Paper short abstract:

I will focus on the applicability of STS to ecological debates in the Global South. With reference to the disruptions decolonial scholarship has forced upon Euro-US historiographies, I will ask if STS can escape colonialism's viral intelligence and speak to a volatile ecological landscape.

Paper long abstract:

At the core of a universalizing environmental theory lies the question of how one relates, both to oneself, and to one’s immediate environment: how have ethnocultural identities shaped as a consequence of the interactions between individuals and their extractive infrastructures? From an epistemological perspective, it is clear that the pathologization of the subaltern identity has obstructed the potentiality for the development of a self-deterministic one. Therefore, to predicate a Western environmental theory on the assumption that individuals in the not-West replicate the same modes of relationality to their environment as the West would extend the long-standing exploitative nature of science studies to contemporary ecological debates in the Global South.

This presentation will frame relational ethics as an emergent question in discussing how STS scholarship treats ecological crises. Does an awareness of relationality (and its divergences across cultures) arrest the possibility of a globalized environmental consciousness? What consequences does this hold for STS’ neo-orientalist approach to studying indigenous science? This presentation will provide disruptive starting points to these, and other questions, that trouble the directions STS is beginning to shape.