Scientific discoveries or testing technical systems are often tied to places deemed central for such endeavours. Related technoscientific visions are not merely mapped onto a place like a blueprint, but co-constituted with pre-existing spatial imaginations. This is particularly so in the case of islands. Taking up Hawai'i's significance both for natural science and contemporary agricultural biotechnology, and expanding upon the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015), spatial imaginations of islandsas remote, contained spaceschannel, and are channeled by technoscientific, colonial visions and theories. In this context, laboratory and paradise tropes either accommodate or 'keep out' science and technology, and find expression in two sociotechnical island imaginaries. In an ecological island imaginary, western-scientific conceptions frame Hawai'i as a laboratory of nature, and hosting paradise for natural sciences. Anti-GMO activists likewise articulate an ecological island imaginary, yet one of Hawai'i as laboratory on nature, and nonabsorbable paradise in such slogans as 'Stop Poisoning Paradise.' In an agribusiness island imaginary, policy and industry visions portray the Islands as conducive agricultural laboratory where Edenic settings point to a hosting paradise to accommodate advancements of science, technology and business. Laboratory and paradise tropes indicate shared epistemic commitments across diverse sociotechnical island imaginaries, as well as divergences, such as in efforts to decolonize science. An analysis of overlapping and contrary sociotechnical island imaginaries that attends to such key visions allows for delineating heterogeneous dynamics beyond conventional categories like biodiversity, science, or culture.

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This article showcases the pedagogical possibilities of working with postcards for teaching anthropology and related disciplinary fields by introducing a set of multifaceted tools and examples. It provides a framework for tangible reflexive teaching practices and a research methodology that supports, both intellectually and emotionally, a vibrant and mobile community of scholars. We commence with the emergence of the postcard, and its (widely undervalued) role as a research subject in the social sciences. Examples from the arts, literature, teaching and research offer inspiration for engaged and creative teaching formats. These cases support our claim that as seemingly ‘anachronistic’ object of communication, postcards are useful for teaching in the classroom, for teaching ethnography, and for community-based work and teaching. In fact, as a traveling communication device, the repurposed postcard lends itself to connect the oft-physically and conceptually divided spaces of the classroom and the ethnographic ‘field.’ Concurrently, the opening of postcards allows for a critique of the medium’s historical use in exoticization the ‘other.’ In other writing [anonymized], we explore in more detail the multimodal qualities of working ethnographically on, within, or through postcards. We here extend the pedagogical potentials to use postcards for innovative approaches in ethnographic research, public anthropology, and applied community work.

This article presents the results of a public engagement experiment on a project trialling ‘vertical farming’, an emerging technology addressing urban food issues. The experiment developed within an issue mapping project, analysing debates about vertical farming on the digital platforms, Twitter and Instagram. The article presents a software tool designed to engage ‘offline’ publics in the issue mapping process, using images collected from Instagram. We describe testing this software tool with visitors to exhibitions of vertical farming in two science and technology museums. Our findings highlight the predominance of commercial publicity about vertical farming on Twitter and Instagram and the organisation of public attention around technological novelty. The article discusses the challenges such publicity dynamics pose to mapping issues on platforms. We suggest some ways digital methods might contribute to public engagement with technologies, like vertical farming, that are a focus of organised commercialised innovation.

Colonial empires, scientists, philanthropists and Hollywood studios have long sustained an image of islands as remote places with unique ecologies and cultures, experimental labs, or loci of escapism. The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have contributed to a predominant view of islands as both exceptional spaces and testbeds to be scaled up onto continental or planetary levels. Likewise, the metaphor of the island is foundational to Western thought yet has been less explored in the context of scientific processes and technology development. Bringing together science and technology studies (STS) with critical Island Studies and related fields, this special section expands upon the spatial dimension of sociotechnical imaginaries to consider islands and their imaginations as both preexisting and channeling visions of science and technology. The introduced concept of Island Imaginaries captures the mutual constitution of island visions and their materialization in scientific, technological and technocratic endeavors that are imagined and pursued by scientific communities, policymakers, and other social collectives. Such an approach explores the co-constitutive dynamic of islands as sites for the foundation of technoscientific knowledge regimes, and the concomitant rendering of islands as conducive places for discovery and experimentation. The special section offers empirical case studies with insights into islands as synecdoche for larger wholes (the Earth), as experimental and exceptional sites for trialing business creation and political orders (in Singapore, and for Asia), and as variously interpreted laboratory paradise (of Hawai'i). Further research themes for STS are suggested in the Conclusion.