Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

The paper analyses the "infrastructuring" of ocean observation systems and the role of geospatial data infrastructures in transforming the ocean from an 'unruly' space into a governable one.

Paper long abstract

Ocean observation systems are increasingly framed as critical infrastructures for governing vast, labile and hard-to-access oceanic spaces in the context of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of ocean-based economies. Large-scale monitoring initiatives and data platforms promise to generate the information required for evidence-based ocean governance. Yet these systems are costly, fragile, and dependent on unstable institutional and financial arrangements. In response, parts of the scientific community attempt to reposition ocean observation systems as societal knowledge infrastructures whose value extends beyond scientific research.

This paper examines this “infrastructuring” process and the role of geospatial data infrastructures in transforming the ocean from an ‘unruly’ space into a governable space, drawing on Science and Technology Studies and recent work on the politics of infrastructuring (Blok et al, 2016; Drakopulos et al, 2022).

The analysis draws on a collective ethnography of international ocean governance arenas linked to the UN Ocean Conferencein Nice (2025), complemented by interviews with actors involved in major observation initiatives ( GOOS, Copernicus Marine Service, and Argo). The paper unpacks scientists, institutions, and funders’ attempts to stabilise observation infrastructures by emphasising their societal relevance and embedding them within governance agendas. The expansion of observation infrastructures – often through commercial partnerships, philanthropy and ships of opportunity – generates conflicts over observation priorities, data commercialisation, and authority over knowledge infrastructures. This produces a geospatially ordered yet uneven ocean, with some areas becoming infrastructurally (in)visible and some actors building epistemic privilege.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

Using Cape Town, this paper argues that Airbnb produces urban space through geospatial data, rankings, and platform governance. Rather than democratizing tourism, it concentrates value in affluent white neighborhoods and reworks postcolonial territorial regulation through digital infrastructuring.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines whether Airbnb in Cape Town expands economic participation or reinforces long-standing urban inequality. Airbnb’s business and governance model relies on organizing accommodation through location, data, and the unequal visibility of neighborhoods, creating a core infrastructure for new global tourism flows. The paper argues that Airbnb uses this infrastructuring power to reshape the city, both territorially and through the changing organization and valuation of place. To demonstrate this, it combines policy analysis with five years of market data and spatial mapping of listing hotspots, patterns of host concentration, and the growing dominance of professional operators across the city.

The findings show that both Cape Town and national authorities helped create a favorable environment for Airbnb’s expansion through new forms of regulatory cooperation, policy accommodation, and data sharing. At the same time, the platform market became increasingly professionalized. Between 2019 and 2024, the share of professional multi-listings increased from, while amateur listings make up a small minority of the market. Spatial analysis further shows that listings and hotspot areas are heavily concentrated in affluent neighborhoods historically reserved for the white minority under apartheid. In contrast, the Cape Flats and other marginalized areas remain largely excluded from Airbnb’s digital marketplace. As a result, rather than distributing tourism opportunity evenly across the city, Airbnb appears to reproduce older spatial hierarchies while channeling new tourism value into already advantaged urban areas and reinforcing existing social and economic inequalities over time.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

This research scrutinises the socio-technical imaginary about the relation between technology and sustainability that emerges in the promotion of Europe's Digital Twin of the Earth. The current imaginary seems to direct the project towards a Eurocentric, one-directional and high-tech driven future.

Paper long abstract

"Destination Earth", or in short "DestinE" is a project of the European Commission that aims to develop of a Digital Twin of planet Earth: a highly accurate data-driven digital representation that is expected to monitor and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activity. Because DestinE is expected to play a key role in environmental governance, it is important to scrutinise what relations between technology and sustainability this large technical project proposes and reinforces.

This article will take a first step in drawing out the world-views in DestinE by analysing the socio-technical imaginary that emerges in the promotion and framing of the project. Drawing on philosophy of technology and science and technology studies, we employ critical hermeneutics to scrutinise three main narratives driving the DestinE project: the Digital Twin narrative as well as the coupled narratives of the Europe's Twin Transition, i.e. the Green Deal and Digital Strategy. We trace how these narratives conceptualise DestinE and promote certain approaches to its representation of and relation to the Earth. As DestinE is still in its early stages of development, offering insight into the imaginary that emerges through the project promotion can help to question and recalibrate the project as it develops. The article concludes that the current imaginary seems to direct the project towards a Eurocentric and one-directional future, and offers a research agenda to open up alternative futures.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Urban Digital Twins seek to provide virtual city replicas for governance purposes. This presentation analyses how they transform existing governance arrangements, prompting critical reflection on the present and potential futures of urban democracy through geospatial data platforms.

Paper long abstract

Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) are increasingly being promoted as the future of urban governance and democracy. UDTs are presented as dynamic virtual replicas of cities and consist of interconnected data infrastructures that can extract, manage and analyse multi-sourced spatialized big data. I argue that UDTs are particularly insightful sites through which to examine how geospatial data platforms redefine existing orders by shaping relationships between citizens, public authorities and markets, and to critically consider possible future avenues for urban democracy and governance. Analysing and comparing experiments with UDTs within the EU and asking how they are transforming urban governance, I develop an understanding of UDTs as data assemblages — complex socio-technical systems infused with politics and context — and scrutinise how the generation, circulation and deployment of data are constituted by technological, political, social and economic elements, including imaginaries and discourses. This highlights the specific situated ways in which UDTs redefine the norms and values of a governance deemed desirable: how they reposition citizens in relation to public authorities (e.g. by involving them as data providers through urban sensors or by governing them in more individualised ways through the increasing use of digital platforms) and reorganise political institutions and procedures (e.g. by developing more participatory decision-making processes or by delegating part of urban governance to digital contractors). Overall, this perspective highlights the ongoing and future reconfigurations of crucial issues in urban governance, notably public mastery over data and the specific forms of digital citizenship that are enacted through digital platforms.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledges in Campinas, Brazil, were historically excluded from scientific and technological recognition. Drawing on STS and epistemic justice, it analyzes "Pretos Velhos" traditions as forms of situated sociotechnical knowledge.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledges have been systematically excluded from dominant regimes of scientific and technological recognition in Brazil, despite their central role in shaping sociotechnical practices and territorial organization. Focusing on Campinas, a city historically marked by late abolition, the study examines how Black knowledge systems - particularly of Bantu and Yoruba origin- were relegated to the domains of folklore, rather than acknowledged as science and technology. The analysis draws on debates on epistemic justice, situated knowledges, and the co-production of science and social order to interrogate how boundaries between “science,” “technology,” and “tradition” are historically constructed. Empirically, the paper centers on the figure of Toninho, associated with the "Lenda do Boi Falô" and the spiritual tradition of the "Pretos Velhos", as a case through which botanical, territorial, organizational, and spiritual knowledge practices can be understood as complex sociotechnical systems. Methodologically, the research combines archival analysis, bibliographic review, fieldwork, and collective memory records, treating the territory itself as a living archive of knowledge practices. Rather than advocating for the mere inclusion of ancestral knowledges within existing scientific frameworks, the paper argues that recognizing these practices as science and technology requires a reconfiguration of dominant epistemic criteria. By foregrounding Afro-diasporic epistemologies, the study contributes to STS debates on decolonial science and the politics of epistemic and technological recognition.