Sociotechnical Environments. Actors, Technologies, Geographies and New Kinds of Action

Abstract

This section draws from the opening plenary session of the 6th STS Italia Conference “Sociotechnical Environments” (Trento, 24-26 November 2016). The section was dedicated to the topic “Sociotechnical Environments: actors, technologies, geographies and new kinds of action”. It is composed by three contributions which articulate different relationships among actors, technologies and sociotechnical environments. Felix Ekardt presents an analysis of the scope of technologies with reference to societal problems, analysing the case of climate change. The idea of sufficiency as leading human behaviour for a sustainable normality drives the author’s analysis of the node technology-environments-action. The second contribution by Luigi Pellizzoni is an epistemological travel around possibilities and conditions of an alternative science. Drawing from philosophical and STS literature the author inquires the (not) surprising convergences between critical STS literature and neo-liberal approaches, pointing to the concepts of materiality and materialism, In the third piece of the section Christine Fassert focuses on the node of actors-technologies-geographies through the case of Fukushima contaminated territories. She presents technologies of zoning in their ambivalence towards residents’ life and multifaceted consequences of scientific controversies in territorialised risks.