Paper short abstract:

Taking a case study of the implementation of a new waste water treatment system in the Netherlands, I think ethnographically ‘vulnerability’. Recognizing vulnerability as a characteristic of a damaged planet is a starting point to think vulnerability as a quality of solutions

Paper long abstract:

One of the challenges facing the Netherlands and elsewhere have to do with contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) present in waste water. To 'fix' the problem, engineers, ecologist, and citizens are busy creating new technologies in order to further clean waste water. These technologies, of course, demand new knowledges and learning approaches --for once, little is known about CEC pathways, and furthermore, new waste water technologies demand a lot of careful observation and adaptation. In this paper, taking a case study of the implementation of a new waste water treatment system in the Netherlands, I think ethnographically ‘vulnerability’ as it is enacted in the experimental setting. Villagers’ involvement in the new technology demanded learning to collaborate and coordinate with global actors such as researchers, governmental institutions, global fish, microalgae and polluted oceans. Recognizing vulnerability as a characteristic of a damaged planet is a starting point to think vulnerability as a quality of solutions for and arrangements to tackle and remedy planetary damage. In this paper I thus trace ‘vulnerability’ as a crucial question or element present in three different practices: 1) Vulnerability of the technological infrastructure; 2) vulnerability of damaged ecosystems; 3) vulnerability of the ‘the social’ understood as community that live and care for the system in a daily fashion. What can we learn while tracing vulnerability of the different normative repertoires are pertaining to each practice?