Browsing by Author "Shew, Ashley"
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- An Alchemy of Smoke and Flame: The Politics of Tear Gas Use Against Social Movements in the United StatesLeff, Jack Rance (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-08)Tear gas is a chemical weapon used by the police to put a stop to protests, riots, and other large-scale political actions. It has been employed for over one hundred years, yet our historical and political understanding of the technology is relatively limited. The historical framings of tear gas are dominated by deference to state and military claims and the biomedical literature furthers this one-sided approach to the security technology. At the same time, many groups have fought against tear gas and fought through tear gas as part of the struggle against state politics. The history of tear gas is deeply intertwined with that of policing and questions of state violence against protest movements. A deeper knowledge of tear gas enables us to better understand how and when it is used against protestors as well as how protestors challenge dominant narratives of security. As a scholar of Science, Technology, and Society, I am interested in understanding the sociotechnical elements of tear gas and how it operates within racial capitalism. This dissertation asks, in what ways has tear gas been used as a security technology mobilized to protect the State from political dissidents and what lessons can be learned from how social movement activists challenged the sociotechnical narratives surrounding tear gas? This is a social study of a particular security technology that is used in moments of contestation between State forces (military, police, and weapons industry) and radical social movements. I look at two specific kinds of contestation. The first are historical examples of contestations. That is, the interwar historical context in which tear gas emerges and examples from the 1960s through our contemporary political moment where it is used against social movements. The second is the contested space of biomedical knowledge, which has two major narratives associated with it. On the one hand, mainstream medical literature has examined tear gas using military research labs and military test subjects. This selective research has facilitated claims that tear gas is a "less-lethal" weapon that is practically harmless to those it is used on. On the other hand, social movement activists and street medics who are exposed to it on a regular basis have identified some real concerns surrounding its deployment, thereby challenging claims to its harmlessness.
- Beaver Dams, Spider Webs, and the Sticky Wicket: An Investigation On What Counts as Technology and What Counts as KnowledgeShew, Ashley (Virginia Tech, 2007-05-09)Philosophers of technology have often considered only the tools and processes used and conducted by humans, but natural structures and man-made structures are not always easily discernable from one another. The complexity of a spider web is not matched by many human-made technologies. Beaver dams, beehives, and ant hills are great creations made by non-human animals. Davis Baird has argued that our scientific instruments bear knowledge in important ways, and the idea of technological knowledge bears interestingly on discussions of natural artifacts. Baird thinks his argument for instruments bearing knowledge can be extended, but how far can it be taken? Do "natural" technologies, like spider webs, bear technological knowledge of some sort? This move to consider whether natural artifacts might bear knowledge rubs interestingly against current definitions of technology which include human agency or progression as important. If we find that some natural artifacts seem to bear knowledge in the way Baird describes, technological knowledge would not be the exclusive domain of humans. Our current definitions of technology seem incongruent with our view of knowledge and our knowledge of natural artifacts. The purpose of this paper is to sort out the inconsistencies between current philosophical literature on knowledge and on technology. In sorting out the inconsistencies we find, I recommend a spectrum approach with regard to technology based on the epistemological status of the artifact. Using observations from anthropology and biology, I suggest a scale with regard to technological behavior, tool use, and technology.
- Disabled Dimensionalities: Normative expectations' impacts on disabled perceptions and spatialitiesBlanchard, Enka; Shew, Ashley (OpenEdition, 2022)As humans, we are expected to interact as fully functional 3D manipulators who can observe, handle,and act in three spatial dimensions. This is how users are considered in the design of many products and spaces. Ableism often gives people the perception that disabled people are inferior at manipulating, imagining, and navigating the world. We contest this perception using both our own experiences as disabled manipulators and narratives from other disabled people that speak to this presumption as limited imagination and consideration. In this theoretical contribution, we analyze the consequences of ableism in how spaces — digital, physical, imaginary in science fiction, present in practice and material configuration — operate in the way we think about the material and virtual world.
- How To Get A Story Wrong: Technoableism, Simulation, and Cyborg ResistanceShew, Ashley (2022-03)For this paper, I will first share with you what we take to be the wrong stories out there about disability - narrative arcs we’ve inherited from tropes through various media as well as highlight the dangers of disability simulation to address these. Next, I’ll talk about better stories, more authentic narratives we might give about technology and about disability. Third, I’ll talk about social responsibility in the context of disability narrative, before ending by talking about cyborg-cripborg-disability expertise and knowledge with a reflection on cyborg expertise during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Transmobility: Possibilities in Cyborg (Cripborg) BodiesNelson, Mallory Kay; Shew, Ashley; Stevens, Bethany (University of Toronto Libraries, 2019)This creative, experimental contribution blends written words and sketches depicting our crip bodies engaging with various mobility technologies, including crutches, walkers, prosthetic limbs, and manual and power wheelchairs. By picturing and describing our crip bodies with varieties of technologies that we use, we use these pictures and corresponding narratives about disabled bodies in technology to tell a larger story about the constitution of disability with technologies, as well as the modes of mobility available to disabled bodies. Our visual and narrative elements serve to argue that disabled bodies have a wider array of mobilities and ways of being than are afforded to non-disabled bodies. We resist super-crippery and insist on cripborgery. Crip bodies are taken as sites of possibility, adaptation, and creative reflection.