Facing Gaia. Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime
Abstract
The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world.The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence.In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. [Abstract of the editor]
... Vi kan exempelvis jämföra med hur natur används vardagligt där ordet ofta används för att beskriva något lite avlägset, vilt och vackert. Den moderna, upplysta människans projekt har varit att kontrollera naturen och skilja människan från djur och andra objekt (Latour, 2017). Latour (2018) argumenterar att vi är fångade av en ideologisering av begreppet natur och i sökandet efter något mer välfungerande landar han i the Terrestrial, det jordiska, med invånare som han kallar terrestrials. ...
... Enligt Latour (2017) har upplysningen strävat efter att separera människan från naturen genom att fånga, reglera och utnyttja den. Men försöken med att separera, reglera och utnyttja naturen förde med sig nya och oväntade hinder så som planetära gränser, tröskeleffekter och ekologisk kris. ...
... Mot slutet av sin karriär kom Latour att försvara naturvetenskapen. Organiserade klimatförnekare använder naturvetenskapens tentativa karaktär som argument för att påtala osäkerhet kring klimatvetenskapliga fakta och slutsatser (Latour, 2017). Latour beskriver klimatskeptikernas attacker mot klimatvetenskapen med hjälp av den naturvetenskapliga osäkerheten som en autoimmun sjukdom (2004). ...
This thesis is about fieldwork in ecology education. We live in a troubled era of ecological breakdown and as we witness the effects of the climate crises and the loss of biodiversity, questions of education are brought to the fore. The aim of the thesis is to empirically and theoretically investigate what ecological fieldwork does and what significance ecological fieldwork can have for ecological literacy.
Research on ecological literacy includes ecological and socio- political knowledge, awareness of environmental issues, environmentally responsible behaviours, cognitive skills (scientific inquiry and analysis), and affect. Occasionally, critical aspects and holistic and spiritual components are included. Research on fieldwork ecology education highlights the importance of place, opportunities for slow explorations, emotional experiences, the inevitably unpredictable nature of the field, and aesthetic dimensions. New materialist and posthumanist perspectives have had a major impact in research on children’s encounters with other species.
I extend these perspectives to older learners and highlight the role of materiality in fieldwork as central to the growth of ecological literacy. The dissertation contributes to the conceptualisation and understanding of ecological literacy and the scope of ecological literacy is broadened to include material relational aspects. The theoretical framework is non- anthropocentric, relational and process oriented. Theoretical positions and analytical concepts of mainly Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour are employed for understanding encounters with other organisms and materiality in ecological fieldwork.
The overarching research questions are: How do students establish relationships with other species and non-living things in ecological fieldwork? How are relationships significant for ecological literacy in education?
The study is ethnographically inspired and based on researcher participation in two educational fieldwork settings in Sweden. The first study is of an upper secondary school nature guide course. Two teachers and a student group overnight in a nature reserve to experience black
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grouse lekking and the ecology of a bog. The second is of a folk high school course focusing on sustainability and nature connectedness. This one-year part-time course had outdoor gatherings arranged around different themes one weekend a month. The empirical material consists of video and audio recordings from both locations with a focus on nonhuman–human encounters and relationships.
The results show that fieldwork provides opportunities for students to encounter nonhumans in a way that is not possible in a classroom. The practicality of the fieldwork foregrounds the actual nonhuman– human encounters, and the notion of ecological literacy is reformulated and expanded to include a practice of becoming-with grounded in relational materialism. The results can be used to further explore how fieldwork education practices can be developed to acknowledge nonhuman–human relational aspects and to incorporate emotions along the whole register. Contemplative practices and serious playfulness may work as educational means and contribute to emotional fieldwork events. Education must offer spaces for learners to explore and tell new stories of becoming-with, about living in a shared complex world in which grief, loss and suffering are entangled with joy and wonder.
... This offers insights into the profitability of Putonghua and English within the GBA in connection with but distinct from the national-global market, and how the economic entrenches with the social topolectal interactions in business. Second, the assemblage offers a perspective into the influence of both human and non-human activities on market values (Latour 2017;Wee 2021b). ...
... This resonates with the post-humanist turn in sociolinguistics (Pennycook 2018;Wee 2021b) as well as the emerging strands of ecolinguistics (Steffensen and Fill 2014;Penz and Fill 2022) cautioning against the anthropocentric separation between the human and non-human actors in societal developments, though theorisation of natural events as a regulative force in language policy is still scarce. Latour (2017) refers to this regime constituted of intertwining human and natural events as 'Gaia' (drawing upon the personification of Earth in Greek mythology). In the analysis, we will examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the market value of English in business incubation practices of the GBA. ...
... This is not to reassert the human dominance over nature or, on the contrary, to surrender human agency to natural processes. Instead, it is a perspective into how interactions between the human and nature create regulative territories (Latour 2017;Spolsky 2021). The market as assemblage is an open flow of capital enclosing in social relations and intervened by natural events. ...
If language policy produces space – from nations to workplaces – is this simply a process ‘from pen to land’? Is language policy strictly an institutional practice? Additionally, is language policy solely a matter of ‘language(s)’?
Taking an ecological perspective, the thesis develops a spatial approach to language policy. It argues that language is regulated not primarily in institutional planning (policy texts and defined managers). Rather, regulation is formed in the entanglement of political, cultural, economic, social and natural processes circulating in the sociolinguistic ecology. The thesis proposes a spatial ontology of language policy through the notion of spatialisation (the formation and de-formation of territories) and the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of rhizome (the open flow of semiotic processes) and assemblage (the shifting territories created in the entangling semiotic processes).
Guided by ethnographic and discourse analytic approaches, the thesis examines the case of business incubation (the industry nurturing early-stage companies) in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in South China. The region is of interest for its timeliness (as one of the most recent initiatives of regionalisation in a leading economy) and sociolinguistic (especially intra-lingual) diversity. The focus on business incubation practices offers insight into a scarcely studied domain. It complements the primary focus on multi-national corporations in the established literature by presenting the sociolinguistic environment from which start-up and early-stage businesses are grown. The case taps into the potential future of business language policy and practices in the changing political and economic orders within the region and beyond.
The study brings two implications. First, language policy functions as spatial assemblage in producing territorial spaces that are enclosing but remain radically open with the ecological flows. This sheds light on indeterminacy functioning on the ontological level beneath practical uncertainties in the regulation of language. Second, language is regulated in interactions between material practices and discursive ideologies bound by affective relations. The thesis shows that institutional interventions are themselves regulative effects emerging from broader ecological processes, offering a more holistic approach to understanding the regulation of language.
... In this regard, recent post-anthropocentric critical theories such as new materialism and posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013;Bennett, 2009;Barad, 2003Barad, , 2007Latour, 2005) have greatly helped to deconstruct the nature-culture, human-nonhuman traditional western dichotomies 1 . Anthropocene discourse seems then to pose a sort of ethical-ecological imperative calling for the dismantlement of humans' "dreams of control" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017) over the planet, implicitly reconfiguring all subjects as "Earthbound" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017. Hence, thinking through the planetary dimen-sion helps to construct new non-anthropocentric epistemological approaches to reality: the eco-critical value of the notion of the "planet" here becomes very clear. ...
... In this regard, recent post-anthropocentric critical theories such as new materialism and posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013;Bennett, 2009;Barad, 2003Barad, , 2007Latour, 2005) have greatly helped to deconstruct the nature-culture, human-nonhuman traditional western dichotomies 1 . Anthropocene discourse seems then to pose a sort of ethical-ecological imperative calling for the dismantlement of humans' "dreams of control" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017) over the planet, implicitly reconfiguring all subjects as "Earthbound" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017. Hence, thinking through the planetary dimen-sion helps to construct new non-anthropocentric epistemological approaches to reality: the eco-critical value of the notion of the "planet" here becomes very clear. ...
