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Paper short abstract

This paper reflects on a collaboration between a group of chemists from a low-tech lab and an (invited) STS scholar who together aimed to open up scientific practices by taking a collectively limited (degrowth) future into account during agenda-setting and experimentation.

Paper long abstract

The production of steel starts by the reduction of iron oxide into metallic iron, a reaction which is in most cases performed with large volumes of coal. Decarbonization scenarios for steel propose to use electricity or green hydrogen, typically maintaining or expanding current scale of production. A group of French chemists, self-identifying as a low-tech lab, decided to refuse this hegemonic socio-technic imaginary of green growth. Instead, they turned to STS and degrowth scholars that question the inevitability of such imaginaries, and advocate for reduction of energy and material use, toward steady-state economies. Soon realizing that it remains an open question how to rethink and reorganize natural sciences when one refuses economic growth as a driver of research and innovation, they turned to a befriended STS researcher for collaboration on the issue how to orient, execute and justify a chemical research practice within socio-ecological boundaries.

In this presentation I, the invited STS researcher, share some of the intricate results - it is possible to produce iron with solar energy and mammal urine, instead of coal or other fuels, and this forces us to rethink scalability as a techno-economic criterion for innovation - and I will reflect on the interdisciplinary process which I provisionally dub 'invitational sts': the fruits of responding to requests from natural scientists who are keen to politicize and open up disciplinary science, for which prior informal engagement - 'hanging out' and going odd places together - and shared normative orientations towards (limited) futures proved to be key.