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Short abstract:

This article introduces a paradigm in agricultural economics that integrates localization and STS. It highlights a gap between current research trends and educational content, advocating for this integration to enhance policy effectiveness and address sustainability challenges in agriculture.

Long abstract:

This article presents an additional paradigm in agricultural economics, focusing on the integration of localization and Science and Technology Studies (STS) alongside traditional global approaches to address the multifaceted sustainability challenges in agriculture. It highlights the limitations of traditional macro-level analyses, particularly in addressing localized, region-specific issues such as small-scale farming practices, ecological challenges, and cultural dimensions. The paper advocates for a localized approach, emphasizing the need to tailor agricultural policies and practices to specific regional characteristics to enhance their sustainability. Additionally, it proposes the incorporation of STS, offering a critical examination of the interactions between science, technology, and societal structures, and emphasizing the importance of broader societal considerations in agricultural development. The article identifies a significant gap between emerging research trends that advocate for this integrated approach and the prevailing content in contemporary educational resources. It suggests that bridging this gap is essential for the formal recognition and incorporation of these perspectives into the academic and practical realms of agricultural economics. The proposed integration of localization and STS is argued to provide a more comprehensive, effective, and context-sensitive approach to policy formulation and implementation, essential for tackling the complex sustainability challenges in the agricultural sector.

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Short abstract:

Drawing on long-term collaboration with Buscadora collectives, forensics, and environmentalists in Mexico, I explore how their work generates new modes of attention and an inclusive set of sensibilities that entails a radical reconceptualization of the notions and temporal frameworks of justice.

Long abstract:

In this paper, I will focus on the material history of the lands and soils of La Laguna, a dry lagoon system located in the Mexican state of Coahuila, one of the most affected areas by contemporary violence. Exhausted by a massive modern environmental transformation project, the lands and soils of La Laguna have recently turned into a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of human remains. In this sense, they have become a clandestine cemetery and, consequently, a forensic object for anthropological intervention.

Attending to practices and relations that exist alongside but exceed contemporary forensic domains, I offer the concept of forensic geo-logics to examine self-organized and counter-forensic practices led by Buscadora collectives as they unfold new sets of investigative and narrative sensibilities. By excavating the human-nonhuman, living-nonliving relational complex of this dusty ecosystem, I aim to acknowledge the multiple temporalities, scales, and registers of deep, stratified forms of violence. This violence operates by way of entangled forms of life destruction –for humans and nonhumans alike–, and finds its expression not solely in the so-called Mexican drug war, but also in slower violence of resource extraction, historical and current colonialism, and state domination in a landscape of neoliberal dispossession.

Drawing on my long-term collaboration with Buscadora collectives, forensic experts, and environmental activists in the region, I explore how their work could contribute to generating new modes of attention, and an inclusive set of senses and sensibilities that entails a radical reconceptualization of the notions and temporal frameworks of justice.

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The study explores governance challenges of simultaneous energy transitions in India's transport sector. It argues that to harmonize long- and short-term objectives, new governance paradigm that addresses complexities of long-term planning is needed. It suggests such a governance paradigm.

Long abstract:

Format: traditional (10-15 min presentation) Email: dwarkeshwar@gmail.com

In roughly the last two decades, new policy objectives such as achieving net-zero, developing industrial competence in emerging green technologies, and reducing fuel import dependence have been added over already existing ones like meeting growing fuel demand and air quality improvement to India’s transport sector policy mix. To realize these multiple long and short-term objectives, several alternative fuels and powertrains (AF&P) such as electric vehicles, compressed biogas, ethanol, green hydrogen, and methanol are being promoted by the government. However, weaving multiple policy goals in a single coherent vision can often create tensions between technological trajectories and pose governance challenges. For instance, while options like electrification and green hydrogen are suitable for long-term goals like net zero, for short-term goals such as air quality improvement low-hanging fruits like compressed biogas appear right. However, promoting compressed biogas can lead to infrastructural lock-in and can hinder long-term net-zero goal. This study takes a brief stock of the variegated AF&P landscape of India and through wide stakeholder interviews identifies three significant governance challenges. It is argued that addressing these would require shifting from the governance paradigm based on linear management of clearly structured policy problems towards a more reflexive approach. Based on the principles of reflexive governance and transition management, a reiterative governance framework is proposed.

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Short abstract:

It explores the ethical, social and technological challenges that arise during the implementation of digital surveillance tools, focused on health code in China. It emphasizes the need for an inclusive governance framework and the responsibility of scientists in addressing these complex dynamics.

Long abstract:

This paper examines China’s health code system in the context of digital surveillance and governance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Divided into two main parts, the paper it first explores how the integration of digital tracking technologies in public health management reshapes the dynamics of state authority, citizen privacy, and social norms. By focusing on the role of health code in monitoring health status and controlling population movement, it illuminates the interplay between digital infrastructure and social functioning. Preliminary conclusions suggest that while health code facilitate epidemic control in the short term, their long-term use also raises concerns about privacy, the ethics of data use, and the impact on social relations and cultural norms.

The paper thus turns to the second part on the challenging nature of long-term digital governance and the evolving responsibilities of scientists within the framework of digital governance and public health surveillance. Through a series of case studies of resistance in the late stages of the Chinese epidemic, it presents structural challenges to long-term governance, such as the non-transparent mechanisms and digital divide that accompany rapid infrastructurization. It calls for design approaches to responsible and adaptive governance, advocating the need for scientists to play a key role in shaping governance models that are fair, ethical, and responsive to societal needs. The conclusions provide recommendations for future collaboration between scientists, policymakers and technologists, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue in addressing the complexities of digital governance and ensuring long-term societal well-being.