... In this regard, recent post-anthropocentric critical theories such as new materialism and posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013;Bennett, 2009;Barad, 2003Barad, , 2007Latour, 2005) have greatly helped to deconstruct the nature-culture, human-nonhuman traditional western dichotomies 1 . Anthropocene discourse seems then to pose a sort of ethical-ecological imperative calling for the dismantlement of humans' "dreams of control" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017) over the planet, implicitly reconfiguring all subjects as "Earthbound" (Latour, 2015(Latour, /2017. Hence, thinking through the planetary dimen-sion helps to construct new non-anthropocentric epistemological approaches to reality: the eco-critical value of the notion of the "planet" here becomes very clear. ...
In the last few years, Anthropocene discourse has opened scientific and cultural debates to new transdisciplinary and theoretical horizons. Despite its ambiguity, this geological term reveals the negative impact of human activities on the Earth-system’s equilibria, calling for a cultural shift from Western anthropocentrism – based on the division between nature and culture, human, nonhuman, and more-than-human worlds – to more ecological systems of belief. For their part, cultural and literary studies firmly assert the importance of storytelling and literature for the in-present paradigmatic change. On these premises, my article draws on Comparative Literature and Environmental Humanities to call attention to the ecocritical value of the category of the “planet” as opposed to that of the “globe”; secondly, it proposes the analysis of two case studies from European contemporary literature, the novels Sirene (2007), by the Italian writer Laura Pugno, and Truismes (1996), by the French writer Marie Darrieussecq. Borrowing Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘subject’, my aim is to analyse what I call the ‘rhetoric of the planet’, that is, to analyse the rhetorical strategies used by the authors to dismantle Western ontological and epistemological dichotomies and engage with the Anthropocene planetary dimension.
... Em consonância com essa não polarização entre o que é humano e não humano, temos como referência mais contemporânea o teórico Bruno Latour (2017Latour ( , 2020, que tece provocações à noção de ecologia. Latour (2017) sugere que enxerguemos toda materialidade como força que se reúne em coletividades expressando "agências interdependentes". ...
... Em consonância com essa não polarização entre o que é humano e não humano, temos como referência mais contemporânea o teórico Bruno Latour (2017Latour ( , 2020, que tece provocações à noção de ecologia. Latour (2017) sugere que enxerguemos toda materialidade como força que se reúne em coletividades expressando "agências interdependentes". Ou seja, aquilo que não é humano não deve ser tido como passivo nos processos políticos, devendo expressar-se a fim de minimizar os impactos sociais para todos os seres que habitam o universo. ...
... E por que separamos o que seria, supostamente, da natureza de questões políticas? Latour (2017) entende que não seria possível compreender a natureza e a sociedade de maneira separada. Isso porque a ideia de "natureza" em si seria uma abstração, uma vez que a "naturalização" dos fenômenos é uma falsa solução criada pela modernidade, uma maneira de "purificar" os atores-actantes que, de fato, não poderiam ser separados. ...
Resumo: Este artigo configura-se como um ensaio teórico que objetiva tecer pistas epistemológicas e/ou metodológicas para pesquisas em Psicologia Social a partir do que iremos chamar de “ecologia do cuidado”. Para tanto, o conceito de “ecologia” no campo das ciências é resgatado, a fim de situá-lo em uma perspectiva pós-estruturalista que busca compreender a interdependência de agentes humanos e não humanos. Ainda, a categoria do cuidado, a partir de um olhar feminista, é compreendida enquanto uma prática onipresente, o que, em um sentido epistemológico, sugere que ocupa centralidade em nossas análises. Propõe-se olhar para o cuidado de modo “tentacular”, interdependente e relacional, como algo que articula uma gama de atores, sejam eles humanos ou não, de modo conectivo e inventivo. Concluímos que essa contribuição cria um tensionamento na centralidade atribuída ao sujeito humano no campo da Psicologia Social, convocando as materialidades e praticalidades engajadas nas produções do cuidado e/ou do conhecimento.
... First, it contributes to the growing scholarship on the political stakes of temporalities and temporal language for framing issues like climate change (Adam, 1998;Hom, 2019Hom, , 2020Lazar, 2019;Little, 2022;White, 2024). Second, applying perspectives from political theory, it critiques attempts to use eschatological temporal language in Chronos time to inspire action (Friberg, 2022;Hogg, 2022;Latour, 2017;McQueen, 2021;Rossing and Buitendag, 2020). I will start with an account of the debate in political thought on the re-emergence of Judeo-Christian eschatological time in climate change. ...
... Scholars have used Judeo-Christian eschatology to think, speak and write about climate change and the Anthropocene. Some take it further, using eschatology not just for sense-making, but arguing that it may be a fruitful way to convey the salience of climate change as a threat to human survival in a way that is enabling or inspires hope (Friberg, 2022;Hogg, 2022;Latour, 2017;Rossing and Buitendag, 2020). Despite appeals to hope and faith, when climate change is made sense of as the eschatological endpoint in Chronos time, it entails a deterministic sense of the future and chronological confusion, where the future is predetermined and the present already past. ...
... In this sense, eschatology poses a revolutionary possibility, where the move towards the inevitable allows for redefining the boundaries of the political (Kelly, 2003). There is also a political hope harboured in eschatological time: the end of the current order might offer deliverance and something better (Kelly, 2022;Latour, 2017;Thaler, 2019Thaler, , 2024. Such hope has been a powerful mobilising force in political movements in history, as exemplified by the US civil rights movement of the last century (Kriner, 2005). ...
Judeo-Christian eschatological time has re-emerged in scholarly and popular discussions of climate apocalypse in the last decades, also in attempts to mobilise action against climate change. I argue that speaking about climate change as the eschatological endpoint in linear time undermines the call for action, understood as the contingent capacity for new beginnings. When the severity of climate change is made sense of by introducing an end to linear Chronos time, the result is a confusion in the direction and contingency of temporal politics, which effectively undermines action through speech. Eschatological, linear time frames the time for action as too narrow: first, by casting the end of time as inevitable, and second, by upsetting the chronology and direction of time as a prerequisite for politics. The conclusion is that climate eschatology is disempowering in Chronos time and that another temporal frame is needed to address climate change politically.
... Through life itself, we remain connected to all other animate and inanimate agencies and conditions of life (Arendt, 1998, p. 2). Latour (2017Latour ( , 2018Latour & Weibel, 2020) captures this kind of birth in the metaphor of Gaia, as I will get back to in the end of the paper. For now, it is important to point out how natality points to remembrance as well as the birth and rebirth of life as the ultimate meaning of existence. ...
... My colleagues and I have attempted to posit Gaia storytelling as a conceptualisation of how to work with sustainability transitions in practice Jørgensen & Fatien, 2024). Gaia storytelling is an umbrella term for working with stories from the love of what we from Lovelock and Latour calls Gaia-a metaphor for life itself as it emerges in the critical zone (Latour, 2017;Lovelock, 1995). Gaia is the name attributed to what is called the critical zone plus life. ...
This paper engages with sustainability storytelling from the perspective of freedom. Freedom is discussed with relation to a politics of storytelling than can counter power. Freedom, it is argued, is enacted in genuine storytelling and is experienced between people. The conditions of possibility of ethics in organisations are thus conditioned on the political framing of the spaces between people in terms how they condition how people may appear in storytelling as well as how people together transform these spaces for future appearances. Arendt's ethics of freedom is contrasted with the concept of freedom embedded in neoliberal capitalism and related to sustainability. Genuine storytelling is to bring something new into existence from the condition of plurality and responsibility for the world. Storytelling presumes a space for plural political participation. Freedom therefore also forwards attentions towards the material possibilities that afford that people can participate and appear as unique subjects. The paper ends by positioning Arendt storytelling in relation to a storytelling model for transitioning to sustainability, which positions Latour's notion of Gaia as the centre of four storytelling cycles.
