Short Abstract

Following a planetary shift in social thought, we ask: if navigating changing climates affects our everyday lives, how do these affects shape, in turn, how we know, envision, and care for planetary futures? What do these climate affects and futures ask of STS, more than now, or now more than ever?

Description

The last decade has witnessed a shift of attention towards “planetary thinking” in social and political theory (Clark & Szerszynski 2020, Hui 2024) and in global agendas for planetary boundaries and health, drawing attention to the existential threats posed by anthropogenic crises of climate change and extreme weather events, toxic waste and pollution, and biodiversity and habitat loss. STS scholars suggested that such a shift calls for down-to-earth modes of knowing and being (Latour 2018), staying with the trouble (Haraway 2016), acting-with the world (Pickering 2025), and pluralistic world-making (Escobar 2007, Masco et al. 2025).

Yet comparatively less attention has been paid to the reverse-arrow of the climate question in STS: if inhabiting a planet on fire affects virtually every aspect of our lives, how do these affects and emerging eco-anxieties shape, in turn, how we navigate changing climates and envision liveable futures? How might climate feelings, cares, and their discontents shape horizons of possibility – at once expressing and withholding existential exhaustion and ontological vulnerability ? How might we pivot the perennial STS focus on the co-production of science and society (Filipe et al. 2017) towards reimagining how climate knowledge, action, and emotion (Sasser 2024) are being jointly produced or unequally distributed? What are the means, methods, qualities, and aesthetics that this reimagination begets? In other words, what do climate feelings and planetary futures want and ask of STS?

This Combined Format Panel invites proposals that engage with these questions. Its hybrid format will combine (i) a panel, comprising talks from speakers (short papers or combinations of these with creative, multimedia interventions), and (ii) a workshop, where participants will come together to co-develop plans for an edited collection on the panel’s themes. The aim is to foster critical conversations in the EASST community and across STS, social science, arts, and humanities.

This Combined Format Open Panel has 4 pending contribution proposals.
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