Science, technology and environment II

Summary

Science and technology have profoundly transformed our world. In the current crisis, they emerge as both solutions and problems. The course explores the complex relations between science, technology, and ecological issues. Students will conduct their own inquiry of human-transformed environments.

Content

Keywords

climate change; anthropocene; science; technology; infrastructure; ecology; environment; justice; science and technology studies (STS); anthropology

Learning Prerequisites

Required courses

Recommended courses

it is oblogatory to have attended the same course in the Fall semester (HUM-428).

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Carry out an inquiry of a patch of the anthropocene
• Analyze the interplay between ecological, social, and political issues
• Interpret your observations in regard to the literature
• Characterize the actors, knowledge, and transformations at stake
• Explore the historical and social constitution of a patch of the anthropocene
• Visualize your results with a map, drawing or a schema
• Report your results in an oral presentation, a poster and a written report
• Develop your arguments

Transversal skills

• Write a scientific or technical report.
• Design and present a poster.
• Plan and carry out activities in a way which makes optimal use of available time and other resources.
• Use a work methodology appropriate to the task.
• Communicate effectively, being understood, including across different languages and cultures.
• Take responsibility for environmental impacts of her/ his actions and decisions.
• Collect data.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking

Teaching methods

The course will combine theoretical and methodological inputs, with seminar sessions to accomapgny the students in the conduct of their own inquiry.

Expected student activities

Students will collectively conduct an inquiry of a "patch of the anthropocene" (Tsing 2024)

Active participation in class

Oral presentation (1st and 2d semester)

A review of literature (1st semester)

A poster and writtent report (2d semester)

Assessment methods

Oral presentation and review of litterature (1st semester, 50/50)

Oral presentation, poster, and written report (2d semester, each counts for 1/3 of the final note)

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

Indicative References

Alaimo, Stacy. 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. 1st edition. Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press.

Barrios, Roberto E. 2017. « What Does Catastrophe Reveal for Whom? The Anthropology of Crises and Disasters at the Onset of the Anthropocene ». Annual Review of Anthropology 46(1):151‑66. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041635.

Barua, Maan. 2023. Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology. University of Minnesota Press. Calvillo, Nerea. 2023. Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds. New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.

Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. 2022. « Rethinking Time in Response to the Anthropocene: From Timescales to Timescapes ». The Anthropocene Review 9(2):206‑19. doi:10.1177/20530196211006888.

Bogusz, Tanja. 2023. « Fieldwork in the Anthropocene: On the Possibilities of Analogical Thinking between Nature and Society ». Science & Technology Studies 36(2):3‑25. doi:10.23987/sts.111538.

Brown, Hannah, et Alex M. Nading. 2019. « Introduction: Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology ». Medical Anthropology Quarterly 33(1):5‑23. doi:10.1111/maq.12488.

Bubandt, Nils, et Anna Tsing. 2018. « Feral Dynamics of Post-Industrial Ruin: An Introduction ». Journal of Ethnobiology 38(1):1‑7. doi:10.2993/0278-0771-38.1.001.

David, Pierre-Marie, Nicolas Le Dévédec, et Anouck Alary. 2021. « Pandemics in the Age of the Anthropocene: Is ‘Planetary Health’ the Answer? » Global Public Health. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2021.1893372.

Davis, Janae, Alex A. Moulton, Levi Van Sant, et Brian Williams. 2019. « Anthropocene, Capitalocene,   Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises ». Geography Compass 13(5):e12438. doi:10.1111/gec3.12438.

Ebron, Paulla, et Anna Tsing. 2017. « Feminism and the Anthropocene: Assessing the Field through Recent Books ». Feminist Studies 43(3):658‑83. doi:10.15767/feministstudies.43.3.0658.

Finn, Megan. 2024. Documenting Aftermath: Information Infrastructures in the Wake of Disasters. Infrastructures. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.

Fischer, Michael M. J. 2005. « Technoscientific Infrastructures and Emergent Forms of Life: A Commentary ». American Anthropologist 107(1):55‑61. doi:10.1525/aa.2005.107.1.055.

Fortun, Kim, James Adams, Tim SchÌtz, et Scott Gabriel Knowles. 2021. « Knowledge Infrastructure and Research Agendas for Quotidian Anthropocenes: Critical Localism with Planetary Scope ». The Anthropocene Review 8(2):169‑82. doi:10.1177/20530196211031972.

Fortun, Kim. 2012. « Ethnography in Late Industrialism ». Cultural Anthropology 27(3):446‑64. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01153.x.

