Control, Care, and Conviviality in the Politics of Technology for Sustainability

Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability

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Arora, Saurabh, Van Dyck, Barbara, Sharma, Divya and Stirling, Andy (2020) Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy, 16 (1). pp. 247-262. ISSN 1548-7733

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Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability

Saurabh Arora , Barbara Van Dyck , Divya Sharma & Andy Stirling

To cite this article: Saurabh Arora , Barbara Van Dyck , Divya Sharma & Andy Stirling (2020) Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 16:1, 247-262 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2020.1816687

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsus20 SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 2020, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 247–262 https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2020.1816687

RESEARCH ARTICLE Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability

Saurabh Aroraa, Barbara Van Dyckb, Divya Sharmaa and Andy Stirlinga aScience Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Sussex, UK; bCentre for Agroecology, Water, and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This article discusses currently neglected distinctions between control, care, and conviviality Received 15 November 2019 in the politics of technology for sustainability. We conceptualize control as the ambition to Accepted 26 August 2020 maintain fictitious borders between hierarchically ordered categories such as subjects and KEYWORDS objects. This ambition is materialized into a wide range of Modern technological innovations, Modernity; domination; including genome editing and deep sea mining. Contrasting with control, we conceptualize innovation; care; values of care that constitute socio-technical practices where connections are prioritized conviviality; (de)coloniality over categories and hierarchy is countered with egalitarian commitment. In caring practices, objects are thus treated as subjects, often within political contexts that are dominated by ambitions to control. Building on care, we explore hopes for conviviality as mutualistic autonomy and decolonial self-realization to orient plural socio-technical pathways for moving beyond Modernity. We argue that such pathways are crucial for democratic transformations to sustainability. We illustrate our concepts using two brief case studies of agricultural developments. The first case discusses the politics of control in agricultural biotechnologies in Belgium. The second case reports on care within rural people's coping strategies in a south Indian "green revolution" landscape laden with control. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to situate attempted materializations of control, care, and conviviality in specific historical junctures. Situated understandings of the interplay between control, care, and conviviality can help realize sustainability that does not reproduce the centralizing, control- driven logic of Modern technocratic development.

Introduction disciplining of labor, disqualification and assimila- tion of alternatives, objectification of nature, and As imperatives for transformations to sustainability marginalization of uncertainties (Arora 2019). emerge more strongly around the world, so do pres- sures to govern the transformations from above, to Ambitions to control are central to many influential serve powerful interests, and to maintain socio-eco- proposals for transformations to sustainability cen- nomic inequalities. Attempts are made to control tered on the role of new technologies. sustainability from technocratic “war rooms,” to Consider, for example, the Breakthrough ’ accelerate it from the driving seat, to assess using Institute s Ecomodernist Manifesto, which observes a “ expedient performance indicators, and to maximize long-term trend of decoupling of human well-being ” “value” for financial investors. Such attempts, we from environmental impacts (Asafu-Adjaye et al. argue, represent modernist ambitions to control 2015, 11). Calling for optimism about the promise (Stirling 2019). They prioritize hierarchical orderings of technological innovations (cf. Hamilton 2015), across societies and natures. This process marginal- Asafu-Adjaye et al. (2015,23–24) claim that “next- izes values of care for vulnerable and damaged generation solar, advanced nuclear fission, and socio-ecologies and hopes for convivial societies nuclear fusion represent the most plausible pathways based on democratic mutualism and self-realization. toward the joint goals of climate stabilization and Ambitions to control are central to modernity. radical decoupling of humans from nature.” They are materialized through modern sciences and Ecomodernists’ ambitions to control lead them to technologies, often with serious “unintended” socio- believe that they can stabilize the climate, and real- ecological consequences. They shape modernizing ize transformations to sustainability, by intervening programs such as standardization of production, in reality with surgical precision, changing only what

CONTACT Saurabh Arora [email protected] Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Sussex House, Falmer, Sussex BN1 9RH, UK This Special Issue is sponsored and supported by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Brandenburg Ministry of Science, Research and Culture. ß 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 248 S. ARORA ET AL. they desire by using the “right” technologies that we develop the three concepts of control, care, and can neatly decouple humanity from nature. conviviality. We then illustrate the concepts using Decisions of choosing the “right” technologies are to two examples of transforming socio-material politics be made by the market and the state (with their of agricultural development. In the final two sec- “experts”), which the ecomodernists’ believe to be tions, we specify the connections between control, the real drivers of modernization. Such decisions are care, and conviviality and highlight the three con- considered too important to be left to messy cepts’ key political implications for transformations “politics and democratic choices in the making of to sustainability. possible socio-ecological futures” (Fremaux and Barry 2019, 7). Control, care, and conviviality In contrast with Modernist ambitions to control, emergent sustainability transformations build on We argue that ambitions to control are materialized values of care for neglected and damaged ecologies. into technologies, values of care in practices, and Materialized in diverse practices, caring is “much hopes for conviviality across societies. Materialization more than a moral stance” (Puig de la Bellacasa here points to configuring socio-political aspirations 2017, 4). Instead it points to “moral acts” consti- into technological artifacts (Winner 1986;Akrich tuted by openness, adaptability, and humility. 1992); conditioning socio-technical practices by human Caring practices recognize the relations between values (Moser 2006;Arora2019); and orienting whole humans and nonhumans that make action possible societies through hopes and imaginaries (Jasanoff and (Latour 2005). They admit uncertainties and precar- Kim 2015). Materialization in any of these forms is iousness associated with their techniques and knowl- rarely direct or straightforward (Joerges 1999). edges (Arora 2019). Rather than “scaling up” Premeditated ambitions and values cannot simply be finished processes and diffusing end-products to built into technologies and practices. Constraints and achieve rapid sustainability “transitions” (van den deviations are routinely encountered. For instance, Bosch and Rotmans 2008; Delina 2017), caring materials involved in developing a technological arti- transformations to sustainability facilitate adapta- fact might not work as desired or expected, which tion, ongoing tinkering, fine-tuning, and repair of necessitates adjustments including using new materials, processes and products by users situated in acquiring of new skills, or altering the design of the their settings. technology itself (Arora and Glover 2017). Such con- In addition to control and care, we explore a straints and deviations make materialization a political third proposal for sustainability transformations process, raising questions about relations of power. In based on distributed struggles driven by hopes for technological development, these questions include conviviality across societies. Inspired by Gandhian who benefits from the extraction or development of experiments with building autonomous alternatives new materials, who is made to acquire new skills in to colonial Modernity, particularly in the form of order to remain employed, who is disproportionately “tools for conviviality” (Illich 1973), such struggles harmed by social and environmental impacts of new militate against the “radical monopoly” of techno- designs, and what kind of (Modern) worlds are built crats. Driven by ambitions to control, technocratic at the expense of others that are disqualified as coloniality structures societies around the wide- “Traditional” or “Underdeveloped.” spread use of Modern technologies such as hybrid Control is arguably the most widely prevalent varieties of seeds and toxic agrochemicals that and deeply rooted ambition in Modernity (Stirling enable monocultural farming. In contrast to such 2019). Through the development of technologies technologies, convivial techniques are promoted and and governance institutions, ambitions to control developed through democratizing egalitarian rela- populations and nature have been central to tions within and between societies and their wider Modern nation-building (Gorz 1980; Scott 1998; environments. Through institutional transformation Mitchell 2002). Equally central have been ambitions of whole societies, involving plural pathways of to control or expel workers, through technological socio-material change beyond Modernity, convivial- developments that deskill work through ity hopes to materialize “general self-realization” “automation” and hamper collective bargaining based on caring for one’s own needs while equally (Noble 1984). Within this overarching thrust for helping others in theirs (Gandhi 1997; Illich 1973). control in Modernization, situated practices consti- Such self-realization might be crucial for sustainabil- tuted by values of care have nevertheless remained ity as constituted by ecological integrity, social just- widespread across fields such as parenting, craft- ice, and human wellbeing. work, education, and healthcare. Caring practices In the following section, using insights on the may however be devalued or made invisible inside politics of technology from a diverse set of studies, homes, hospitals, and workshops (Tronto 1993; SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 249

