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Paper short abstract

Drawing on de la Bellacasa’s (2012) thinking with care, the emergence and development of political ontology is traced. In doing so, western and non-western traditions of thought and practice are put in dialogue.

Paper long abstract

The ontological turn does not leave unaffected a variety of fields, including anthropology, philosophy, and science & technology studies (STS). However, in its margins a particular field developed: political ontology. The emergence and development of political ontology as academic field constitutes the focus of this paper presentation. First, political ontology’s thought and main scholars are presented. Second, following de la Bellacasa’s (2012) thinking with care, political ontology’s development is traced by putting into dialogue central figures and their thoughts and by rendering explicit intellectual inspirations, institutional connections, and personal influences, i.e. by mapping instances of mutual engagement, interdependencies, and prolongations. Doing so, the field’s emergence and development is linked to the ontological turn in anthropology, philosophy, and STS. Through this emerges an understanding of how political ontology emerged and stabilised, and the political, social, cultural, and institutional processes that facilitated this. Political ontology is shown to be developed from the concern that Western scholars fail to engage with theorisations in the non-West while non-Western scholars easily consider Western thought inapplicable to their contexts (Escobar, 2018). The crossing over of West non-West contexts renders the development of political ontology politically and epistemologically interesting, demonstrating how modern science is brought into continuous dialogue with de/postcolonial science. Finally, contemporary dynamics in political ontology are presented, articulating present-day questions, scholars and institutions, reflecting upon the theoretical, institutional, and personal connections that seem to organise and shape the field’s further development.