- Convenors:
-
Roberta Raffaetà
(Ca' Foscari Venice University)
Alexander Mawyer (Director Center for Pacific Islands Studies)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Network:
- Network Panel
Short Abstract
As ecological crises deepen, “planetary biology” emerges—driven by AI and sequencing that reveal new life patterns across scales. This mapping of oceans and mountains exposes tensions between scientific exploration, extraction, and renewed (neo)colonial and ecological anxieties.
Long Abstract
As the planet faces an unprecedented ecological crisis, a new concept is taking shape — that of planetary biology. Still a moving target, it is driven by sequencing technologies and cutting-edge algorithmic power, including AI, which enable scientists to identify novel biological patterns through unexpected correlations across places and samples. To make this possible, scientists feel an urgency to sample and map the entire planet, crossing and aggregating conventional disciplinary and geographical boundaries and blurring distinctions between biomes and “anthromes.” Planetary thinking resonates with social science efforts to decentre the human and its anthropocentric gaze. Yet, the technologies that sustain it — many of which originated in military research — reveal “family resemblances” and deep anxieties about control and domination, both over humans and the environment, as well as new configurations of what Ann Laura Stoler calls “imperial formations” which raise the spectre of new forms ecological imperialism and (neo)colonial entanglements. With this panel, we aim to ethnographically account for and anthropologically theorize how this planetary mapping of data unfolds in different sites through a shared logic of extraction. In particular, we focus on two interconnected yet seemingly distant ecosystems: mountains and oceans — on the frontlines of current planetary challenges, where glaciers are melting and oceans are rising. We also wish to explore the interconnections between these charismatic, rural or para-urban environments from Europe to the Pacific as sites where competing conceptions of Indigeneity, locality, and place are (re)emerging, offering a lens to think beyond polarizations and reactionary (mis)recognitions.