Caring and Commoning as World(s)-Making Practices and Sites of Ambivalence

Abstract

This editorial introduces the special issue by examining recent developments around caring and commoning within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and offers an overview of the contributions collected. It approaches caring and commoning as both world(s)-making practices and conceptual resources for thinking and acting towards more equitable and response-able futures. By tracing how these themes have been articulated across contemporary STS debates, we argue that ambivalence constitutes a recurring feature of current engagements with care and commons. Rather than treating it as a marginal effect, we propose ambivalence as a productive analytical lens for understanding the multiple and often contradictory effects of caring and commoning practices. Two major sites of ambivalence are identified. First, caring emerges as indispensable work of maintenance and repair that sustains sociotechnical worlds while also stabilizing existing arrangements through the redistribution of responsibilities and labour. Second, commoning fosters collective governance and political opening while remaining entangled with institutional, market, and infrastructural logics that shape participation, authority, and responsibility. Echoing key STS scholarship, we conclude by positioning ambivalence as a productive analytical perspective for understanding caring and commoning as relational, more-than-human, and intervention-oriented practices through which collective worlds are continuously made, maintained, contested, and transformed.