Kalendář

In our project “Vulnerable residents in fragile residences: An inquiry into tensions of residential care” we focus on a double object: people and buildings. More precisely, we study (a) caring of people and (b) maintenance of their residences IN RELATION. There are many reasons for such a focus. I want to discuss one specific motivation related to the politics of critique in STS. How to be effectively critical? How to confront “bad things” and help “good things” happen? To be critical of something, we often try to show it as obviously and objectively stupid, irrational, and absurd. If we eventually associate “bad things” (such as climate change denial, technocracy in politics or resistance toward humanization of residential care) with some rationality, meaningfulness, and relevance, we risk being accused of standing on the wrong side and of unacceptable “relativization”... I believe that this way of being critical is unfortunate, since it underestimates our enemies. It implies that “bad things” are based on weak fundaments. As social scientists we should instead try to support our warnings by showing “bad things” as making relatively good sense in a number of ways, being well-integrated into rather reasonable and routinely accepted arrangements – this is, after all, why they are such a difficult enemy: strong, widespread and persistent. Studying objects in relation, such as in our research, where divergent or even contradictory values are at stake, can be taken as a useful heuristic tool for being critical in this more effective way.