Martin, Myers, and Viseu 2015). They may also be Accompanying such engineering for homogeneity made subservient to ambitions to control pervading among entities grouped by a category, are legitimat- Modern institutions, as has arguably been the case ing claims that categories provide accurate descrip- in government attempts to manage the COVID-19 tions of reality (Callon 2007). If some aspects of pandemic (Stirling 2020). reality are encountered as deviant or unfitting, in Conviviality highlights societal visions that have relation to the description provided by a category, been disqualified from the space of development those aspects may be formatted until they fit the and progress by Modernity, particularly as part of description. Driven by techno-scientific knowledges (settler) colonial projects extending European con- and artifacts from Modernizing agencies, the history trol (Escobar 2018). Convivial visions are based on of international development is replete with exam- hopes for sustainability articulated by decolonial ples of such formatting of societies and communities social movements such as the water protectors encountered as “underdeveloped” (Rist 2008; Sachs standing firm against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 1992). Under extreme expressions of control, devi- the United States and the Adivasi carers of sacred ant aspects of encountered realities are violently dis- mountains who are resisting bauxite mining in ciplined, incarcerated, exploited, or expelled, while Orissa, India (Kumar 2014; Estes 2019). Constituted homogenizing identities such as “Indigenous” or by autonomous and caring relations between “Black” are imposed on diverse peoples (Quijano humans, and with nature, visions of conviviality 2000). Such violent forms of (colonial) control may hope to move societal institutions and infrastruc- be viewed as materializing orders of domination. tures beyond Modern ambitions to control. In processes of engineering reality, attempts may sometimes be made to redefine categories. Such redefinition may be geared toward assimilating enti- Control ties that are successful in resisting the engineering A general expression of ambitions to control is efforts. It may also attempt to exclude rebellious found in the enactment of bordering. In modern entities that were hitherto considered to be captured societies, borders often begin their life as discursive by a category. In general, redefinition may entail the formations. They divide the world into reifying cate- adding of new dimensions or new meanings to a gories such as Nature and Culture, Objects and category. Redefinition thus shifts categorical borders. Subjects, Self and Other, Male and Female, Black For example, while the Western middle-class White and White, Rationality and Superstition, Individual Man remains overrepresented in the category and Collective, Developed and Underdeveloped, and “human” (Wynter 2003), the borders of the latter indeed Modern and Traditional. Through reifica- have shifted considerably since the early colonial era tion, each of these abstract constructs is confused of the sixteenth century (Quijano 2000). with the (complex and heterogeneous) reality that it Some categorical divisions of identities (e.g., purportedly describes. Each category is, as a result, between Self and Other) are materialized through made more concrete than it ever can be. Whitehead technological instruments of control such as fences, (1929) describes such reification as the “fallacy of walls, tools of surveillance, and weapons. Such misplaced concreteness.” Reification thus expresses instrumental manipulation is directed firstly at the ambition to control realities and identities that humans who are “Othered” on the basis of categor- are complex, heterogeneous, and interconnected by ical differences across race, class, gender, religion, bundling them into concrete categories. caste, ethnicity, sexuality, rationality, and nationality. Performing this ontology of categorical bordering, Specifically, by controlling movements and connec- ambitions to control are comprehensively material- tions across (categorical) borders, technological ized into technological instruments such as dams on instruments are deployed to facilitate “divide and rivers and pesticides on crops. For examples of rule” (see e.g., Christopher 1988). Such control is materialization of reifying categories in engineering discriminatory. For example, national borders can efforts for Modernizing development, see Shiva be open for the international circulation of market (1989), Sachs (1992), and Mitchell (2002). In par- goods and intellectual property. They may also allow ticular, as a reifying category groups together enti- a few privileged people from another side to cross ties that are believed to be the same or similar, it is over easily to the Self, through immigration win- conveniently deployable in projects of standardizing dows and doors, while forcing many to dig tunnels industrialization (e.g., through mass production and or use precarious dinghies (Bauman 1998). technology diffusion) and large-scale “resource” Technological instruments such as fences are also extraction (e.g., through industrial agriculture, min- used to manipulate Objectified nature, for example ing, and smelting). This is discussed in more in Modern conservation zones (e.g., wildlife parks), detail later. with the ambition to materialize the discursive 250 S. ARORA ET AL. border between Nature and Culture (Adams and things across borders. The things circulated Hutton 2007). This border and the related one “globally” during the Modern-colonial era include between Objects and Subjects, are materialized into traded goods, resources, skills, knowledges, and a wide range of Modern instruments. By treating data. Within such cross-border circulation, stratifi- nonhuman entities (in Nature) as Objects that lack cation as centralization and accumulation by and agency, and therefore “inferior” to Subjects who act, for some people and regions, is afforded through modern cultures develop technological instruments technologies such as those for media and communi- aimed at controlling Objectified Nature and its cations (to spread advertisements, propaganda, and dynamics, if only to facilitate incessant resource entertainment across globalizing markets); logistics extraction (Arora 2019). In addition to extractivist and other supply chain management models; large instruments of industrial mining and nuclear power ports and harbors (as central nodes in global net- which yield toxic wastes, disasters, and death works of circulation); high-capacity servers that (Cardoso 2015; Steinhauser, Brandl, and Johnson store and process data, and other electronic network 2014), examples of such technologies include: infrastructure (see e.g., Crawford and Joler 2018). Crucial to stratification are deterministic economic Hydroelectric dams that arrest riverine ecosys- models and financial instruments that promote the tems and displace thousands of “Othered” people centralization of value and knowledge production. from their homes and lands (Mitchell 2002; The same models and instruments also aim to con- Baviskar 2019). struct interrelated people as Individual Rational con- Toxic chemicals deployed across farms, factories, sumers in “efficient” markets (Callon 2007). and homes that inflict violence during and after use on marginalized workers, consumers, and Care Othered living beings (Shiva 1989; Davies 2019). Genome editing to perform highly uncertain Privileging interdependence, rather than the division “targeted modifications” in whole species of of reality into hierarchically ordered categories, rela- plants and animals (with even more uncertain tional values of care are characterized by a reflexive ecological consequences) (Agapito-Tenfen et al. commitment to egalitarianism (Arora 2019). Caring 2018; Sirinathsinghji 2019). is egalitarian in its attitude to the affording of agency. It is intersubjective, in that nonhuman enti- Many of the technologies embedding Modern ties are approached as subjects (instead of Objects). ambitions to control Nature (reified and objectified), And, subjects are treated not as atomistic individu- are now promoted as solutions to climate change als, but rather as interconnected in diverse relational and central to sustainability (see e.g., Asafu-Adjaye webs that afford and constrain agency. Similarly, et al. 2015). values of care do not subscribe to Modern hierar- Objectification of Nature points to a second aspect chies like those between Male and Female, Black of control: hierarchical ordering between categories on and White, and Rationality and Superstition. Nor different sides of the borders. As noted, entities cate- does care extend any stratification between practices gorizedaspassiveObjectsareconsidered“inferior” to considered ethical and affective (Mol 2008, 84). active Subjects. Similarly, humans aligned with the This means that the relations through which car- “Self” are “superiorized” as