In all language, there may be a gap between what is said and what is understood. In medical communication, these often-unnoticed misunderstandings have serious consequence for ethics or practice of clinical care. This team aims to create a multi- institutional collaboration specifically analyzing the multi-faceted use of the word “treatable” around oncology patients in intensive […]
Research Team
Assembling Resilience: Expert Systems and Knowledge Infrastructures in Climate Change Governance
Resilience has become a central topic in discussions about how to respond to global climate change. This project examines the politics of resilience as an emerging terrain of government. Up to this point, social science discussions have been speculative, based largely on theoretical definitions of resilience. But with the recent implementation of a growing number […]
Research Team
Toward a Political Economy of Computer Science: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
This progress team examines the politics implicit in the technical development of artificial intelligence. In particular, they will work toward a one-day workshop in spring 2020 that will include student presentations and faculty panels on the “political economy of AI development," outlining how the technical decisions made by system designers and AI theorists when endorsing […]
Research Team
Interpreting Risk in the Age of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Health Testing
Following the success of genetic ancestry testing, direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic health tests are on a rapid rise. 23andMe, Veritas, and Genos are just three of many companies ushering consumers to a new age of neoliberal healthcare management. These at-home tests promise accurate predictions of health problems, ranging from ‘lifestyle’ concerns such as how much one […]
Research Team
Queer Ecologies / Feminist Biologies
How do scientists engage queer feminist methodologies to understand sex and gender in non-human animals? Animal research—including studies of sexual selection, mate choice, and social pairing—has long been used to make inferences about human biology, health, and sociality. Reciprocally, cultural norms infused with political, social, and economic assumptions also influence the ways in which scientists […]
Research Team
Climate Economics
The field of economics plays a crucial role in the debate about appropriate policies intended to mitigate climate change. For example, the tools of economics can be used to measure and/or estimate impacts such as the costs of mitigation, the valuation of damages, the role of abatement in lowering damages, design of policy instruments (e.g. […]
Research Team
Seeing Like a Valley: Locating the Moral Visions of Silicon Valley Culture
Like modern states, the industrial region known as Silicon Valley has developed through attempts to regularize, rationalize, and codify the world. These ways of knowing have favored emerging technologies and new modes of organization. But what are the effects of this developing view to the world? The "Seeing Like a Valley" Matrix Research Team will […]
Research Team
Formation of interdisciplinary research group to study the socio-ecological impacts of cannabis production
The recent legalization and regulation of cannabis production and consumption in California represent an unprecedented change in public policy that may have profound impacts on the environment and communities across the state. At this moment of change, there is a critical need for scholarship on cannabis-producing communities and their relation to the natural environment. This […]
Research Team
Community Conversations on Sexual Violence and Harassment: Narratives of Activism, Inclusion, Confidentiality, Accountability, and Healing
Incidents of sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH) have been a focus of national headlines this year as a social and political movement swept the country. SVSH is also a longstanding topic of interest among social science researchers nationally, and UC Berkeley administrators and practitioners are making efforts to improve SVSH support, procedure, and policy […]
Research Team
Comparing the Politics of Computer Vision in the United States, China, and Europe
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to visualize the social world, and computer vision technologies are being developed according to divergent standards in different countries. This Matrix Research Team will study, discuss, and provide perspective on the emerging comparative political economy of computer vision. The group’s work will focus on three case studies—United States, China, […]
Research Team
Causal Conversations
The proliferation of data sources and the advent of computationally intensive analytic algorithms have multiplied the possibilities for non-experimental (i.e., observational) research. Much of that research highlights prediction, yet remains agnostic about cause, a successful strategy as long as the causal structures undergirding the phenomena remain stable. This raises concerns, as practical action or public […]
Research Team
Native/Immigrant/Refugee: Crossings and Divides
In the current moment of resurgent populist nationalism, understanding how rhetorical and legal claims are made about the “native,” “immigrant,” and “refugee” is an urgent project of critical social importance. Understanding the complex nature of these categories in relationship to each other—as by turns antonymous, overlapping, oppositional, and precarious—even as the laws and policies that […]