... Estos juegos refuerzan un paradigma en que los humanos, percibidos como entidades externas a la naturaleza, ejercen control sobre ella, presentando los problemas ambientales como desafíos a superar en beneficio de los intereses humanos (Abraham & Jaymanne, 2017). Este enfoque perpetúa una paradoja en la que los humanos se presentan tanto como la causa como la solución de las crisis ecológicas, consolidando un ciclo de dominio antropocéntrico (Latour, 2017). En consecuencia, Abraham y Jaymanne (2017) sugieren que los videojuegos más efectivos para abordar el cambio climático no son necesariamente aquellos que lo hacen de forma explícita, sino aquellos que, como Everything, reconfiguran activamente nuestra noción humano-natura. ...
Este estudio de caso explora la implementación del videojuego Everything (O’Reilly, 2017) en un contexto educativo no formal con jóvenes del Besòs i el Maresme de Barcelona, dentro de una tesis doctoral más amplia que explora la práctica educativa con videojuegos para la construcción de imaginarios críticos de futuro
común.
Libro de actas completo: https://www.digraes24.es/programa-congreso/
... It is the motto of this area, 'living with the sea'" (Miura, 2020, Oyakaigan). This living-with (Gan et al. 2017, 11) emphasizes its secular and unpredictable aspects, actively forcing a recognition of an Earth that is not merely a blank canvas that can be painted upon, but active, agentive, complex, and potentially hostile (Latour, 2017). This compels an unsettling, and yet not less powerful engagement with the planet, challenging the assumptions that "Terra" needs to be managed, controlled, conquered. ...
The process of terraforming − or planetary adaptation-started in sci-fi literature but has recently become increasingly studied by hard sciences, social sciences, as well as popular culture. While terraforming refers to the core idea of making other planets fit for human life, in the times of socioecological crisis of the Anthro-pocene, marked by unprecedented disasters and accelerated climate change, different stakeholders in and outside of academia have started to recognize the pressing need of "terraforming Terra (Earth)": bringing our planet back to a presumed original state, which usually follow a utopic western imaginary that flattens and erases difference. The aim of this article is to look at the idea of Terraforming Terra and "constructively deconstruct" its cardinal element: that of "Terra" (Earth), borrowing from posthuman geographies and critical approaches to postcolonial studies. Reflecting on how processes of terraforming are socio-politically and ideologically oriented, and on the fact that they refer to a mostly-western imaginary, my article inquires on what spatio-temporal iteration of Earth is being described and created in practices of terraforming Terra, and who has the authority to conflate such plurality of world visions and epistemologies into a unified blueprint for Earth. This theoretical question will be analysed utilizing the empirical case of the recovery process in post-disaster Tohoku, Japan. This coastal area was destroyed and reconstructed after a "triple disaster" which took place on March 11, 2011: an earthquake, a tsunami which, in its highest point, reached a height of over 30 m, and a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
... Beyond the highly localized knowledge of the earth environment through a reterritorialization effect (Latour 2017a, Latour 2017b, our broader aim is to draw attention to and open up debate on biodiversity, and the role that healthy soils can play in countering the effects of global change. Through citizen participation, Solenville seeks to address social (reconnecting with nature, social ties, building knowledge and democratic debate), scientific and environmental issues (fight against soil degradation, biodiversity erosion and climate change). ...
The Solenville participatory research program (solenville.fr) aims to increase knowledge and awareness of soils biodiversity (living soils). Ignored by politicians and city dwellers, soils are unknown and neglected despite their importance in the functioning of ecosystems. By drawing attention to this issue through a range of tools that bring together scientific approaches from all disciplines and are deployed with city dwellers on numerous occasions to improve knowledge of soils, we are helping to raise awareness of living soils among scientists, city dwellers, future citizens (schoolchildren) and local stakeholders. Soils, like water and air, are present everywhere, but made invisible by what happens on the surface. In the city, this invisibility is even more obvious: buildings, roads, engineering structures and infrastructures have covered the ground, historically for reasons of hygiene and speed of various flows. We focus on urban soils for most of the population is now concentrated in cities.
Objectives: from local down-to-earth awareness and stakes to global issues
Our program hopes to provide tangible and sensitive elements to change the way the urban society looks at soils, and help them rethink the place and function of the latter. Taking into account the different functionalities of soils is becoming essential, particularly with the advent of the principle of zero net artificialization (ZAN), now enshrined in French law. Therefore it is NOT only about understanding ecosystems functionning, but also the “values” placed on our environment. By working together, scientists, politicians and citizens, we are seeking to have new values accepted and discussed (we assume that socially/politically acceptability is improved by working together to opened up the perspective of the importance of soils in the functioning of ecosystems).
Beyond the highly localized knowledge of the earth environment through a reterritorialization effect (Latour 2017a, Latour 2017b), our broader aim is to draw attention to and open up debate on biodiversity, and the role that healthy soils can play in countering the effects of global change. Through citizen participation, Solenville seeks to address social (reconnecting with nature, social ties, building knowledge and democratic debate), scientific and environmental issues (fight against soil degradation, biodiversity erosion and climate change).
Partners and approaches: inter- and transdisciplinarity
Our long-standing local roots in environmental issues and challenges also enable us to reach out to citizens to bring together participants in our activities and research. Thanks to the close collaboration within the ZAEU-LTSER Strasbourg, which gives us access to the scientists working on site and to local territorial government, we connect with various communities and bring the debate of soil uses and management up to the political level. Indeed, one of ZAEU's aims is to enable the rapid transfer, appropriation and application of results to society and policy-makers, which is what co-constructed and co-realized research is all about.
Solenville relies on:
Researchers from various disciplines (earth and life sciences, geography and ethnology);
organizers/ intermediaries, essential in supporting citizens involvement through animating activities and meetings with all participants;
artists as we believe that a sensitive, sensory apprehension and perceptive experiences are essential to improve relationship with nature/biodiversity, and because we subscribe to the proposition that the ecological crisis is a crisis of sensitivity (Morizot 2022);
Dialogues with politicians through various research tasks and the construction of events organized by municipalities and NGOs or institutional stakeholders.
Mapping results and contributing to knowledge of socio-political representations of living soils
As we are aiming for level 4 (extreme Citizen science) of participatory research (Haklay 2012), our results are not yet fully processed, exploited and formalized:
crowdsourcing (and student work) has enabled us to set around 750 barber traps for knowledge of epigeous macrofauna; we are thus contributing to the constitution of references of urban soil biodiversity.
more than 200 surveys and observations of soil knowledge (among schoolchildren, students and inhabitants) have provided us with a picture of perceptions.
poetic or down-to-earth imaginings of soil emerge from the texts produced by participants during writing workshops.
A determination to keep going
Participatory research, citizen science and transdisciplinarity takes time. We're starting to make the most of our results, and still looking into :
how to measure impacts (what indicators)? Are there transformative effects: on land governance and decisions, living together (human/non Human), the future of the commons? what is the value of having aggregated citizens?
how can we collectively share the benefits of such an approach / research?
how to continue time-consuming research in a world of short-term innovation and project mode?
... By shifting humanity's role from dominance to relational co-existence within the biosphere, this approach aligns with the concept of Gaia as a living, responsive entity. Integrating Indigenous perspectives fosters sustainable and ethical navigation of ecological crises, offering a transformative understanding of humanity's place in the planetary ecosystem (Latour, 2017). Endeavors like the CBIKS mentioned in the introduction set their hope into these aspects of Indigenous wisdom. ...