compared to those who ing engages with others are more horizontal than are “Othered” (on the basis of gender, race, class, the presumptively vertical and deterministic rela- caste, ethnicity, and other “cultural attributes”). This tions of control. Treating others as different but hierarchical ordering is done as part of a wider pro- equal (Escobar 2006), caring is geared toward con- cess of stratification of groups of people and regions tributing to pathways for social and ecological just- (e.g., Quijano 2000;Boatca 2015). As the coercive ice through solidarity and collective action (Stirling power of Modern coloniality, such stratification has 2014). In this way, care does not reduce inter- been materialized through technological instruments dependence to commodified flows (across borders) deployed by (state) power. For example, border walls and stratification between categorized groups. Nor is built around settler colonies may be used to repel and it geared toward the integration of “inferiorized” expel others considered “inferior” on the basis of race, groups into realities or identities attached to a nationality, or religion (Madrigal 2019). Similarly, sur- “superiorized” category, through assimilationist veillance instruments may be used aggressively against instruments deployed by state power (Wolfe 2011). “inferiorized” people within societies. Processes for materializing values of care are Stratifying instruments are developed and focused on heterogeneous relations constituting deployed to centralize power and accumulate value practices. Thus, care is not materialized directly into and knowledge, derived from the circulation of technologies but rather into diverse assemblages of SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 251 interdependent people, values, interests, technolo- effects is a central aspect of caring practices. Caring gies, and biophysical processes. Such assemblages adaptation, however, can be suppressed, muted, and are situated rather than universal; provisional rather made invisible through stratifying processes of than stable. This means that caring practices do not control and domination. Documenting caring adap- push for the “scaling up” of their (finished) proc- tation/negotiation therefore requires close horizon- esses, or the widespread diffusion of their products. tal attention. Instead, they promote decentralized adaptation, tin- Caring practices point to the importance of egali- kering, fine-tuning, and repair their processes and tarian humility among human designers, manufac- products across situated practices of use and dis- turers, and users who defy the ambition to control posal (see de Laet and Mol 2000). and dominate nature and “inferiorized” human Embodied across practices in myriad ways, care beings. Practicing humility, care implies the admit- cannot be reduced to “a moral stance” (Puig de la ting of uncertainties in practices of design, produc- Bellacasa 2017, 4). As caring is materialized in/ tion, use, and disposal of technologies (Arora 2019). through actions performed by assemblages, it is not Admitting uncertainties is not just about highlight- about people making value judgements about others. ing cognitive dissonance. Nor is it about pointing to Instead, caring is about “engaging in practical gaps in knowledge. Instead, this admitting recog- activities” (Mol 2008, 75), ranging from “caring nizes that reality is complex and multiple, and about” others to “taking care of” them (and oneself) uncertainties are inherent to all knowing. They do (Tronto 1993, 106; Foucault 1996 [1986]). Thus, the not disappear once a phase in knowledge produc- concept of care is constituted by practical aspects tion or technological development process is that combine dispositions that are ethical and affect- “finished.” Uncertainties are always present, in the ive (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). These dispositions form of incompleteness, ambiguity, and ignorance are enacted in practices, as concerns and responsi- (Stirling 2015). bilities that enable reciprocal wellbeing. As noted Assemblages of care can include technologies that above, based on the egalitarian commitment under- are designed to extend ambitions to control. Such pinning care, these others can be ecological proc- caring practices make use of the “interpretive esses and beings in nature that have been flexibility” associated with many technologies (Bijker Objectified, damaged, or neglected. The others can 1995). This flexibility implies that a technology also be people, techniques, and knowledges that designed as an instrument of control can be repur- have been “inferiorized” or marginalized by practi- posed, used, and disposed of with care. However, ces and technologies of control. one only needs to consider serious challenges such For example, agroecology, permaculture, and as rapidly declining insect populations driven in other marginalized forms of agriculture approach part by the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides soils as living. This points to mutually caring inter- of industrial agriculture (Sanchez-Bayo and actions between humans and soil, which recognize Wyckhuys 2019) to imagine that the use or disposal soil’s relations with biodiversity. In contrast to of many Modern industrial technologies is critically Modern industrial agriculture that involves heavy governed by the already materialized ambitions to use of synthetic fertilizers aimed at increasing soil’s control. In industrial societies, therefore, caring efficiency to increase productivity at the expense of practices are often constrained by the widespread all other relations (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, use of technologies of control. 169–216), permaculture and agroecological farming We have to be cautious to not romanticize “care” involve slow and labor-intensive practices that draw as an innocent and self-evidently desirable set of upon “inferiorized” knowledges of farmers and values. Such caution is critical for transforming farmworkers. By showing that agricultural practices Modern practices of knowledge production (under- can care for (and be nurtured by) Objectified or pinned by ambitions to control) into practices of neglected forms of life, agroecology and permacul- care (Haraway 2011; Murphy 2015). Feminist tech- ture help unravel the adverse implications of domin- noscience scholars foreground a politics of care for ant control-driven agricultural infrastructures (Holt- making visible any controlling (bordering and strati- Gimenez 2006). fying) relations across otherwise “caring” assemb- Caring practices can help to reveal how control is lages. They pose questions such as who does the a fallacy (Stirling 2014). Despite concerted and sys- work of caring, for whom, and for what purpose. tematic attempts, control cannot be fully realized. For example, Murphy (2015) illustrates how feminist Social and ecological realities approached as Objects self-help interventions focused on the clinical level in the development and use of Modern technologies, to improve access to pap smear tests for women in can actually entail multiple unpredicted and United States and Canada toward the end of the unanticipated effects. Adapting to such uncertain twentieth century were approached as caring 252 S. ARORA ET AL. practices. However, this approach neglects the themselves to act, while equally helping others (and racialized inequalities and post-colonial geopolitics in return, receives help from others). Such mutual- that constitute global health infrastructures. While ism can reduce dependence on Modern machines much of the research to verify the causes of cervical and commodities by using tools that are “least con- cancer is conducted in the global South, and the dis- trolled by others” (Illich 1973, 31). Gorz (1980) ease remains widespread in Southern regions that extends autonomy to include “decentralized self-reg- were colonized, most women living in these regions ulation” in nature, which must not be submitted to are unable to access the tests for cervical screening. “control” or “correction” by a regulating authority of human experts. Regulation of nature by technocratic experts is argued to also compromise people’s Conviviality autonomy through “a growing submission of indi- Our third concept for grappling with the politics of viduals to institutions” (Gorz 1980, 18). technology for sustainability is inspired by Self-realization points to autonomous commun- Gandhian thought and in particular by Illich’s ities and neighborhoods imagining and creating (1973) work on “tools for conviviality.” For Illich, tools, “according to their own tastes, and to put socio-ecological interdependence is political and them to use in caring for and about others” (Illich mediated by tools in society. These tools are not 1973, 24). Self-realization thus highlights collective just technological artifacts, but also institutions such creativity that is caring for and about (ecological) as schools and factories (Vetter 2018). Practices others. These others include vulnerable humans; the within and beyond such institutions might also be reservoirs of minerals, trees, and water constituting approached as “tools.” As Illich (1973, 34) high- nonrenewable nature; and the flows between the lights, “school curricula or marriage laws are no less sun, wind, soils, plants, and animals constituting the purposely shaped social devices than road “cycle of life” (Kumarappa 1945). networks.” Therefore, Illich focuses on possibilities Care for the reservoirs of nonrenewable nature for institutional transformations toward convivial mightmeanthattheyareleftonandintheground, societies, within which struggles are waged for tech- through creative resistance against industrial resource nologies that are not shaped by ambitions to control extraction and against all attacks on “indigenous” and dominate (Gorz 1980, 19). ways of living (Estes 2019;Kumar2014). Caring for Illich (1973, 65) emphasizes the problem of soci- the flows in the cycle of life implies nonviolent nurtur- etal control by centralizing institutions and struc- ing of their cooperation and continuity in time and tures associated with Modern industrialization space (Kumarappa 1945). Caring for the flows can, for across capitalist and “socialist” societies (Gorz 1980), example, be done through agricultural practices such in which technocrats hold “radical monopoly” over as permaculture and agroecology discussed above. (institutional) design. In such industrial societies, These flows help constitute the assemblages in which Illich argues that the use of machines has gone too people can collectively enact self-realization based on far. It has exceeded social and ecological limits. As a caring creativity. Generalizing such self-realization result, machines destroy ecologies and end up ruling across diverse practices, hopes for conviviality help over people. Through its radical monopoly, technoc- imagine and materialize possibilities for plural path- racy marginalizes alternatives by institutionalizing ways to decolonize society as a whole (Escobar 2018). society around its designs that materialize ambitions Therefore, in addition to resistance against to control. In this way, technocratic tools undermine extractivist Modernity, self-realization points to car- freedom and cultural diversity (Pimbert 2015). They ing creativity that helps develop a diverse range of also presuppose and impose a stratified society that autonomous “tools” for realizing plural pathways of centralizes power through policy and policing (Gorz socio-material change that diverge from Modernity 1980). Critically, this implies colonization by tech- (Arora et al. 2019). The diversity of tools and plural nocracy of possible futures in society. pathways are not meant to fully replace standardized To undo this colonization, inspired by Gandhian products and processes that are the hallmark of thought including especially the writings of J.C. Modern industrial societies. Illich sees effectiveness Kumarappa (Gerber 2020, 246), Illich (1973) articu- and efficiency in society as resulting from standard- lates hopes for conviviality through autonomy and ization in some situations (e.g., for road and trans- self-realization. Like Gandhi’s(1997) Swaraj or self- port planning to prioritize bicycles rather than rule, as freedom from colonial Modernity for the motor cars). However, such standardization is whole of society and all of its parts across interrelat- always promoted in combination with multiple ing communities (Terchek 1998), Illich’s under- autonomous pathways of change (cf. Stirling 2009). standing of autonomy is holistically relational, Each of these pathways beyond Modernity com- mutualistic, and egalitarian. An individual helps prises its own knowing, designing, and valuing SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 253 practices co-produced with mutualistic autonomy The illusion of control: field trials with gene- and decolonial self-realization. To build such co- edited crops in Belgium existing plural pathways, hopes for conviviality point In the short term, the legislation should be altered to two interrelated socio-material struggles. such that crops with small DNA adaptations The first centers on the decolonization of innov- obtained through genome editing are not subject to ation in society, such that no institutional (techno- the provisions of the GMO Directive but instead cratic) power is able to monopolize or control fall under the regulatory regime that applies to classically bred varieties. knowledge production and technological development. This might necessitate democratization of Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, Position Statement institutions to give primacy to the knowledges and on Genome Editing, 2018 techniques developed by communities of diverse In European Union (EU) member states, the author- practitioners ranging from workers and peasants to ization to “voluntarily disseminate” genetically craftspeople and forest peoples. To facilitate the modified organisms (GMOs) must adhere to biosaf- development of such knowledges and techniques, ety measures stipulated in the EU GMO Directive communities are supported to intensify autonomy 2001/18/EC. This directive mandates labeling and from colonial Modernity (while struggling for equal- assessments of food safety and environmental risks ity and mutualism within and across communities). associated with genetically engineered products. The second struggle seeks to foster the production European GMO legislation has been a site of strug- and sustenance of plural decolonial pathways of gle since its inception (Levidow 2001). While con- socio-material change beyond Modernization in each sumers, civil society organizations, and peasant and area of socioeconomic activity. Such pathways are organic farmer associations stress the importance of composed of creative caring practices performed by good biosafety regulations and transparency to safe- autonomous assemblages. They develop convivial guard consumer choice, health, and safety, corpora- knowledges, designs, values, and techniques. tions emphasize how regulations stifle innovation Conviviality thus implies the promotion of co-exist- and trade. ing cultural and cognitive diversity in every commu- As part of scholar activism in Belgium around nity and neighborhood. This implies the promotion the role of publicly financed research institutes in of decolonial diversification based on caring creativity demands for European deregulation of GMOs, one to materialize social and ecological self-realization for of us has analyzed parliamentary discussions the historically “inferiorized” and “objectified” by (2007–2019), mainstream media articles Modern coloniality. (2007–2019), and public information requests to regulating authorities (2016–2019) while doing par- ticipant observation at multiple public events around biotechnology (2010–2019). This work reveals that Belgian research institutes’ attempts to Transforming socio-material politics of influence European legislation intensified with the agricultural development arrival of a new set of techniques for genetic Based on ethnographic research in South India and manipulation, also referred to as gene editing. scholar activism (as defined below) in the politics of Around 2012, corporations and their allies started biotechnologies for genetically modifying plants in referring to gene-editing techniques as “new breed- Belgium, we briefly explore below how control, care, ing techniques” in an effort to rebrand GMOs. This and conviviality are materialized in different agricul- strategy aimed to ease the dissemination of new tural strategies. To map control, we focus on how genetically modified (GM) plants in Europe bordering and stratifying is attempted through the (Holland 2016). Nevertheless, in 2018, the European development of new technologies. For care, we Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the GMO Directive explore how “Objects” are approached as subjects in 2001/18/EC also covers organisms developed using practices, through a commitment to egalitarianism gene-editing techniques, including the popular and the admitting of uncertainties. And conviviality CRISPR/Cas9 (Gutwirth and van Dijk 2020). In this is examined through emergent possibilities for case, corporations and their allies thus failed to shift decolonization in society, through autonomy and the boundaries of existing categorization of GMOs. self-realization, to resist technocratic coloniality and If they had succeeded in shifting the boundaries by to realize plural pathways of socio-material change placing the new GMOs outside the existing regu- diverging from Modernity. Throughout this analysis, lated category, corporations would have been able to we attempt to study interactions between the avoid labeling, to complicate traceability, and to cir- materialization of control, care, and conviviality. cumvent the precautionary principle. 254 S. ARORA ET AL.

