Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination

Text Exploration

In this text, the author calls for scholars working within science and technology studies to consider justice frameworks related to race-ethnicity in all of their work, even if that work does not immediately appear to touch on issues of equity. Benjamin contextualizes the argument in a history of inaction within the field of sociology. Scholars have been called to consider issues of race relations and equity for years, but it is argued that these calls have been ignored. The author presents the idea of “the carceral imagination,” which is to see a collective imaginary of a future of how life out to be lived, in order to urge the field to commit to integrating critical race approaches into the study of science and technology.

Using a number of examples, the author shows how technological change has historically been built and designed with racial impact implicit in operation, leaving someone using such a technology to simply “do their job” while still activating a form of inequity. For example, a spirometer included a capability to offer a “race correction,” and this capability was used to make it more difficult for black workers to qualify for workers comp as a result of asbestos in the workplace. “Hot spotting”, using GIS to identify areas of medical vulnerability, classifies those in need as “socially disintegrated,” which “reproduces the very forms of classificatory stigma that restrict people’s life chances in the first place.” Citing Browne, the author notes the digital epidermalization produced by facial recognition installs racism into critical state interactions, such as border crossing.

The author concludes by calling for integration of critical race theories into sociology research of science and technology as a matter of practice, as “social inequality is legitimized by cultural mythologies about human differences,” and those mythologies are highlighted by everything from pharmaceuticals, to genetic ancestry tests, to police databases.