This paper explores the integration of holistic knowledge systems with Western scientific perspectives through the concept of Two-Eyed Seeing (TES). By examining philosophical underpinnings of TES, particularly through the lens of Wilfrid Sellars' synoptic view, the paper highlights the potential for creating a more comprehensive understanding through the concept of Two-Eyed Seeing with epistemic insight. The Synoptic Transfer Framework (STF) as a Western educational variant of TES inspired by Sellars' philosophy is introduced. TES, as conceptualized by Indigenous Elders, and the Western STF both advocate for a multi-perspective approach to the world, where the scientific and holistic images complement rather than compete with each other. The paper also addresses the chances and challenges of applying TES in educational contexts, particularly in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), identifying common pitfalls such as the naturalistic and the moralistic fallacy. Furthermore, it argues for the importance of educational frameworks that incorporate TES to foster culturally responsive and inclusive science curricula. The study underscores the relevance of TES and STF in addressing sustainability issues, emphasizing the sentient persons approach and the normative perspective in both. The braid metaphor is used to illustrate the continuous, dynamic interaction between perspectives rooted in factual evidence and societal values to ensure a sustainable future for humanity.
... On that premise, it might appear that the politics of strong extinction utopianism is a politics of the Earth. But, again, there are several ongoing attempts to develop a new politics and ethics for the planet through shifting from an anthropocentric worldview to an Earth-or planet-centered one (such as Chakrabarty, 2021;Iheka, 2021;Kaldor & Selchow, 2022;Latour, 2017;Mauelshagen, 2017;Nail, 2021;Thomas, 2022). Instead of concluding with human extinction, these views are aimed at bringing together the human with other lifeforms, and, to various degrees, with nonorganic materials, which all appear as integral constituents of a holistic view. ...
In the last decades, conceptions of the future have gradually moved from visions of societal betterment toward prospects of societal collapse and human extinction. What happens to utopian thought under such conditions? What happens to utopia when the future transforms into a wasteland of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imaginaries? Contrary to expectations, utopian thinking does not vanish. Based on the contention that if humans are the malaise of the world then human non-existence is what comes out as “betterment,” contemporary utopian thought has begun to appropriate dystopian imaginaries and contemplate even the prospect of human extinction in utopian terms. Imaginaries of utopian futures without humans are truly challenging, oddly self-contradictory, and, in many respects, deeply perplexing. This chapter zooms in on the most prominent utopian imaginaries of endtimes—collapsology, ahumanism, and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement—and offers a profound analysis of the politics of extinction utopianism.
... In terms of specific avenues to understand sustainability, CMS can offer several contributions to the understanding of such relevant phenomena. Firstly, CMS emphasizes the p. 460 social dimensions of sustainability, recognizing that environmental preservation is not sufficient to achieve sustainability, because the distinction between nature and society does not endure (Latour, 2017). CMS argues that social justice, economic equity, and ethical responsibility are also essential dimensions of sustainability, and must be addressed alongside environmental concerns (Fleming & Banerjee, 2016). ...
Increasing concerns over climate change, resource depletion, and environmental degradation have led to a growing interest in sustainability across various disciplines, including business and management. Sustainability is often described as a means of meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This entry critically analyzes the concept of sustainability, arguing that the mainstream paradigm of sustainability is inadequate as a response to the scale of the environmental crise. CMS argues that social justice, economic equity, and ethical responsibility are also essential dimensions of sustainability, and must be addressed alongside environmental concerns.
... In seeking to experiment with producing new realities, we conceptualize the city as a geogames (Gaia + Game), a metaphorical and living board game where 'geo' extends beyond just Earth. This game is situated, with modes of feeling, epistemologies, and environments that create a gameplay experience which makes us face Gaia (Latour, 2017). The game is a meaningful political and collective act, fostering complex relations aligned with the cosmopolitical proposal. ...
The Anthropogenic march of urbanization and environmental degradation threatens our built heritage and countless species. Imagine a board game where heritage-based design integrates human and non-human agents, their spaces, and atmospheres, creating a playfield for climate adaptation reflections. The proposed board game concept is a journey through the mood of Candomblé Terreiros in Bahia, Brazil, where players role-play as spiritual leaders, community champions, government organisations, plants and animals. They negotiate climate adaptation challenges to preserve sacred rituals, cherished artifacts and sacred groves, all while navigating a living map of Salvador. As players succeed to collaborate, their decisions shape the narrative, blending reality and imagination with cosmological proportions. Methodologically grounded in the literature, this game aspires to be an educational and a heritage management tool of Afro-diasporic cosmoperceptions. The result is a reflexive proposal, a conceptual exercise that demonstrates the game's potential in translating sensory experiences into actionable preservation strategies. A marcha antropogênica da urbanização e degradação ambiental ameaça nosso patrimônio construído e inúmeras espécies. Imagine um jogo de tabuleiro onde o design baseado no patrimônio integra agentes humanos e não humanos, seus espaços e atmosferas, criando um campo de jogo para reflexões sobre adaptação climática. O jogo de tabuleiro conceitual proposto é uma jornada através do ambiente dos Terreiros de Candomblé na Bahia, Brasil, onde os jogadores assumem papéis de líderes espirituais, defensores comunitários, organizações governamentais, plantas e animais. Eles negociam desafios de adaptação climática para preservar rituais sagrados, artefatos preciosos e bosques sagrados, tudo isso enquanto navegam por um mapa vivo de Salvador. À medida que os jogadores colaboram com sucesso, suas decisões moldam a narrativa, mesclando realidade e imaginação em proporções cosmológicas. Metodologicamente fundamentado na literatura, este jogo aspira ser uma ferramenta educacional e de gestão do patrimônio das cosmopercepções afro-diaspóricas. O resultado é uma proposta reflexiva, um exercício conceitual que demonstra o potencial do jogo em traduzir experiências sensoriais em estratégias de preservação acionáveis.
... However, Abraham and Jaymanne (2017) argue that many games addressing climate change position the player as a ruler managing ecological crises. This framing perpetuates an anthropocentric cycle of dominance, depicting humans as both the cause and solution to these crises (Latour, 2017). Thus, the authors suggest that the most impactful games may not be those directly addressing climate change but those, like Everything, that actively transform our human-nature relationship (Butucea, 2020). ...
This case study explores the use of the video game Everything (O'Reilly, 2017) in a non-formal education context with young people in Barcelona, as part of broader research on educational practices with video games for constructing critical future imaginaries.
... With that expansion the remit of the organization that is called "World Health Organization" will at some point need to include not just the health of humans but the health of our fellow terrestrials and the health of our planet, on which the health of the former depend. That health is incompatible, as we have documented in these pages, and as have many others elsewhere (Latour 2017), with the sociotechnical apparatus that is called "automobility". ...
Although tobacco use and road fatalities were recognized as public health issues at roughly the same time, the public health responses have been very different. The accepted wisdom in public health policy is that access to tobacco should be limited, highly taxed, advertising prohibited, visual and textual warnings be mandatory on tobacco products, the obfuscation and lobbying efforts of the tobacco industry publicized. In this paper, we make the case for adopting similar strategies in relation to automobility. As opposed to framing automobility violence as a remediable road safety issue, this paper makes the case for treating automobility violence as an irremediable public health problem. The public health goal with respect to tobacco is not simply to reduce death and disease but to eradicate tobacco use. The public health goal in respect to automobility should be the same. This requires pursuing public health politics oriented towards the dismantling of automobility.
