EASST-4S - Imagining and making post-fossil futures
July 16th, 2024
Alice Jarry presents during Imagining and making post-fossil futures at EASST-4S 2024 Amsterdam: Making and Doing Transformations
Alice Jarry presents during Imagining and making post-fossil futures at EASST-4S 2024 Amsterdam: Making and Doing Transformations
Though adept at deconstructing power relations, STS struggles to define its role in building post-fossil futures. Imaginaries of post-fossil futures transpire in activist and artistic practices. What can STS learn from those practices and contribute to imagining and making of post-fossil futures?
As carbon fuels are ingrained in every aspect of human life, it is difficult to envision a world beyond the fossil era. Visions of sustainable futures in environmental politics, policy, and even sciences remain strongly technocratic. They remain ‘problem-solving’ (Hammond, 2021), focused on the realisation of quantified targets such as ‘net-zero’ (van Beek et al., 2022). Despite the prominence of apocalyptic imaginaries of catastrophic climate futures, collective aspirations remain captured by twentieth century dreams of material wealth. This imaginative occupation forecloses the imagination of deep cultural transformations.
As carbon fuels are ingrained in every aspect of human life, it is difficult to envision a world beyond the fossil era. Visions of sustainable futures in environmental politics, policy, and even sciences remain strongly technocratic. They remain ‘problem-solving’ (Hammond, 2021), focused on the realisation of quantified targets such as ‘net-zero’ (van Beek et al., 2022). Despite the prominence of apocalyptic imaginaries of catastrophic climate futures, collective aspirations remain captured by twentieth century dreams of material wealth. This imaginative occupation forecloses the imagination of deep cultural transformations.
It is in this cultural space that STS must place its contributions. Though adept at deconstructing power relations and fossil imaginaries, STS struggles to define its role in building post-fossil futures. Yet imaginaries of post-fossil futures do exist. Activists and citizens are becoming increasingly vocal in calling for climate justice. Artists increasingly envision post-fossil futures across diverse practices such speculative design, theatre, and literary fiction. The institutional legitimacy of many political venues is fraying.
In this changing world, what is the role of STS? How can STS move beyond deconstructivism and contribute to the imagining and making of post-fossil futures?
Drawing on the emerging literature on futuring (e.g. Oomen et al., 2021), this panel solicits alternative and emerging practices to reimagine the role of STS scholars in imagining and making post-fossil futures.
In this changing world, what is the role of STS? How can STS move beyond deconstructivism and contribute to the imagining and making of post-fossil futures?
Drawing on the emerging literature on futuring (e.g. Oomen et al., 2021), this panel solicits alternative and emerging practices to reimagine the role of STS scholars in imagining and making post-fossil futures.