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Long abstract:

In recent decades, the imperative for a sustainable paradigm shift in living, consuming, and producing has become increasingly evident. To address these transformative changes, robust governance structures must be established that not only initiate but also support medium and long-term transformations. This transition is typically gradual and decentralized, thus demanding governance approaches that actively guide and monitor these complex processes.

While the concept of long-term governance is a contemporary one, societies have always grappled with the challenges of governing long or continuous processes in various domains. Examples include formulating education policies, managing mega infrastructure development, building and maintaining alliances and treaties between nations, preserving cultural and historical heritage, urban planning, and environmental conservation.

To promote sustainable transitions, effective and lasting governance is essential. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the socio-political conditions conducive to their emergence and discerning the essential characteristics that support their feasibility. To achieve this goal, we conducted a comprehensive literature review analysing historical instances of long-term governance, encompassing both successes and failures. This approach aims to provide valuable insights to address contemporary challenges and inform future governance strategies. Indeed, historical contexts often unveil recurring themes such as social stability, visionary leadership, and collective commitment to social well-being. Conversely, cases of governance failures or insufficient long-term planning and governance underscore vulnerabilities and pitfalls that undermine sustainability efforts.

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Short abstract:

The concept of long-term governance (LTG) is promising to better understand and prepare the necessary political actions to shape and govern such challenges in the long run. We therefore aim at elaborating a framework concept for a better LTG understanding.

Long abstract:

Climate change, energy transition, nuclear disposal or certain key technologies are examples of societal grand challenges with great scope and long-term impact. The concept of long-term governance (LTG) is promising to better understand and prepare the necessary political actions to shape and govern such challenges in the long run. Hence, a long-term governance approach to cope with grand challenges is necessary. We therefore aim at elaborating a framework concept for a better LTG understanding. We interpret and define LTG as the most foresighted and adequate political handling of far-reaching change processes that have the potential to influence our society positively as well as negatively. In order to master these major challenges, overarching integrated and long-term efforts are needed that combine technical with organizational, social and economic dimensions. Policymakers face the task of making socially and politically robust decisions coping with grand challenges that reach far beyond usual planning horizons. The LTG framework elaborates on several building-blocks, namely the LTG generic approach, LTG obstacles, the roles of science, ethics and technologies, and LTG principles and strategies. The LTG approach essentially focusses on a problem, solution, and connecting pathway perspective. Key LTG principles and strategies that we identified are located in the areas of multi-level integration of a long-term perspective (e.g. learning environment, participation, institutional embedment), problem definition and agenda setting (e.g. science policy interface, problem identification), pathway and policy formulation (e.g. target specification and goal setting, solution options), decision-making and implementation (e.g. time management), and monitoring and reformulation.

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Long abstract:

Transformation programs are launched to address global challenges and enable more sustainable futures. However, each transformation requires reorganizing basic socio-technical systems that can affect all social subsystems. These changes have far-reaching consequences and affect actors who may not be directly involved in the transformation effort. Crisis-driven transformation programs, such as those focused on energy or digital transitions, can cause significant disruptions in social coexistence because they are often initiated without consideration of the necessary social and structural changes. These interdependencies within transformation activities have received limited attention. Understanding them is critical to the success of transformation.

Technology assessment (TA) is involved in transformation projects at all levels. Like other approaches in STS, TA's expertise lies in its interdisciplinary and integrated range of theories and methods to critically anticipate, examine, evaluate, communicate, and help shape (emerging) transformations. TA is concerned with creating structures that generate solutions to problems in society. It situates these activities in a larger societal perspective, assessing their potential for change and impact on social subsystems while considering their visionary promise and interconnectedness.

Our paper will outline a concept for "transformation assessment" by and in TA. It is intended to provide orientation for transformation projects and to make their possibilities and consequences visible, assessable, and subject to reflection. It integrates the analysis of transformations from a systems-theoretical, an immersive anthropological, and a vision-assessment perspective. In this sense, "transformation assessment" could be a resource for the co-shaping and governance of transformation projects.

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Long abstract:

Anthropogenic challenges such as environmental pollution or climate change demand a paradigm shift in governance from short-term responses to far-reaching solutions. Addressing these challenges necessitates societal responses marked by reflexivity, anticipation, and adaptability. Therefore, in my PhD research I am addressing the pressing need to tackle complex and enduring challenges with a focus on urban infrastructures.

Drawing on the conceptual foundations of change management, the multi-level perspective (MLP), and the long-term governance (LTG) framework, my research aims to develop a holistic and practical approach for addressing long-term challenges in urban infrastructures. First, a conceptual cornerstone is laid by exploring the interlinkages between change management, MLP, and the LTG framework through a comprehensive literature review, researching similarities and differences of these approaches and discovering their combined potential in addressing long-term urban issues. Subsequently, urban heat planning is considered as an individual urban infrastructure issue by conduction of a comparative case study of best practices. A further issue considered in a comparative case study is the long-term governance of urban forests. Insights and key success factors concerning strategies as well as challenges, regarding urban heat planning and urban forests, will be elaborated.

Thereupon, insights from the individual cases are synthesized, shaping a comprehensive roadmap for the long-term transformation of urban infrastructures – integrating principles from MLP, change management, and the LTG framework. In conclusion, my dissertation provides an interdisciplinary exploration of long-term urban governance, offering theoretical and practical insights for addressing pressing anthropogenic challenges in the urban landscape.