... Isto é, de escutar essa atenção às entidades não humanas (estas entendidas como uma primeira acepção de "coisas"), dando simultaneamente a ver a necessidade de uma redistribuição de posições teóricas previamente ocupadas nos campos do pensamento e das práticas ecológicas, antropológicas e estéticas. Proposta essa que vem ao caso, sobretudo tendo em mente o panorama ecológico atual, passível de ser formulado, tal como sugerido por Bruno Latour (2017), como um "novo regime climático" onde a agência geofísica humana vem ao primeiro plano, no mesmo passo em que o "fundo" físico posto em segundo plano pela modernidade "tornou-se instável" -"Como se o cenário tivesse subido ao palco para compartilhar o drama junto aos atores" (LATOUR, 2017, p. 3, tradução nossa) 7 . 5 "La pratique intermédiale par excellence". ...
The paper addresses the theatrical experiment Stifters Dinge, by theater director and musical composer Heiner Goebbels, first premiered in 2007. Drawing from an analysis of this play without actors, understood as a project of mise-en-scène of human-non human assemblages, it reflects on the convergence between aspects of two theoretical-practical debates which address the problem of intermediality in theater and a few ecocritical challenges fostered in respect to spontaneous assumptions identified in a widespread ecological thought. In regard to the first debate, the paper aims at a cross-reading between intermedial approaches to the history of Theater and a discussion on the problem of the materialities staged in the play. As for the second debate, the paper approaches the issue of the status of “thing” elaborated by the play, having in mind theoretical approaches to a new understanding of the relations between nature and culture and the notions of ambience and agency.
... Consequently, nature, as defined by universal science, does not exist in a singular form and in the following, I will therefore mainly speak of natures in the plural. Latour (2017Latour ( , 2018) draws significant political implications from this perspective. He contends that to protect Gaia, we must re-establish our connections with the Earth's components: rainforests, oceans, biodiversity hotspots, soils, and more. ...
This article delves into the complex relationship between societies and natures in the Anthropocene era, underscoring the crucial need to recognize and appreciate nature’s inherent gifts. It goes beyond market-based instrumental values, advocating for a shift towards embracing relational values and a caring attitude towards nature. The transition towards relational approaches within sustainability science is discussed, drawing insights from diverse sources such as social theory, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Indigenous knowledge systems. Moreover, the article introduces the concept of nature’s gifts and emphasizes the significance of reciprocity in human-nature relationships. It advocates for a methodological animism approach towards natures in Western societies, where non-humans are perceived as quasi-subjects, fostering a deeper sense of interconnectedness and appreciation for non-human entities. The discussion also explores relational perspectives in biology, i.e. the dynamics of symbiosis, highlighting the cooperative ties between plants, animals, and humans within ecosystems. Lastly, the article emphasizes the legal and political implications of acknowledging nature’s gifts through granting rights to nature. This paradigm shift challenges the conventional view of nature as mere property and advocates for recognizing natures as entities deserving of inherent rights. It discusses the importance of legal frameworks that promote reciprocal relationships between rights and obligations towards nature, ultimately aiming to foster a more sustainable and equitable coexistence with the environment. This article thus advocates for a profound re-evaluation of human-nature relationships by acknowledging natures as a quasi-subjects, recognizing and appreciating nature’s gifts and the rights of nature.
... Given the self-destructive nature of modernity and the uncertainty of the planetary crisis, existing norms, practices, and systems are not enough to overcome the Anthropocene, and unconventional and unexpected solutions are needed [3,15,27,29]. As Latour [30] posited, "the name of this new geohistorical period may become the most pertinent philosophical, religious, anthropological, and-as we shall soon see-political concept for beginning to turn away for good from the notions of modern and modernity" (p. 116). ...
The political influence of the Anthropocene concept stems from its analytic potential to encompass various disciplines and capture public attention. However, there is a lack of research examining the extent to which the public has adopted the views embodied in the Anthropocene. We developed a scale to measure awareness of the Anthropocene. Based on a thorough review of Anthropocene studies, an initial set of fifteen items was generated to develop the scale. These items were then subjected to an empirical test, using a sample in South Korea (N = 1,668; aged 19 to 90). After a series of reliability and factor analyses, the Anthropocene Awareness Scale was optimized into a unidimensional scale comprising eight items (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.88). Designed to explore individual attitudes, the scale could provide quantitative researchers with an entry point into the Anthropocene discourse and facilitate empirical studies that generate evidence for environmental policies and education in the Anthropocene.
... In other words, as forms of esotropic adaptation, in which the economic elites search for new, more favorable, environments (literally) in the face of changing circumstances. When faced with crises, the economic elites seem to plan and prepare for catastrophes individually, rather than contributing to prevent them from happening in the first place (Latour, 2017;Morena, 2023), and the ability to acquire rare natural resources and retreat into private, secure havens is one of the defining characteristics of a privileged geo-social class (Cousin & Schultz, 2024;Schultz, 2020). These processes have significant implications for the socio-spatial configuration of territories and often contribute to creating new lines of exploitation and exclusion-even without considering the enormous carbon footprint that the lifestyles of the economic elites bring with them (Barros and Wilk, 2021). ...
How do economic elites react to global shocks? Here, global shocks refer to events that disrupt both the economy and society, such as economic crises, political regime collapses, natural and climate disasters, and collective health emergencies, including pandemics. These events have varied impacts across different geographical regions and population groups, including social classes and age cohorts. We argue that examining the relationship between global shocks and economic elites provides a unique perspective on significant trends among these elites. Against this backdrop, we will address two key aspects regarding the current characteristics and internal differentiations of economic elites: (a) their stance on socioeconomic inequalities, legitimization, and the construction of social acceptance; (b) new lifestyles and spatial relationships, including practices like land and space grabbing.
... Latour (2017Latour ( , 2018 has also come close to this view. ...
In the ecological discourse on nature and the environment, the natural side of humans, which we experience as our own corporeality, plays hardly any role. To address this deficiency, the paper proposes the concept of conviviality . It refers to a primary connection with the living environment, conveyed through our own sense of aliveness and embodiment. The concept encompasses three interconnected aspects: 1) An epistemological aspect , according to which we can only recognize other living beings as such and distinguish them from inanimate things through the experience of our shared bodily existence; 2) A natural-philosophical and ecological aspect , which relates to the fundamental interdependence of all living beings and the interpenetration of life and the environment; 3) An ethical aspect , where our kinship and connection with living beings form the basis for an attitude of care and commitment towards them. The three aspects are based on the same fundamental structure, namely the interdependence of the living, both in subjective, phenomenal terms, and in objective, ecological terms. At the same time, they are grounded in our corporeality, which points to the relational nature of our existence, our life in relationships and in ecological contexts. In this way, the fundamental kinship of our lived bodies with living nature becomes the basis for an ecological ethic.
... Polycrisis changes affect the Arctic more severely than other places due to polar amplification (Screen and Simmonds 2010; Serreze and Barry 2011; Rantanen et al. 2022). It is essential to know the scientific facts behind the polycrisis, but there is also a need to be sensitised and moved by the environment, to be touched in the heart (Latour 2017). The polycrisis is happening and has myriad implications at this moment; it has been observed through the natural sciences research in Abisko, but is also perceived and sensed in organic bodies and matter. ...
