Technology allows humans to act at increasing distance from the situations they seek to manipulate. In contexts spanning Congo, Palestine, and the USA, technological instruments from linguistic categories to automated drones are driving forces behind ever-heightened political campaigns of surveillance, occupation, and violence. However, technology is not intrinsically an agent of destruction. In this Cross-STS roundtable, we gather local experts on the political life of technology – not only to soberly account for the ways that humans use technical tools to dominate and oppress but also how people leverage technology every day to resist their oppressors and forge liberatory futures.

The roundtable discussion will include:

Dwaipayan Banerjee, an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at MIT. His research is guided by a central theme: how do various kinds of social inequity shape medical, scientific and technological practices? In turn, how do scientific and medical practice ease or sharpen such inequities? In doing so, his ongoing research pushes science and technology studies into the global south.