Arapostathis, Stathis | Greece

Stathis Araoistathis

Stathis Arapostathis is an Associate Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He completed his DPhil at the Faculty of Modern History, University of Oxford, UK. His research focuses on history and sociology of technology, history and sociology of innovation, environmental history, science and technology policy, sustainability sociotechnical transitions.

Project at IAS-STS: “Chemicalizing Breeds: From industrialized animal husbandry to the emergence of organic production in Greece, 1950-2020”

The research proposal aims at contributing a study of the Greek animal husbandry by focusing on the material conditions and the techno-scientific networks in the historical shaping of the agri-food industry. The study will unravel hidden actors, science and technology experts, and critical infrastructures as vital contributors to the creation of the regime and in influencing and configuring food policies and culture in post-WWII and contemporary Greece. The research will focus on regimes of chemicalization and industrialization of the production and processing and their impact on the environment of the chicken and pig production. The main goal of the proposal is to introduce a historically informed policy analysis of the Greek agri-food industry as an attempt to unravel path dependencies, sociotechnical dynamics and pathways that can inform contemporary challenges that the Greek agri-food sector is facing. It provides a policy-relevant history of the food chain in Greece as an exemplar case of the Mediterranean food chain by focusing on the techno-scientific networks, their articulation and agency in configuring the food chain from 1950 to the present. The techno-scientific networks are conceptualized both as a. networks of infrastructures (technological and research) that enabled/disabled the material conditions of technological change and b. networks of experts - engineers, chemists, soil scientists, biologists, toxicologists, agronomists, biotechnologists, food scientists, veterinarians and biochemists - that functioned as entanglers in shaping socio-technical transitions. The techno-scientific networks as the focus of the analysis have been neglected or completely downplayed in the current historiography as well as the political analysis of socio-technical transitions in the food industry. The reconfiguration of the environment and the reconsideration of practices and toxicity limits became ubiquitous in the food chain due to the agency of an expert network of knowledge and technological innovations. In this framework, the research study will move into two interconnected and complementary directions:  a) the co-production of the environment with practices and policies which reproduce intensified animal husbandry and aquaculture models. b) the legitimization of scientific practices and the use of technological networks which configured the meaning of environment and reproduced practices that furthered the use of pollutant toxic preservatives and antibiotics.  These two directions are closely interconnected at the technocratic ideology of economies of scale which legitimizes the intensification of the use of science and technology in the agri-food sector as an end for production increase.

Contact: arapost at phs [punkt] uoa [punkt] gr

Selected Publications:


Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (MIT Press, 2013) (John Pickstone Book Award Winner, 2014, British History for the History of Science)

Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday (guest editors) Special Issue (Spotlight Section) "SILVANUS P. THOMPSON: QUAKER POLYMATH AND PUBLIC SCIENTIST-ENGINEER", Centaurus, 63:3
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/16000498/2021/63/3

Stathis Arapostathis and Peter Pearson (guest editors), Special Issue on How History Matters in the Governance of Sociotechnical Transitions, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions (September 2019)

Stathis Arapostathis and Graham Dutfield (eds.), Knowledge Management and Intellectual Property: Concepts, Actors and Practices from the Past to the Present (Edward Elgar, 2013)

Stathis Arapostathis and Anna Guagnini, "Living in Between: The commercial side of Silvanus P. Thompson's engineering," Centaurus, 63:3 (2021), 499-512

Josie Coburn, Frederique Bone, Michael M. Hopkins, Andy C. Stirling, Jorge Mestre-Ferrandiz, Stathis Arapostathis, Martin J. Llewelyn, "Appraising research policy instrument mixes: a multicriteria mapping study in six European countries of diagnostic innovation to manage antimicrobial resistance", Research Policy, 50 (2021)

Stathis Arapostathis, Kyriaki Klokiti, Graham Dutfield, “Plants, Catalogues and Credit: Agriculture Transitions in Proprietary Regimes in Greece, 1920-2020”, Intellectual Property Quarterly 4 (2020)
 
Efi Nakopoulou and Stathis Arapostathis, ‘Reconfiguring technologies by funding transitions: priorities, policies, and the renewable energy sources in the European Community funding schemes’, Journal of Energy History/Revue d'Histoire de l'Énergie [Online], n°4, published 27 July 2020, URL : energyhistory.eu/en/node/212

Stathis Arapostathis and Leonard Laborie, "Governing Technosciences in the Age of Grand Challenges: A European Historical Perspective on the Entanglement of Science, Technology, Diplomacy, and Democracy", Technology and Culture, 61 (2020), 318-332

Yannis Fotopoulos, Stathis Arapostathis, Peter Pearson, ‘Understanding Sociotechnical Dynamics in Natural Gas Transition in Greece’, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, 32 (2019)

Stathis Arapostathis, Laczay Scott, Peter Pearson, ‘Steering the C-Day: Insights from the fast and planned transition of the UK’s natural gas conversion’, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, 32 (2019)

Stathis Arapostathis and Peter Pearson, “How History Matters in the Governance of Sociotechnical Transitions, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, 32 (2019)

Stathis Arapostathis and Yannis Fotopoulos, “Transnational energy flows, capacity building and Greece's quest for energy autarky, 1914–2010”, Energy Policy, 127 (2019), 39-50