Aiming for control through field trials conditions, the complexity of real ecosystems risked proliferating “unintended interactions between In efforts to materialize ambitions to control GMOs and other organisms” (Federal Health through agricultural GMOs (as detailed below), field Agency 2019a, 3). Aiming to control such risks, field trials form a crucial step. It is here that companies trial plots were kept small (a few acres) and “highly demonstrated the testing of new crops in quasi real- monitored.” Maize plants were labeled, counted, and life conditions. In Belgian Flanders, GMO field trials planted at regular intervals. They were also sur- have been an important communication and public rounded by conventional hybrid control plants. In engagement tool (Krom, Dessein, and Erbout 2014; Raeymakers 2012) while forming part of a larger addition, the removal of male flowers prevented the effort to transform biotechnology research into eco- spread of pollen and the seeds were harvested nomic growth (van Dyck and Arora 2018). manually. Also, the plot was fenced off to minimize In July 2018, two newspapers reported the exist- interactions of the GM maize with humans and ence of an authorized but “secret” field trial of larger mammals, with the aim of materializing the gene-edited maize in Belgium using CRISPR/Cas9. categorical border between Nature and Culture. The ostensible aim was to learn about the plants’ Such materialization of ambitions to control response to environmental changes. The failure to approaches plants, pollen, seeds, and mammals (and inform the wider public about the existence of the even consuming humans) as Objects lacking autono- field trials provoked widespread consternation, espe- mous agency. Their actions were believed to fully “ ” cially since it had happened with the knowledge and confirm to the accurate descriptions provided by agreement of three Belgian ministries for public the controllers of field trials, with little or no room “ ” health, innovation, and agriculture (van Horenbeeck for unintended interactions. ’ and Debusschere 2018). The field trial s ultimate goal was to enable the Using a public information request, we learned dissemination of the GMO plants into the environ- that the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology ment and the agri-food system. The very basis of “ ” “ approached the Belgian authorities in Spring 2016 GMO plants that are better suited to human ” to clarify whether a field trial with maize genetically needs expresses Modern ambitions to control modified using CRISPR/Cas9 fell within the scope nature. Here humans are homogenized as having of existing GMO regulations. While the EU urges the same needs. Their divergent views on GMOs, as European member states not to take hasty decisions expressed during the public consultation, are margi- on the matter, Belgian authorities opted to create a nalized. Ambitions to control are also evident in the fait accompli and decided to exclude the CRISPR/ language used to describe interventions in the gen- 1 “ Cas9-maize from GMO regulations. A year later, ome of plants. Metaphors of surgical inter- ”“ ” when the ECJ clarified that gene- editing techniques ventions, precision breeding, and related to cannot bypass the EU’s GMO directive, Belgian computer coding (e.g. “GMO 2.0,”“on and off- authorities swiftly moved to regularize the field trial, switching of genes,”“small accurate adaptations”) mainly through assurances of governmental over- are widely used. Such metaphors attempt to con- sight on the adherence to biosafety measures for vince policy makers and wider publics that things avoiding the dissemination of pollen or maize ker- are fully under control in the execution of genetic nels in the environment or the food chain modification (Gheysen et al. 2018). Crucially, such (Grymonprez 2018). metaphors yet again reveal how Nature is objectified For the third replication of the field trial, in in the materialization of ambitions to control in the 2019, its executors went through the legal proce- development of GM technology. Nature’s autono- dures for GMO field trials. This included submitting mous agency is obscured. And biotechnologists are a technical report for review by an expert biosafety presented as Subjects producing “accurate knowl- panel and organizing a public consultation. While edge.” Rather hubristically, they are the superior the public raised questions about the benefits, sus- beings in control of their Objects in/as Nature. tainability, and socio-economic effects of using Yet, the presumed accuracy of an intervention GMOs in agri-food, the Belgian authorities choose cannot be equated to predictability in its outcome not to address any of these concerns during the (Stirling 2018). More critical scientists have shown consultation (Federal Health Agency 2019a). how small genetic changes can produce large-scale Following the EU’s GMO directive, a permit was ecological effects (Bortesi et al. 2016; Jupe et al. granted based on assurances of adherence to the 2019). However, rather than taking this seriously, usual biosafety measures during field trials (Federal Belgian authorities followed researchers from the Health Agency 2019b). Flemish Institute of Biotechnology in arguing that According to a report from the public consult- public concerns about biosafety were unwarranted ation, in contrast to “controlled” laboratory “because of the application of various risk control SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 255 measures during the field test” (Federal Health changes in the region that have occurred over the Agency 2019b, 2). Thus in the field trials, Belgian course of their lives. Additionally, the analysis pre- policy authorities and Flemish biotechnology sented here is informed by ethnographic notes on researchers aligned with each other in following people’s socio-eco-technical milieu in 2017–2018 ambitions to control by Objectifying Nature. They and by previous research on long-term changes in failed to countenance how their ambitions to con- agrarian structures, caste, class, and gender dynam- trol were not only fictions but also fallacies. ics in these villages and the region more broadly Ecological processes were not their Objects to con- (Farmer 1977; Harriss 1982; Harriss-White and trol. Instead, as revealed by caring practices and as Janakarajan 2004). embedded in hopes for conviviality, ecologies mani- Cultivators juggled between a few varieties of fest through relational actors whose autonomy from hybrid rice, while coping with erratic rainfall and technocratic coloniality and generalized self-realiza- sinking water levels in open wells. The three rice tion are critical for sustainability transformations. cultivation seasons in a year, promoted during the GR, have given way to ad hoc planting schedules as farmers select rice varieties with varied maturing Care and survival in a South Indian green periods or are compelled to leave (parts of) their revolution landscape land fallow based on the availability of water in As part of the so-called Green Revolution (GR), wells. As a consequence, for landless women work- international ambitions to increase agricultural ers, transplanting and weeding that used to be their yields were materialized through monocultures of primary avenues of employment are no longer reli- hybrid wheat and rice for national food security able. The summer months are particularly difficult, from the 1950s through the 1970s. Technological as the limited available work is shared among a packages of “high-yielding varieties” of seeds, agro- large number of women for meager wages. For chemicals, and assured irrigation (often through farmers, the most distressing forms of precarious- groundwater extraction), coupled with pricing and ness arise from unremunerative crop prices and procurement policies, were disseminated to achieve entanglement in complex formal and informal credit the geopolitical objectives of controlling social dis- arrangements for buying seeds and agrochemical content and stemming communist influence in inputs. In state-run procurement markets, farmers newly independent postcolonial countries (Cullather camp sometimes for several days to sell paddy at 2010; Perkins 1997). In India, this technology-driven lower than the minimum support price declared by agricultural intensification was promoted as a devel- the government. opment strategy to improve wellbeing of smallholders and landless workers. The violence and plunder Coping with and struggling against control of colonial rule that contributed to producing the poverty of smallholders and landless workers was Instead of the controlled landscape of ever-increas- eliminated from technocratic diagnoses of the prob- ing agricultural productivity and universal prosper- lems of hunger and poverty, and from the proposed ity promised by the GR, a number of unpredicted development solutions (Patnaik and Patnaik 2016). and uncertain effects have been produced including A large body of literature since the 1970s has high- volatile crop prices and declining availability of lighted the failure of the GR in terms of its own water for irrigation. Among households relying on stated objectives of addressing rural poverty and agricultural incomes, farmers and workers are inequality, in addition to ecological critiques cen- adapting, tinkering, and repairing lives and liveli- tered on declining groundwater levels and chemical hoods through practices such as buying and sharing pollution (Frankel 1971; Shiva 1989; Farmer 1977; of water from wells and using micro-credit for con- Kumar 2016). sumption needs and for small investments During ethnographic fieldwork over seven in farming. months in 2017–2018, open-ended life history inter- People with marginal landholdings, unable to views with 24 smallholders and landless workers afford irrigation, have been attempting to grow (both male and female) in two villages of northern rain-fed finger millets and groundnuts. And having Tamil Nadu outline an increasingly precarious culti- a cow or two helps some households survive, as vation landscape shaped by GR technologies since milk tends to fetch a good price in the market. the 1970s (Arora et al. 2018; Sharma and Gajendran Women and older men spend significant parts of 2018). The interviews focus on “critical events” in their day caring for the cows, taking them out for workers’ and farmers’ lives, continuity and change grazing in uncultivated fields and in the silted water in livelihood practices, personal accounts of GR reservoirs (tanks) that once played a crucial role in transformations, and how people evaluate these irrigation and groundwater recharge (Janakarajan 256 S. ARORA ET AL.

