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

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Control, Care, and Conviviality in the Politics of Technology for Sustainability Control, care, and conviviality in the politics of technology for sustainability Article (Published Version) 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 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/94548/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse: Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University. Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available. Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsus20 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 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Published online: 22 Oct 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data 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 mov- ing beyond Modernity. We argue that such pathways are crucial for democratic transforma- tions 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 con- viviality 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
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