State-Environment Relationality: Organic Engines and Regimes of Governance

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Sociology of Science

Abstract

We argue for the de-coupling of the environment-nature synonym that undergirds macro conceptualizations of science-state relations. Instead we suggest that state-environment should be conceptualized as a complex set of shifting relationalities between agents (human beings), actants (material culture), and forces (non-designed materialities). We seek to reconceive the ontology of state-environment as a complex “thing,” i.e. a gathering that is simultaneously human and non-human, material and discursive, practice and process. This requires understanding the practices involved in “environing,” i.e. the process of surrounding that which surrounds. The processes of environing become visible around the boundary objects of land, water, and lithium, objects that network science and governance. The result is the building of regimes of governance into and out of the “environment,” a process not captured in the macro distinction between state and environment, where the former acts and the latter is passive and acted upon. We use the term “enviro-state” to capture the resulting state formations. The enviro-state is constituted in technoscientific “regimes of governance.” This “technoscientific state,” this enviro-state, is further conceived as an “organic engine,” an entity constantly and forcefully driven by resource extraction and relentless growth.

Author

• Patrick Eamonn Carroll, University of California-Davis