2003). In extremely dry periods that have been fre- controlled by landowning dominant castes quent in the last decade, however, fodder is also dif- (Harriss 1982). ficult to access. Modern ambitions to control While the neglect of tanks began under British disregard boundaries of GR farms, creating the colonialism (Mosse 1997), it continued in the GR socio-ecological conditions in which most adapta- period as governments facilitated groundwater tion and repair practices are individualized. These extraction by dominant castes using subsidized elec- individualized coping practices are focused on deal- tricity. The GR’s promotion of technologies of con- ing with immediate needs, showing that the precar- trol, ostensibly for socio-economic development, ious post-GR landscape seems to offer limited failed to address gendered and casteist inequalities possibilities for caring practices to rebuild damaged that structure farming practices. In the two and neglected rural livelihoods and ecologies with- Northern Tamil Nadu villages, Dalit women’s out shifts in institutional and policy frameworks mobilization for rights to access the tanks reasserts (Vasavi 2012; cf. Blaikie 1985). The necessity of their value as multi-use village commons, rather such shifts highlights the importance of materializ- than as irrigation instruments controlled by land- ing hopes for conviviality across whole societies. owning farmers. Women articulate these struggles in Values of care are dormant, even as state-level terms of social justice and dignity, not simply as farmers’ unions and established agroecology groups demands for accessing natural resources. Defying in other sub-regions mobilize for institutional shifts categorical borders between Culture and Nature, to support ecologically regenerative farming practi- between the Symbolic and the Material (Mosse ces. While these organized groups were not locally 1997), these struggles are constituted by values of active in the region of our research, close horizontal care and hopes for conviviality. While these strug- engagement revealed that everyday forms of political gles by the most marginalized groups may not, by organizing to realize equality are prevalent among themselves, succeed in building socio-ecologically women workers performing agricultural tasks in col- just and sustainable agricultures, they are critical for lectives. Mostly women have been employed to per- charting directions of sustainability transformations. form the only remaining unmechanized skilled tasks They show that materializing hopes for conviviality in the cultivation process—transplanting paddy requires challenging intersecting power relations of seedlings in flooded fields and weeding (in rice and gender, caste, and class, as well as institutional shifts groundnut). Through mutualistic interdependence across the whole of society. and careful organizing, Dalit women largely from Caring practices for regenerating water reservoirs, landless households have successfully bargained for shifts toward “indigenous” rice varieties, and more better wages and more dignified working conditions diverse cropping systems with millets and ground- within control-driven GR agriculture. These strug- nuts can help move beyond the radical monopoly of gles also challenge casteist “inferiorization” in and the GR’s technocracy, if they simultaneously struggle beyond the fields, most prominently around quality, against multiple socio-economic and cultural preparation, and modes of serving food and exclu- inequalities with which farming practices are deeply sion from accessing the village commons. The ambi- entangled. Many emergent agroecological move- tion to control the organizing efforts of women ments across India, supporting plural pathways and workers is, however, resurgent in the form of trans- constituting practices of knowing, such as in organic planting machines that have been appearing on agriculture, permaculture, and zero-budget natural large farms. Many large farmers and state agricul- farming, are working toward this possibility for a tural officers argue that these transplanting convivial society (Khadse et al. 2018; Brown 2018). machines will solve the “labor problem.” In other parts of the world, peasant movements are building on “indigenous knowledge practices” to promote in situ approaches to preserving agrobiodi- Hoping for conviviality? versity and dealing with environmental stresses such In discussions of groundwater depletion in Tamil as droughts and floods. For instance, seeds bred Nadu, a consistent theme is the neglect and loss of through in situ approaches, are based on mutualistic water reservoirs or tanks that were integral to local co-evolution of seeds with their socio-ecological agricultural landscapes. Tanks were simultaneously a environments. By defying separations of Nature common resource (for water, fishing, and trees) and from Culture, this dynamic cultural biodiversity a public institution comparable to the village temple stands in sharp contrast with Objectifying genetic (Mosse 1997). Tanks were often maintained using engineering for homogenous commercial seed vari- unpaid labor by Dalits, even as Dalits themselves eties that are registered in the European seed cata- could be prohibited from use for fishing or irriga- logue as distinct, uniform, and stable (Serpolay et al. tion. The majority of lands irrigated by tanks were 2011). Such peasant movements are thus attempting Table 1. Materializations of control, care, and conviviality across different political dimensions. Dimensions of political processes Domination Control Care Conviviality Prevalent ontology Categorically bounded Categorically bordered Interactively relational Holistically relational India: by helping to create conditions of India: the GR “high-yielding varieties (HYV) India: emergent grassroots actions and socio- India: the politics of agroecology famine and underdevelopment, self- package” frames food security as ecological relations condition durable regional movements for sustainability that can serving colonial exploitation sets the national self-sufficiency through variabilities in the uptake of GR and in encompass whole societies and material stage for the “Green Revolution” (GR) enhanced productivity of cheap calories adaptation practices cultures (including plural human- through monocultures of wheat and nature relations) rice. Belgium: the understanding of GMO field trials as semi-controlled environments with clear insides and outsides Mode of engagement Totalizing Othering Instrumental manipulation Reflexive commitment Immersive equality India: “superiorized” interests colonize Belgium: materializing control relations to India: local cultural-ecological conditions push India: pluralities of interests and identities territory; dispossess targeted castes and “engineer” for high performance, by back against GR varieties. Seasonal variations engage with each other in multiple classes; “inferiorize” and exploit through manipulating selected crop genes, in switch between rainfed and irrigated crops ways on equal terms, across social gendered racialization; objectifying ostensibly “Objective” ways. and fallows. Manual plowing co-exists with movements, struggling against “inferiorized” people alongside extracted India: instrumental “industrial tools” of GR tractors. Welfare entitlements reduce overarching gradients of power or “natural resources.” include subsidized private groundwater dependence of landless workers on dominant privilege that “inferiorize” particular Belgium: “superiorized” interests colonize extraction for monocultures of just a castes, opening up spaces for egalitarian actors and “superiorize” others territory; objectifying “inferiorized” few hybrid varieties of cereals, struggles. people alongside extracted (re)producing marginalization of Belgium: ECJ ruling acknowledges scientific “natural resources” smallholders and workers uncertainty and affirms precaution as guiding principle for GMO assessment. Freedom of information request by civil society reveals influence of corporate lobbying Manner of materialization Identity imposition Comprehensive instrumentalization Assemblages of practices Socio-material wholes India and Belgium: entire new identities India: GR policies entrench marketization India: women’s work groups bargain for higher Belgium: civil society demands to assess are created and rigidly imposed as a around agrochemicals, seed dealing, agricultural wages, dignified work, struggle to field trials in their full socio-ecological means to violent “inferiorization,” and procurement of credit, also through use village commons interwoven with context, to include intersecting socio-

