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UID:127@vi2025.seu-events.org
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20250922T180000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20250922T193000
DTSTAMP:20250916T120351Z
URL:https://vi2025.seu-events.org/events/opening-session-2025/
SUMMARY:Keynote Presentation
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 icky_enabled="0"]In a seminal piece of work\, Arturo Escobar has called up
 on academics and practitioners to look beyond modernity's universalising 
 tendencies that tend to homogenise or erase cultural difference. He argues
  that an alternative and more just possibility involves a focus on place-b
 ased communities and knowledge systems.  In this talk I take inspiration 
 from Escobar’s call to think about alternative futures in the context\, 
 content and capabilities of technological innovation. To do so\, I draw up
 on research in different global sites to highlight the role of technologie
 s in creating connection and disconnection across cultures. First\, the co
 ntext of innovation emerges via a focus upon how a transnational telecommu
 nications company began to interpret and misinterpret culture in their que
 st gain access to new mobile phone markets in the Caribbean and the Pacifi
 c.  I then explore how technological content is created and interpreted 
 via the use of a new consumer device that uses algorithms and machine lear
 ning to make recommendations about what to wear\, with particular attentio
 n to the missteps the device made in making recommendations for different 
 social and ethnic communities in the US and the Caribbean. The third and f
 inal example of capabilities explores the ways in which technological inno
 vation in digital printing has enabled new forms of multicultural connecti
 on and belonging via a clothing practice known as kalavata in Fiji and th
 e Pacific region. Taken together\, I highlight how recognition of these di
 verse worlds of technology use and innovation can make space for greater i
 ntercultural dialog and connection that\, in turn\, enable new possibiliti
 es creating worlds filled with diverse experiences\, perspectives and cult
 ures.\nABOUT THE SPEAKER\nHeather A. Horst is Professor of Design Anthropo
 logy at the Sydney School of Architecture\, Design and Planning at the Uni
 versity of Sydney\, Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of th
 e Humanities. A sociocultural anthropologist by training\, she researches 
 material culture\, mobility\, and the mediation of social relations\, thro
 ugh the study of homes\, clothing\, and technology. \nHer publications inc
 lude The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication\; Hanging Around\, M
 essing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media\; D
 igital Anthropology\; Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices\; The 
 Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Island Perspectives\; and Digital 
 Media Practices in Households. She is also the Executive Producer of docum
 entary films on smartphones and parenting in Fiji\, mobile phone infrastru
 ctures in Papua New Guinea\, and a forthcoming film on the relationship be
 tween Indigenous and international fashion design in contemporary Fiji. [
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CATEGORIES:Opening Session
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