Gabrys, Jennifer. 2016. Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. U of Minnesota Press.

Hache, Emilie, éd.Noteris, Emilie, trad. 2016. RECLAIM: Anthologie de textes écoféministes. Paris: CAMBOURAKIS.

Hache, Émilie. 2010. Ce à quoi nous tenons: Propositions pour une écologie pragmatique. Paris: Empêcheurs de penser rond.

Hache, Émilie. 2024. De la génération: Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production. Empêcheurs de penser rond.

Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

Haraway, Donna, Noboru Ishikawa, Scott F. Gilbert, Kenneth Olwig, Anna L. Tsing, et Nils Bubandt. 2016. « Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene ». Ethnos 81(3):535‑64. doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1105838.

Hecht, Gabrielle. 2018. « Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence ». Cultural Anthropology 33(1):109‑41. doi:10.14506/ca33.1.05.

Hird, Myra J. 2016. « The Phenomenon of Waste-World-Making ». Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (30). doi:10.20415/rhiz/030.e15.

Jensen, Casper Bruun, et Atsuro Morita. 2015. « Infrastructures as Ontological Experiments ». Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 1(0):81‑87. doi:10.17351/ests2015.21.

Jensen, Casper Bruun. 2026. Southern Anthropocenes. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.

Langston, Nancy. 2021. Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene. The Mandel Lectures in the Humanities at Brandeis University. Brandeis University Press.

Larkin, Brian. 2013. « The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure ». Annual Review of Anthropology 42(1):327‑43. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522.

Latour, Bruno. 2009. POLITICS OF NATURE. Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2012. Enquête sur les modes d’existence : Une anthropologie des Modernes. Paris: La Découverte.

Latour, Bruno. 2017. « Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene: A Personal View of What Is to Be Studied ». P. 35‑49 in The Anthropology of Sustainability: Beyond Development and Progress, Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability, édité par M. Brightman et J. Lewis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.

Latour, Bruno. 2017. Où atterrir ?: Comment s’orienter en politique. Paris: La Découverte.

Latour, Bruno. 2018. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. John Wiley & Sons.

Liboiron, Max. 2016. « Redefining Pollution and Action: The Matter of Plastics ». Journal of Material Culture 21(1):87‑110. doi:10.1177/1359183515622966.

Mathews, Andrew S. 2020. « Anthropology and the Anthropocene: Criticisms, Experiments, and Collaborations ». Annual Review of Anthropology 49(1):67‑82. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011317.

Segata, Jean, Ceres Víctora, Paola Sesia, Laura Montesi, Jennie Gamlin, et Sahra Gibbon. 2023. « Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene ». Medicine Anthropology Theory 10(2):1‑30. doi:10.17157/mat.10.2.8887.

STAR, SUSAN LEIGH. 1999. « The Ethnography of Infrastructure ». American Behavioral Scientist 43(3):377‑91. doi:10.1177/00027649921955326.

Stengers, Isabelle, Emilie Hache, et Marin Schaffner. 2019. Résister au désastre: Dialogue avec Marin Schaffner. 1er édition. Marseille: Wildproject Editions.

Stengers, Isabelle, et Thierry Drumm. 2017. Une autre science est possible !: Manifeste pour un ralentissement des sciences. Paris: La Découverte.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2013. Au temps des catastrophes. La Découverte.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2022. « Lettre aux scientifiques qui lisent les rapports du Giec ». P. 34‑47 in Pour un tournant radical. Socialter.

Tsing, Anna L. 2021. « Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene ». Stanford University Press. http://feralatlas.org.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Andrew S. Mathews, et Nils Bubandt. 2019. « Patchy Anthropocene: Landscape Structure, Multispecies History, and the Retooling of Anthropology: An Introduction to Supplement 20 ». Current Anthropology 60(S20):S186‑97. doi:10.1086/703391.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, et Feifei Zhou. 2024. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature. 1st edition. Stanford (Calif.): Stanford University Press.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2004. Friction - An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2012. « On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales ». Common Knowledge 18(3):505‑24. doi:10.1215/0961754X-1630424.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World – On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. « Supply Chains and the Human Condition ». Rethinking Marxism 21(2):148‑76. doi:10.1080/08935690902743088.

Tsing, Anna. 2013. « More-than-Human Sociality: A Call for Critical Description ». P. 37‑52 in Anthropology and Nature. Routledge.

 

 

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/HUM-426