devastating objectification, and public extension services. challenging casteism. Struggles for economic drivers and ecological POLICY AND PRACTICE SCIENCE, SUSTAINABILITY: unbridled exploitation Belgium: public policies instrumentalize in accountability and welfare entitlements are impacts. favor of biotech interests through tax intrinsic to livelihoods India: agroecology social movements shelters, public–private partnerships, tackling caste and gender inequalities and erosions of EU biosafety regulations entangled with environmental change using field trials in farming (and beyond) Affordance of agency Subject over all else Subject over Object “Objects” approached as subjects Su/o-bjects entangle as collectives General: one class of social actors Belgium: notional “switching” of genes India: in situ practices (of seed breeding and India: nurturing conditions of democratic privileged as the “superiorized” Self, “on” and “off,” as directed by exchange) based on principles of cultural parity across multiple dimensions of enjoy cultural–political norms under biotechnologists as a class of biodiversity and dynamism, to highlight caring relations between humans and with which patterns of entitlement and “superiorized” subjects-who-know. for nature’s agency in interdependent co- nature. Contrasting social and ecological valuation uphold their interests (and India: individualizing of risk and coping evolution of seeds with their socio- actors thus enjoy institutional norms recognize only their identities)— strategies. Multiple cropping seasons ecological milieus under which patterns of innovation and essentially Objectifying aggravate extraction of groundwater as valuation repair the damage associated “inferiorised” Others an object (to serve human subjects’ with “inferiorization” and Objectification needs constructed by the GR model). (for socio-ecological justice). Former “Inferiorized” laboring classes are colonial “Objects” are thus engaged displaced by mechanization with/as decolonial subjects Propagating processes Violent oppression Technocratic determinism Autonomous reciprocity Mutualism for decolonial self-realization India: conditions of dispossession from Belgium: expert hegemony in (policy) India: practices of labor exchange and working India: hopes for conviviality enable

