What's New? Interrogating Innovation as a Concept and Practice

What could possibly be wrong with innovation? In this course, we will examine innovation with new eyes, considering it not as a neutral good but as a political category that often masks hierarchy and exploitation, imposing one group's values on everybody else. For whom do ride-hailing apps like Uber really bring progress, if they (once again) make workers precarious and unable to organize? Might distributing petrochemical-based tampons in rural India make matters worse, not better, for women by undercutting traditional practices and undermining demands for sanitation and water infrastructure? Across these and other case studies, we will consider how "innovation" reframes structural problems so they can be "solved" by apps and commodities while deepening inequality. As an alternative, we consider the often-devalued practices of maintenance and social reproduction that actually keep our worlds alive. We then turn to convivial and post-growth technologies that prioritize community autonomy over novelty.