of Exeter. Join us for the talk at 14:15–15:45 at Unioninkatu 35, room 113.

Regulating Antimicrobial Resistance: Virtual Consumers, Poultry and the Audit Lock-in

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. Food production and farming account for well over half of annual global consumption of antimicrobials, with the result that the sector’s potential to contribute to AMR is large even if its role in resistance emergence and transmission is subject to uncertainty. Acting in a climate of potential rather than demonstrable threats requires social and technical innovation. In this paper we engage with the role of market actors, or virtual consumers, and associated devices in the precautionary regulation of farming practices and AMR threats. The paper takes the UK poultry sector as exemplary of a device- and audit-led process that has achieved notable and impressive reductions in antimicrobial uses. Using qualitative interview data with farmers and veterinarians we chart the changing farming, diagnostic and health practices that have accompanied this reduction in routine treatments. Contrary to some commentators, we use this analysis to raise some cautions around audit-led systems of regulation. Audits can lock farms and animals into particular versions of farming and animal health; they can produce distortions and elevate otherwise harmful compensatory practices; and they can reproduce an actuarial approach to an issue that may not fit the conventions of risk management. The paper presents the considerable successes that have been achieved over a short period of time in a livestock sector, while generating significant notes of caution concerning the manageability of livestock related AMR threats.

Steve Hinchliffe is a Geographer and Social Scientist at the University of Exeter, UK, with specialisms in science and technology studies, risk, health and human-nonhuman relations. He has published widely on issues of food, risk, biosecurity, contagion and nature/cultures. His recent books include the monograph Pathological Lives (Wiley Blackwell), which pioneered a situated approach to human and animal health, the edited volume Humans, Animals and Biopolitics and the monograph Geographies of Nature. He is currently working on socio-economic approaches to antimicrobial resistance, the social production of microbiomes and public participation and public as well as planetary health. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has served from 2017-2023 as a member of the UK Government’s DEFRA Social Science Expert Group and continues to work on its Scientific Advisory Committee on Exotic Diseases. He currently co-leads the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Network on Microbes and Society, and acts as a steering group member on the GW4 (Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter universities) initiative on One Health and Antimicrobial Resistance. He is currently a member of, principal investigator and has previously co-directed the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.

For the March instalment of our seminar series, we will be joined by Aaro Tupasela. The talk will be held at Metsätalo, Unioninkatu 40, room 18 on 16th March at 13:15–14:45, welcome all!

When the National Population Becomes a Brand – Marketing National Resources for Global Data Markets

In this talk I will discuss how country branding has extended into the realm of national data resources. I describe how Denmark and Finland have begun to market and brand their resources using methods and practices drawn from the commercial sector. National and public resources, such as biobanks, electronic health care records, population registers and national statistics have become the object of branding. I argue that this phenomenon constitutes a novel form of nation branding in which relations between the states, individuals and the private sector are re-aligned. The historical underpinnings of population branding can be found in the field of medical genetics starting in the early 1960s but transforming significantly during the 2010s into a professional marketing activity undertaken at multiple levels and sites. In studying this recent phenomenon, I provide examples of how marketing material has become increasingly professional and targeted towards a broader audience, including the public. The talk will be of particular interest to scholars of critical data studies and nation branding, as well as students of science and technology studies, sociology and marketing.

Aaro Tupasela works as a Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) research fellow at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Helsinki. Previously he has worked as an Associate professor at the Faculty of Law and The Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST), Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. His current work centers around what he has termed Critical Nordic Data Studies, which explores the changing landscape of data logistics in Nordic welfare states like Finland and Denmark.

Welcome to the STS Helsinki seminar series’ first talk of the spring, held by Salla Sariola on 10th February at 14:15 EET.

Social study of microbes: fermentation as a method of doing STS otherwise

Salla Sariola is the Director of the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes at University of Helsinki and a Finnish Academy Research Fellow in sociology. Her current research on the social study of microbes includes exploring changing scientific practices on environmental microbes and antimicrobial resistance and well as developing fermentation as an experimental research method. She is the author of four books and her fieldwork has taken her to feminist, queer and HIV activist movements in India and Kenya, hospitals of Sri Lanka, and rural laboratories in Benin and Burkina Faso, as well as fermentation enthusiasts in Finland the Northeast of India.

Join us on Zoom:
https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/69623955896?pwd=QmhnTGxGakduU3lGYjM0NVIrSStpQT09

The STS Helsinki Seminar Series will continue in spring 2021 with talks by both Finnish and international scholars. We are especially happy to get back to our regularly scheduled events after having to cancel a large part of our programme in 2020. We hope the seminar series will continue to be a place to bring together people interested in STS, and look forward to continuing to host lively discussions around the themes this spring.

All talks in the spring programme are planned to take place online. Details will be posted closer to each event.

21 January 2021, 16:15–17:45
Małgorzata Rajtar, Prof. IFiS/Associate Professor, Institute of Philosophy & Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences/Rare Disease Social Research Center http://rdsrc.ifispan.pl/en/researcher/malgorzata-rajtar-2/
Health passports and vulnerability: The case of rare diseases

18 March 2021, 14:15–15:45
Sampsa Hyysalo, Professor of Co-Design, Aalto University, School of Art, Design and Architecture
https://people.aalto.fi/sampsa.hyysalo
Method matters in the social study of technology: Investigating the biographies of artifacts and practices

29 April 2021, 14:15–15:45
Mikko Ojanen, Information specialist, Helsinki University Library, DataSupport
https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/mikko-ojanen
Engaging with electronic music technology in Finland in the 60s and 70s

27 May 2021, 14:15–15:45
Heta Tarkkala, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki
https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/heta-tarkkala
Visual arts in the presentation of research results in qualitative social science – reflections on collaboration with an illustrator

We are excited to have been able to come back with the STS Helsinki seminar series after a hiatus this spring.

The new, now virtual programme was kicked off on 3 December with a talk by Ilpo Helén on the concept of sociotechnical. A video recording of the seminar is now available and will stay up until 18 December. If you missed the event as it happened, you can listen Helén’s talk on the University of Helsinki video service:

Ilpo Helén: What does sociotechnical imply? Conceptual fieldwork with a case of data mining in healthcare