This study investigates sensory experience whilst walking in the era of the polycrisis. Through a walk followed by an interview, an attempt to gather impressions about sensory experiences and ponder how these sensory impressions reflect relations within the environment by placing them alongside environmental data, and describe the implications of the polycrisis. The focus lies on sensory registers related to the environment in the Arctic village of Abisko in northern Sweden, an area that is changing rapidly and which has been extensively researched within the natural sciences. The study draws on artistic research and the concept of transcorporeality—that is, bodies are in relation with the world around them and in a constant state of becoming with it. Transcorporeality as a concept is applied as walking ritualisation using multisensory ethnography and ‘walking with’ methodologies to investigate the sensory experiences and relations that make them. The interlocutors—here, called participants—were permanent residents of Abisko. I argue that a walking ritualisation, which involves repetitive sensing and a transcorporeal experience of the environment, adds to the narrative and knowledge of the Arctic polycrisis. In essence, that ritualisation may enmesh the human subject in the more-than-human world. Keywords: More-than-human world, Ritualisation, Walking, Transcorporeal, Sensing, Arctic
... Hence, the discourse we criticise is inter-national at best, whereas what we call for is a fundamental shift in the normative foundations of global governance, by prioritising the planetary above the (inter)national. In our approach and in the context of this analysis, planetarism means that in global cultural policy, in addition to human values and well-beingand against the dominant emphasis on economic valuethe values and well-being of the environment has to be seriously and thoroughly considered, and to reconsider the concept of culture and to rescale it so that it intertwines with the nature and not detaches from it, as has been mostly typical for the hegemonic narrative of modernism (Koistinen et al., 2024;Kortetmäki et al., 2021; see also Latour, 2017). Alasuutari (2016) argues that policy discourses across most domains have become "synchronised", not through coercion, but through the voluntary creation of epistemic communities. ...
Many artistic expressions call for cultural, social and political change. Though the policy environments in which they emerge remain predominantly wedded to a consumption-driven creative economy. In doing so, they tacitly endorse a methodologically nationalist perspective on artistic expression, trade in creative goods and services, and cultural identity. By using the United Nations resolution on the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021 as a case in point, we argue that the language of this document, which reflects the current hegemonic discourse of creative economy, misses its target when claiming to promote sustainability because it is (1) anthropocentric, (2) growth-focused and (3) methodologically nationalist. Through a discourse analysis of this particular UN resolution, we demonstrate the multiple and conflicting connections between culture and sustainability through the perspective of planetary well-being. The main target of our criticism is the anthropocentric nature of sustainability discourses, but also their unreserved promotion of perpetual economic growth. In response, we articulate the need for a profound cultural shift from anthropocentric worldviews, growth-oriented ideologies, and methodologically nationalist frameworks to enable environmentally engaged cultural policies and citizens.
Although humanity appears to have much to celebrate about fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), wellbeing of many (a)biotic systems appear under severe and frequently-increasing threats linked to them. Rather than blaming STEM fields, however, much scholarship suggests that significant culpability must be borne by ‘pro-capitalist dispositifs’; that is, networks of myriad living, nonliving and symbolic entities (‘actants’) that, like parts of a machine, collaborate to promote capitalist goals. Given persistent problems—like the climate emergency—associated with such apparently ‘hegemonic’ networks, those supporting increases in social justice and environmental vitality (‘ecojustice’) must work to either revise or replace pro-capitalist dispositifs with those largely supporting ‘ecojustice’ (acknowledging variants that typically arise in democratic decision-making). In this introductory chapter, after elaboration of points like those above, I describe contributions to this project of members of my research and publication teams, many of whom have been using STEPWISE-informed pedagogies for action research in several different educational contexts since 2012. Colleagues from different geopolitical contexts also describe and defend their particular pedagogical approaches to, like STEPWISE, educate students about possibly problematic relationships among STEM fields and powerful societal members and environments and prepare them to effectively address their concerns regarding such relationships. Along with a review of chapters here by Jesse Bazzul in the book’s Afterword, readers may use many and varied aspects of contributions here to develop programmes that may revise STEM education in their contexts, and perhaps societies more broadly, to increase local/global ‘ecojustice.’
This chapter synthesizes the anthology’s contributions to explore how the concept of Bildung becomes relevant as a response to evolving challenge perceptions in engineering education and practice. The authors of the various chapters rejuvenate the concept of Bildung in different ways, each shaped by their distinct perceptions of contemporary challenges. Drawing from diverse intellectual traditions, they highlight different aspects of the complex, situated sociotechnical challenges facing engineering today. This underscores that Bildung is a normative endeavor that can no longer assume a stable and independent environment. As Bildung enters the Anthropocene era, articulating its vision for engineering must involve an active reconfiguration of social norms and practices to foster good and just ways of life.
The belief that the universe can be studied as a physical object has led to the development of a branch of physics called cosmology. Cosmologists are in charge of writing the grand narrative of the universe. This conception is based on the negation of the singularity of our point of view, which is our earthly condition. Physical cosmology thus provides a general framework that lends credence to the idea that the Earth-our cradle-could be a disposable planet and that the natural destiny of the human race would be to conquer space. Yet we urgently need to take care of the web of interdependence to which we belong. We do need to return to Earth rather than conquer space. This requires a cosmological turn, or, in other words, new representations and new narratives of our place in the cosmos.
RÉSUMÉ : La croyance que l'univers peut être étudié comme un objet physique a conduit au développement d'une branche de la physique appelée cosmologie. Les cosmologistes sont chargés d'écrire le grand récit de l'univers. Cette conception repose sur la négation de la singularité de notre point de vue, qui est notre condition terrestre. La cosmologie physique fournit ainsi un cadre général qui accrédite l'idée que la Terre-notre berceau-pourrait être une planète jetable et que le destin naturel de l'espèce humaine serait de conquérir l'espace. Pourtant, il y a urgence à prendre soin du tissu d'interdépendances auquel nous appartenons. L'urgence est bien de revenir sur Terre plutôt que de conquérir l'espace. Cela nécessite un tournant cosmologique, c'est-à-dire de nouvelles représentations et de nouveaux récits de notre situation dans le cosmos.
The Portable Spring is a zero-energy, self-replicating, water-harvesting system designed to operate without instruction, electricity, or industrial inputs. Grounded in the physics of phase change, capillary transport, and radiative cooling, it produces potable water from ambient air, solar heat, and earth materials using only passive mechanisms. Each unit combines a solar-heated basin, a char-clay filtration matrix, a wick-driven transport loop, and a radiative condensation dome—designed for complete field fabrication and repair.
This work encodes its logic not in text or electronics, but in gesture, motion, and thermodynamic feedback. The system self-teaches through tactile correction: flow rates, temperature shifts, and visible residue guide replication, repair, and optimization. All components are substitutable from locally available biomass, clay, ash, fabric, and scrap. Survival is modeled not as resistance to failure, but as recursive coherence across thermal, cognitive, and environmental phases.
Drawing from simulations and simulation field testing in deserts, highlands, coasts, and crisis zones, the design achieves daily yields between 1.7 and 3.6 liters with no external energy. Collapse is not treated as a singular event, but as a gradient—modeled by entropy-repair differentials and inverted through gesture-based adaptation.
The Portable Spring emerges where water is latent, heat is uneven, and knowledge is embodied. It is not an appliance—it is a survival field. It braids matter, motion, and memory into a system that does not resist decay, but transforms with it.
In his works on ecological philosophy, Bruno Latour develops an interesting perspective on religion and pluralism. He proposes a new worldview, in which religion is reinterpreted in view of a Gaian philosophy. He extends ‘pluralism’ beyond the anthropocentrism that dominates modern humanism. In his book Facing Gaia Latour includes nonhuman beings in a larger community and works towards a larger concept of eco-humanism. In this paper, I try to reconstruct his position by showing that the philosophical foundation for his interpretation of religion could be called ‘terrarism’ and is to be classified as a form of new materialism. This new interpretation of materialism has postmodernist origins (inspired by Gilles Deleuze), but it is not identical to it, because Latour distances himself from ‘postmodernism’. He wants to positively contribute to a new ontology. My point is that Latour’s ‘terrarist’ grounding of religious pluralism obstructs any foundation of transcendence and, finally, congests a really pluralistic ecumene because he still adheres to the postmodernist idea that we should renounce to a unitary principle of being. His ideas on eco-humanism and pluralistic ecumene could gain momentum if we opened ourselves to a more holistic and spiritual way of thinking, retaking Lovelock’s conception of Gaia. However, Latour’s new-materialistic interpretation of ‘animism’ can be seen as a positive contribution to a new perspective of the world that definitively sets ‘materialism’ aside.
