Zoë Sofoulis

Zoë Sofoulis (* 1954 ) is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Center for Cultural Research at Western Sydney University.

Her research interests include technology and media theory from a gender perspective, as well as cultural aspects of urban water supply. She publishes under the surname Sofoulis as well as under Sofia.

Life

Zoë Sofoulis completed her bachelor's degree in cultural studies in 1979 at Murdoch University . She received her PhD in consciousness research from the University of California Santa Cruz , USA, and was nominated for the Californian University Microfilm International Humanities Dissertation Prize in 1988. Until 1995 Sofoulis was in the editorial advisory board of the magazine Australian Feminist Studies.

In 2001 she was visiting professor at the Marie Jahoda Visiting Chair in International Gender Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum .

In 2010 she received a research grant from the National Water Commission for the project "Cross-Connections: Linking Urban Water Managers with Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Researchers".

Sofoulis is a member of the TWENTY65 Consortium for Water Research and was the keynote speaker at its annual meeting in April 2018.

research

At the beginning of her academic career, Sofoulis initially dealt a lot with science fiction and cyber feminism . Then she turned then practical applications of qualitative cultural and humanistic perspectives in such disciplines, mainly through technology and engineering were intended, in particular the infrastructure of urban residential water management . Her published work helped define a cultural and socio-technical perspective for the management of water and its demand in large cities.

Container Technologies

In her article Container Technologies , Sofoulis criticizes western philosophical notions of matter and space as passive, feminine and unintelligent. Since the birth of modern science, nature has been described in the West as a “mother full of resources ” ( material , land , knowledge ) that are infinite and could be plundered. According to Sofoulis, global technology and industrial companies have created another material “super mother” in the form of “ mobile ” resources that are always available . For example, there is smooth, permanent access to food that is actually only seasonal or that grows in a completely different climate zone . Seamless access to ( hot ) water , gas , supermarkets , banking services and technologies that would facilitate access to other goods and services , such as cable TV , telephone and e-mail , belong to this technological and mobile "super mother" according to Sofoulis. . In the midst of all these seemingly infinite resources, however, homelessness is increasing for both people and animals whose habitats are destroyed or polluted . Today we would know the limits of earthly resources that would once have been considered infinite.

To change this point of view, Sofoulis reconfigures space, matter and the surrounding area as an (inter) active process . It is based on the history of technology , on cybernetic epistemology , which emphasizes the mutual dependence of organism and environment , as well as on intersubjectivistic psychoanalytic theories on maternal care. "In such a context, focusing on questions of containment and supply in thinking about technology can help draw our attention to the assumptions we make about supply in our own lived world, and to larger questions about sustaining the planetary 'facilitating environment' and avoiding an exhaustion of its supplies, including supplies of future biological diversity in the gene pool . "

Sofoulis also sees container technologies at the center of her considerations as a means of correcting distortions that emerged as phallic tools when interpreting technology . If we did not deal with issues of supply and container technologies, according to Sofoulis, we would not be able to recognize the technological character of the everyday environment in urban metropolises , which are dependent on large supply networks.

Water industry and management

In her texts on urban water management and management, Sofoulis criticizes the idea that the current water management system automatically turns all water users into customers. In her lecture "Misbehavior, attitudinal problems and unpredictability: The challenges and limits of water customerization" at the TWENTY65 Annual Conference in 2017, Sofoulis spoke out against the use of the term "customers" in this context. She understands an overemphasis on the customer status as a concealment of actual user-provider relationships, which could potentially also be structured through local engagement and participatory planning or decision-making. Sofoulis affirms that water use is not about customers, but about people as members of communities , cultures and the public .

Sofoulis understands water as a means of socializing , since habits in handling and consuming water are also part of education . In her article "Big Water, Everyday Water: A Sociotechnical Perspective", she analyzes the extent to which domesticated water technologies, e.g. B. faucets and faucets, enable and forbid different types of interaction and pre-determine our behavior . Sofoulis also understands water as a socialized actor that appears in human dwellings and is therefore a product of technological, cultural, historical and geographical features.

Publications (selection)

Monographs

• Sofoulis, Zoë: Whose Second Self? Gender and (Ir) Rationality in Computer Culture. Geelong: Deakin University Press 1993.

As editor

• (Ed., With Marie-Luise Angerer and Kathrin Peters): Future Bodies: For the visualization of bodies in science and fiction , Vienna, New York: Springer-Verlag 2002.

items

• Sofoulis, Zoë: "Contested Zones: Futurity and Technological Art", in Women, Art and Technology, ed. By Judy Malloy. 502-522. Cambridge, London: MIT Press 2003.
• Sofoulis, Zoë: "Post-, non- and para-human: a contribution to a theory of socio-technical personality", in Future Bodies. On the visualization of bodies in science and fiction , edited by Marie-Luise Angerer, Kathrin Peters and Zoë Sofoulis. 273–300, Vienna, New York: Springer-Verlag 2002.
• Sofia, Zoë: "Container Technologies" in: Hypatia, Volume 15, No. 2, 181-201, 2000.
• Sofoulis, Zoë: "Virtual Corporeality: A Feminist View", in: Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace, ed. By Jenna Wolmark. 55-68. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1999.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Prof. Zoë Sofoulis. Retrieved September 17, 2019 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} University of Western Sydney- Unknown: Dr Zoë Sofoulis. Retrieved September 17, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Angerer, Marie-Luise, 1958-, Peters, Kathrin, 1967-, Sofoulis, Zoë .: Future Bodies: for the visualization of bodies in science and fiction . Springer, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-211-83778-7 .
4. ↑ ^{a b} Zoe Sofoulis: Gender and Infrastructure - feminism, philosophy, and the knowledge ecology of urban water. Retrieved September 17, 2019 . 
5. ^ ^{A b} Zoë Sofia: Container Technologies . In: Hypatia . tape 15 , no. 2 , May 2000, pp. 181 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1527-2001.2000.tb00322.x ( wiley.com [accessed September 17, 2019]).
6. ^ Zoë Sofia: Container Technologies . In: Hypatia . tape 15 , no. 2 , May 2000, pp. 198 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1527-2001.2000.tb00322.x ( wiley.com [accessed September 17, 2019]).
7. ^ Zoe Sofoulis: Zoë Sofoulis: Misbehavior, attitudinal problems and unpredictability: The challenges and limits of water customerization. In: Unpublished . 2017, doi : 10.13140 / rg.2.2.17892.78725 ( rgdoi.net [accessed September 17, 2019]).
8. ^ Zoë Sofoulis: Big Water, Everyday Water: A Sociotechnical Perspective . In: Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies . Vol. 19, No. 4 , December 2005, pp. 448 .