(continued) 257 258 S. ARORA ET AL.

to decolonize agriculture to help build a convivial society based on self-realization and autonomy (Naylor 2017). A society in which institutional transformations support biodiverse seeds that contribute to building plural agricultural pathways beyond Modernity, and in which the agency of both people and plants are mutualistically nurtured.

Discussion struggles against injustices producedpower by and privilege. Autonomyself-realization and between interrelated interests and actors throughoutsocio-material wider wholes, with the potential to enable more comprehensively mutualistic relations, within and across societies,deeper free and from wider gradientscoloniality of in all itscaste forms and including gender The above cases have attempted to illustrate the materializing of control, care, and conviviality in particular contexts and their histories. We hope to have highlighted the importance and relevance of arguably crucial political distinctions that currently remain neglected. For transformations to sustainability, it matters critically whether technologies, practices, and institutions are constituted by ambitions, values, and hopes articulated here as “conviviality,”“care,” and “control.” Key implica- (e.g., uncultivated land used for s inter-caste solidarity employed to ” ’ tions of our analysis developing these three concepts are shown as columns in Table 1, with a fourth col-

women cope with economic andEnabling ecological of distress. complex adaptationsettings to local grazing and fodder). Equalvillage access commons for all to umn outlining the extreme case of control in “domination.” Rows of Table 1 distinguish between five different political dimensions of the materialization of control, care, and conviviality. “Prevalent ontology” in the first row of Table 1 refers to the generally established ways of approaching and techno-sciences

” performing (and so helping to shape) the world. In the second row, “mode of engagement” points to ways in

modern which subjects, objects, and their contexts are consid- “ ered to relate to one another. The “manner of materialization” then addresses key means by which these narratives of standardization and economic growth. practices implicated in thebased GR on model (e.g., HYV monocultures andcalories focus for on (mal)nutrition) patterns become materialized in their respective political India: enforced standardization of agrarian situations (into technologies, practices, and institutions). The “affordance of agency” focuses on how agency is enabled or constrained around different possible loci. And “propagating processes” focuses on some major dynamics through which ambitions to control, values of care, and hopes for conviviality might be extended from particular settings outward into the wider world. In each cell of Table 1, a label is coupled with a schematic reference to selected aspects of the empir- ical discussion earlier. Together, we hope that this land and water establishedcolonial, through gendered, and casteist violence, continuing in post-colonial times, also in theviolence form directed of against dominating objectified nature helps make clearer, and accountable, the political distinctions proposed in this article. In short, the table foregrounds nuances in connections between the concepts of control (and its extreme form “domination”), care, and conviviality across particular settings. This may help account for hierarchical orderings in regulation and policy making to move beyond narrow “science-based” technical assessments toward promoting the co-existence of plural Continued. socio-material pathways. We also hope to contribute to articulating and orienting contemporary struggles

Table 1. Dimensions of political processes Domination Controlagainst the unsustainable Care forces of globalizing Conviviality SUSTAINABILITY: SCIENCE, PRACTICE AND POLICY 259

Modernity constituted by control and domination. At production of knowledges and techniques by practi- the same time, we highlight a perennial challenge, tioners such as smallholders practicing permaculture namely that of realizing dynamic continuity and and agroecology, craftspeople experimenting with cooperation across struggles by linking currently iso- nontoxic materials, and forest peoples caring cre- lated pockets and practices of care into deeper and atively for complex socio-ecologies. It is through the more expansive political cultures of conviviality. latter that plural socio-material pathways to sustainability beyond Modernity may be realized. It is imperative that sustainability transformations Conclusions orient societies away from Modern bordering and It is crucial to locate materializations of conviviality, stratification toward interactive and holistically rela- care, and control in particular political contexts. tional ontologies of care; from instrumental manipu- Central to this analysis is the need to attend to his- lation toward a reflexive commitment to deepening toric junctures when possibilities are expanded for democracy and equality; from technocratic policy practices to be strongly conditioned by the values of making toward practical politics of care and self- care and hopes are nurtured for realizing convivial realization; from glorifying the agency of (some) societies. It is crucial that care and conviviality are human subjects toward appreciating the agency of not approached as essentialized sets of values and autonomous collectives producing diverse tools; and hopes, which can be attributed to certain practices from orders of techno-scientific determinism to plu- and societies. Such essentialization simply mirrors ral decolonial ways of knowing with each other. It is and helps entrench the Modern logic of reifying through such caring and convivial transformations control. Instead, by recognizing situated patterns of that values and hopes for sustainability have been care and conviviality, across their materialization in materialized in the past. And it may be through different contexts, it might become possible to such transformations that the promises of sustain- engage in transformations to sustainability through ability are realized in the future. mutualistic autonomy rather than centralized control, egalitarian justice instead of continuing Notes “inferiorization,” and decolonial self-realization as opposed to standardizing modernization. 1. After a similar incident in Germany, the European ’ Central to achieving such autonomy, justice, and Commission s letter to competent authorities in June 2015 asks that governments should “await, as much self-realization in transforming societies toward sustain- as possible, the outcome of the Commission’s legal ability are the democratic politics of social-environmen- interpretation before authorizing a deliberate release tal activism and public policy. We propose that of organisms obtained with new plant breeding directing greater attention to distinctions between con- techniques,” since “the deliberate release of products trol, care, and conviviality, activism and policy can help which are subject to the rules of the EU GMO “ ” legislation without appropriate prior authorization, is steer sustainability transitions and transformations illegal.” Letter obtained through Freedom of away from Modernity. This means moving away from Information request, quoted in Holland (2016, 13). ambitions to control toward materializing values of care in practices and hopes for conviviality across societies. Disclosure statement For example, prominent “decarbonizing transformations” to tackle climate change are reenacting No potential conflict of interest was reported by Modern extractivism by promoting technologies such the authors. as nuclear power and electric cars (using lithium and uranium among other extractive “resources”). Such Funding transformations materialize ambitions to control “ ” The work of the first, third, and fourth authors was sup- Objectified Nature and inferiorized people. In con- ported by the UK ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty trast, through egalitarian and democratic remaking of Alleviation Research [ES/N014456/1]. The work of the urban and rural infrastructures, caring transformations second author was supported by the European Union’s might promote practices such as bicycling and walking. Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Caring and convivial interventions by policy makers a Marie Sklodowska Curie Action [707807]. and activists can also offer support for neighborhoods and communities to harvest their own energy from the sun and the wind at a microscale without breaking the References continuity and cooperation of “cycles of life.” Adams, W., and J. 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