Geographies of science and technology III: Careful entanglements, responsible futures

Abstract

In my previous progress reports I suggested that geographers might attend more to the leaky boundaries of ‘science’ and ‘technology’ and to their imbrications in the mundane spaces of the everyday, and that stances of analytical critique might be joined by practices of engaged imagination of alternative lifeworlds in the shadow of the Anthropocene. In this final report, I zoom in on care as a ‘concept, emotion, practice, politics, moral exhortation’. This has recently provided a focus for much innovative and impactful research in critical geography. I explore the analytical and political potential of centring care within geographical engagements with science and technology, and suggest that nuanced engagements with the concept contain valuable insights into the everyday geographies of technoscience, and into how practices of care are central to – but not exhaustive of – political strategies for building alternative lifeworlds in uncertain times.

Ecologies of co-production in the Anthropocene

“…Under a relational-ecologies perspective, those bringing forward new discrete spaces of co-production would also need to become more attuned to how configurations of past and constitutional co-productions powerfully shape practices of co-production in the present. This in turn reinforces the need for more careful and responsible approaches to co-production that can be open to historical antecedences and power inequalities while anticipating the future ordering effects of co-productions made in the present (Chilvers and Kearnes 2020;Mahony 2023).…”

“…Finally, we suggest that an ecologies of co-production perspective makes a difference through prompting more care-full approaches to doing and studying the co-production of science and society in the Anthropocene (Chilvers and Kearnes 2020;Mahony 2023).…”