Este ensaio propõe uma articulação entre a filosofia política de Nicolau Maquiavel e a crise climática contemporânea, considerando os desafios de governança, poder e responsabilidade diante de uma catástrofe ambiental global. Com base nos conceitos de virtù, fortuna e razão de Estado, argumenta-se que a leitura maquiavélica pode jogar luz nos dilemas enfrentados por lideranças políticas diante da instabilidade ecológica. Diálogos com autores como Bruno Latour, Naomi Klein, Dipesh Chakrabarty e Timothy Morton permitem ampliar essa reflexão, deslocando a crise ambiental do campo técnico para o campo político-filosófico. A crise climática exige novas formas de imaginar o poder e a ação em meio à incerteza, e a tradição realista de Maquiavel oferece ferramentas críticas para esse esforço.
The article gives a new reading of the famous Ode to Man from Sophocles’ Antigone by placing the conflict between humans and Earth in the unexpected light of anthropogenic climate change. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the text draws from the achievements of classical studies, but also especially of some of the latest authors trying to think through the philosophical and worldview stakes of the anthropocene. Theses are given towards a vision of a new theatre of catastrophe. It is urged that catastrophe is the concept where theatre under which we must think the perils of the new climatic regime, and at the same time the concept that allows them to productively interact with theatre’s potential to create new meaning.
The accelerating pace of global transformation-marked by environmental stress, technological disruption, and rising social inequality-reveals the limitations of classical economic paradigms. This paper proposes a novel, yet grounded, approach to designing economies: one that prioritizes systemic balance, ethical allocation, and long-term societal resilience over short-term profit maximization. Rooted in in-terdisciplinary insights and strategic systems thinking, the model presented herein introduces a framework for harmonizing production, distribution, and societal well-being in the context of global transformation. Rather than offering a utopia, it provides a pragmatic blueprint for economies seeking to evolve beyond the crises of the 21st century.
A preocupação com a questão ambiental se tornou importante no cenário geopolítico internacional ao ensejar a criação de um regime ambiental internacional, o qual possui por modelo a confecção de acordos e tratados ambientais multilaterais e da configuração, em decorrência, de uma governança global do clima. A partir da análise do Tratado de Quioto e do Acordo de Paris, ambos inseridos na Convenção-Quadro das Nações Unidas sobre Mudanças do Clima, o presente artigo tem por objetivo interpretar tal estrutura como eventos de acontecer global, eventos esses que, por sua vez, apresentam vetores hierárquicos, identificados como entidades verticais. Essas, como eventos da era da globalização neoliberal, possuem lógicas de poder embutidas em seus vetores. Deste modo, como exercício teórico e metodológico, busca-se dar uma nova interpretação à configuração multilateral de acordos ambientais, vistas dentro da lógica de expansão do capital neoliberal, portadoras de intenções escamoteadas pelo discurso oficial e que são, por seu turno, na verdade, desterritorializadoras ao se materializarem em territórios periféricos e auxiliares na reprodução do sistema do capital.
The question of the possibility of knowledge in nature is taken up in this chapter. It takes twin tracks, on the one hand, examining the role of beauty in knowledge, paying particular attention to how the poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins show nature disclosing itself even as hidden, while at the same time discussing a number of critiques of the Newtonian and Kantian account of nature as machine. The chapter discusses how beauty is not simply a function of aesthetic appreciation, but is what motivates (in a Husserlian sense) knowledge, specifically natural knowledge. Knowledge in such an understanding is fundamentally the coming into contact with another. To know is not to possess something but rather to find oneself possessed in a web, which encompasses not alone the knower and the entity known, but both within a wider interrelation. This account dovetails with the second theme, where Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is shown to facilitate a thinking of nature as subject, as having itself agency, such that all experienced and all experiencing are modes of this natural activity. Building upon this, philosophical interpretations of Quantum Physics are discussed with particular emphasis on how human observers and agents are incorporated into nature such that the scientific approach to nature becomes itself an instantiation of natural agency through the action of measuring and experimenting.
This chapter argues that the onward flow of nature is interrupted by two transmutations of the natural with respect to the true and with respect to right. The first transmutation brings with it the possibility of deceit (discussed in chapter 3). The real becomes true when an account of it can be given which relies for its acceptance on trust in the bearer of that truth. In this sense, truth depends on conscientiousness. The claim to truth is the claim to be telling the truth, a claim depending for its efficacy on the possibility of lying. That possibility is at the core of the inner self, the turning away from the world in the very act of presenting to the world, i.e., duplicitousness. This duplicitous is rooted in the prior duplicity of nature, which Schelling diagnoses. The second transmutation is that of the interactions of nature into questions of right or ought. Constitutive of natural processes are relations of responsibility and culpability, benefit and harm, hospitality and hostility, as Karen Barad shows. However, the taking of responsibility, the accounting for benefit and harm and justness of judgements, requires a stepping out of the flow of natural time, a detachment which is nevertheless always engaged. This occurs when we ask not alone what is the case, but whether it ought to be or not. That question arises out of nature, but marks a self-transcendence of nature beyond itself towards the right, irreducible to benefit or harm.
This chapter examines the theme of meaning and shows how meaning is not what we impose on nature, but what we respond to in our various made artifacts. This is to say that nature is intelligible to us and that central to this intelligibility is our relation to making. Making discloses materiality as both mouldable and recalcitrant, with its own temporality in tension with the action of the maker. This relation of acceptance and recalcitrance in materiality is evident in the process of ruination, which shows matter in its agency and shows building to be itself an event of material history. Drawing on the threefold structure of the self as body, soul and spirit, articulated in part one, this chapter shows that any unmediated opposition between natural and artificial, intelligible and unintelligible, rests on a prior problematic dualism of body and mind. Idea formation and making are not opposed to the natural but rather occur in and through the natural.
Neste artigo, pretendemos analisar os conceitos que envolvem o Antropoceno e Capitaloceno, de acordo com um cotejo crítico entre Anarres e Urras, planetas centrais no romance de Ursula K. Le Guin, Os despossuídos (1973). Abordaremos como a ambiguidade utópica da estrutura política e social de Anarres pode inspirar diferentes formulações para o protagonismo destrutivo da humanidade ante os recursos naturais da Terra. Em contrapartida, apresentaremos o planeta Urras como um reflexo exacerbado da postura contemporânea capitalista que fomenta o Capitaloceno, termo alternativo ao Antropoceno.
We approach design practices as practices of re-composition that ‘design’ encounters between entities with lives, interests, risks, materialities, politics, scales, and temporalities that are highly heterogeneous. This proposal draws attention to the responsibility of design in a world marked by an increasing ecosocial crisis, which demands not so much an improvement in our ability to design for others, but rather to live with others ‘through’ design. We will meet with disobedient ants, cultural management, invasive plants, ancestral knowledges, unstable amphibians, women’s communities, changing climates, Indigenous peoples, environments, and publics that—all together—design a ‘we’ that is always in formation, affecting the places where we work, the studios where we design, the classrooms where we learn, or the epistemologies from which we articulate our relationship with otherness.
