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Accepted Paper:

Problem solving as world making  
Sandra Calkins (University of Twente)

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ways in which nutritionally enhanced crops are made into a solution and how the availability of a solution shapes what is conceived to be problematic. Instead attending to either problem or solution, I explore the onto-epistemological work of problem solving.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Ugandan laboratories and trial fields where biologists are developing nutritionally enriched bananas as technical fix to a nutritional problem. Reflecting on problem-solving as a form of world-making, I examine evidence production that defines the scale and thrust of "the problem" and how it guides the search for only certain solutions. I show that the definition of what is problematic does not emerge from ontological dimensions of the problem but rather from pragmatics of problem-solving, such as what is technically feasible and can be accounted for in terms of efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Inspired by pragmatist writings that posit the co-constitution of problems and solutions, I contribute to debates on evidence and meliorism in STS and explore what world takes shape through the onto-epistemological work of problem solving. I suggest that instead of problems searching for solutions, some solutions may also be searching out their own problems.

Panel T087
What is a Problem? Problematic Ecologies, Methodologies and Ontologies in Techno-science and Beyond
  Session 1 Thursday 1 September, 2016, -