Knowledge relativity: Carnarvon residents' and SKA personnel's conceptions of the SKA's scientific and development endeavours

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Carnarvon, a small and isolated town in the Northern Cape, is the South African host-town of an international radio astronomy project, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The notion of pushing the boundaries of knowledge lies at the heart of this multibillion-rand, big-science project, but this desire stands in stark contrast to many Carnarvon residents' lived realities which are characterised by poverty, low levels of education and high levels of drug and alcohol misuse. The SKA justifies this massive expenditure through a specific development discourse that sees science and development to be in a causal relationship and promises that the SKA will benefit all of society. Most Carnarvon residents, however, are uncertain as to how the SKA will bring about local development as their understandings of what development entails differ from the science-development discourse that the SKA promotes.Many black residents still suffer the consequences of a long history of land dispossession and racial oppression and struggle to make a living. For them, the SKA symbolised a beacon of hope when the Department of Science and Technology (DST) first announced in 2012 that Carnarvon will host the SKA as promises of job opportunities were made. But since then, the SKA has emerged as a controversial entity as it has not fulfilled residents' high expectations of 'development. Furthermore, the SKA has also brought about major changes in this small town in a relatively short timespan which many residents did not expect nor accept.These are the conditions that prompted my study of Carnarvon residents' and SKA personnel's conceptions of the SKA's scientific and development endeavours. Carnarvon was my main research site where I conducted interviews with residents to explore their conceptions of the SKA, as well as the role of their social context in this. I also interviewed a few SKA staff members to discern how their conceptions mesh with Carnarvon residents' conceptions. Through Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, I explored not only how Carnarvon residents and SKA personnel conceived of the SKA, but also 'where they were coming from in their conceptions. Deep-seated power relations underlie Carnarvon residents' and SKA personnel's conflicting conceptions of the SKA's scientific and development endeavours. I consider these conflicting conceptions and unequal power relations in relation to Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, capital and doxa, together with assemblage thinking and Bruno Latour's notions of 'matters of fact' and 'matters of concern'.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University