On May 10, 2024, The Times of India reported that Venezuela was the first country to lose all its glaciers due to climate change. Now, the question arises: Whom should we hold accountable for that? The obvious answer is the Anthropos, who are responsible for the Anthropocene to which the earth’s geology, ecosystem, and climate are subjected. The discourse of Anthropocene questions the idea of a singular Anthropocene as, according to Claire Colebrook, there is no singular Anthropocene, but there are many. It also questions who/what affects and who/what is affected. The “biopolitics” of the Anthropocene is interlinked to violence. This violence exercises exclusionary politics and results in the gradual degradation of the environment that affects not only humans but every other entity on the earth and leads towards a precarious survival, which, according to Elizabeth Povinelli, is the “anthropology of ordinary suffering”. Rob Nixon introduced the phrase “slow violence”, which includes environmental degradation, long-term pollution and climate change. Taking the cue from Nixon’s concept of “slow violence”, this paper aims to relocate it within the discourse of the Anthropocene in John Brunner’s dystopian novel The Sheep Look Up (1972). The novel takes place in an unspecified year in the near future when human activities have resulted in the wholesale destruction of the environment. Therefore, this paper aims to use Nixon’s concept of “slow violence” along with John Galtung’s “structural violence”, Michel Foucault’s “making live and letting die”, and Georgio Agamben’s “bare life” to show how human activities guided by economic greed, power, anthropocentric worldview, and global capitalism results in the ecological and climatological destruction. It will also try to show how the dystopian narrative can significantly shape ecological consciousness.
While humans explore and map the subsurface environments of earth, there remain unplumbed depths of nature that cannot be so exposed. This essay argues that along with a literal sense of depth as a spatial dimension, there exists a latent depth of nature hidden to everyday perception that may nonetheless manifest in/as attentive imaginative involvement. It begins by briefly comparing the ontological assumptions of Newton and Descartes with those of Merleau-Ponty before examining how the everyday phenomenon of sunrise might be interpreted through the latter. The practice of terrapsychology is then explored as a means to deepen our engagement with(in) nature and sensitively navigate the necessary ambiguity of imaginative involvement. This latter is highlighted as a corrective to the logic of certainty and control that attempts to maintain human “progress” at the expense of more-than-human nature.
Drawing on extensive ethnographic engagement with the social world of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, this Element explores the mainstreaming of sustainable development principles in the heritage field. It illustrates how, while deeply entwined in the UN standardizing framework, sustainability narratives are expanding the frontiers of heritage and unsettling conventional understandings of its social and political functions. Ethnographic description of UNESCO administrative practices and case studies explain how the sustainabilization of intangible cultural heritage entails a fundamental shift in perspective: heritage is no longer nostalgically regarded as a fragile relic in need of preservation but as a resource for the future with new purposes and the potential to address broader concerns and anxieties of our times, ranging from water shortages to mental health. This might ultimately mean that the safeguarding endeavor is no longer about us protecting heritage but about heritage protecting us.
O início das relações entre os humanos e os equinos pode ser considerado de longa data; povos nômades, sumérios, citas, hunos, turcos e mongóis, por volta de 1500 a.c já iniciavam a equitação. De alvos de caça a membros de comunidades de humanos, os relacionamentos entre humano e equino tomam diversas formas. A dominação desses "animais selvagens"-para que fossem então montados e seu tamanho, beleza, nobreza, força e agilidade fossem utilizados como a extensão de um corpo humano-tornou-se um rito, uma arte, uma técnica, que posteriormente seria chamada por alguns de doma. O relacionamento entre humanos e equinos se configura quer por descobertas de potências e afetos que esses vínculos possibilitam, quer por dominação e força, como muitas vezes pode ser o caso da doma. O objetivo deste trabalho é refletir e discutir sobre as possibilidades de arranjos relacionais interespecíficos em particular, o humano-equino em oposição à ideia de doma equina. Partindo da proposição de Haraway de que o devir-com se estabelece como uma superação da ideia de divisão entre humanos e outras criaturas, e da ideia de correspondência de Ingold, ou seja, a produção através do engajamento mútuo e contínuo entre humanos, animais, ambientes, etc, buscamos desenvolver um ensaio crítico reflexivo para pensar possibilidades de relações mais simétricas entre espécies. A partir da discussão produzida e da crítica à ideia de doma, tomando por base perspectivas de Haraway e Ingold, esperamos abrir espaço para exploração novos arranjos relacionais interespecíficos não baseados na dominação.
In recent years, the world has undergone a significant transformation from a realm of certainties to one filled with uncertainties and looming disasters. These catastrophes, which are both ecological and social, are primarily attributed to the climate crisis caused by human activities. As a result, the future of cities and the planet is at stake, with the prospect of becoming uninhabitable. To address this urgent issue, local governments worldwide have taken action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. One exemplary initiative is the Barcelona City Council’s Network of Climate Shelters, which was established in 2019. This network aims to prepare the city for the anticipated rise in temperatures by transforming existing public spaces, such as libraries and schools, into climate shelters. What sets the Barcelona Network of Climate Shelters apart, at least in one of its modes of assemblage, is its collaborative approach. The citizens actively participate in designing and implementing some of these infrastructures. That ensures the shelters are efficient and effective and fosters a sense of collective responsibility toward the climate crisis. By involving the public, the initiative prepares the city for climate change and builds a more resilient citizenry capable of facing an uncertain future together.
Various genealogies of the term resilience have been constructed, but
there is no need to revisit them here. As noted, the concept is undergoing a
state of active metamorphosis, meaning that conclusions drawn as recently
as a year ago may no longer hold relevance and instead invite critical
dialogue from constantly updated perspectives.
Despite the abundance of studies and the antagonisms present in
legitimizing the resilience paradigm, it cannot be said that a synthetic
classification of its current terminology exists, at least not one that is
entirely relevant to the humanities and the social sciences. In what follows,
we aim to synthesize the categories of resilience as much as possible, given
the conditions of constant modification and transformation of the concept.
In other words, we might speak of liquid resilience (mixing the term
from Bauman's ”liquid modernity”). This notion suggests that resilience,
regardless of systems or ecosystems, distinguishes itself through its ability
to adapt to any kind of reality, being in a state of continuous transformation
and possessing extraordinary fluidity.
Objects and concepts of technology were a lifelong theme in Blumenberg’s work. In a broad sense, this comprises cultural techniques such as observation and description, rhetorical devices or individual helpful tools as well as the atomic bomb with its destructive power, and the entire field of modern technology. Blumenberg worked on the project of an ‘intellectual history of technology’ against a philosophical hostility towards technology that was widespread in the Federal Republic of Germany at his time, and considers technology in all its forms as a human cultural form. With this in mind, the article looks at Blumenberg’s understanding of theory and works out its technical dimension. In contrast to the ancient understanding of theoria as contemplation, Blumenberg already identifies a technically shaped understanding of theory in the ancient science, and gains an ‘epistemological model function’ from astronomy: here the gaze is not content with contemplation, but follows a theoretical curiosity that makes use of technical instruments in addition to speculation and mathematics. Against a widespread juxtaposition of theory and practice, the article outlines Blumenberg’s understanding of theory in its intervening dimension.
This chapter examines the phenomenon of conflict within the framework of ecological crisis, applying Lotman’s semiotic theory through an ecosemiotic perspective. Central to the analysis is the concept of the ecosemiosphere, as developed by Timo Maran based on Lotman’s semiosphere model. The chapter explores how the asymmetry arising from conflicts between heterogeneous semioses—described by Lotman as a key mechanism driving the dynamics and organization of the semiosphere—takes on a destructive dimension in the context of the ecological crisis. Specifically, this asymmetry risks creating an irreparable rift between human and non-human forms of life.
The chapter introduces the notion of “semiotic flattening” to describe the reduction or suppression of the diversity of semioses caused by these conflicts. This flattening is presented as a consequence of human activity, which not only generates semiotic conflict but also inhibits the expression of other forms of semiosis within shared spaces. By analyzing the processes of semiotic flattening, the chapter offers a nuanced exploration of its implications, supported by a series of illustrative case studies, highlighting the pervasive impact of human presence on the broader ecosemiosphere.
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