28 February

Outsourcing, assessing, forwarding, or the politics of vulnerability.
(a methodographic sketch of Interruption Devices at the external European border)

Time: 12.30 - 14.00 hrs
Venue: Ravelijn, RA 1315
Speakers: Melina Antonakaki, Technical University of Munich, Munich Center for Technology in Society

ABSTRACT: 

In this presentation I offer an ethnographically inspired argument on the distribution of biomedical and humanitarian expertise at the external European border (at Hotspot camps, Greece). I focus on observations during interviews and particularly to the fact that these on-the-spot sessions were repeatedly interrupted by working-environment 'emergencies' (i.e. real operational crises, infrastructural malfunctions, but also 'casual' moments of camp life). So much ethnographic insight on the organizational and political life of the camp was caught at moments of interruption. Important empirical findings indeed stemmed out of contrasting the streamlined operations against the background of these interruptions that point beyond improvisation and informality as modes of theorizing: i.e.