We invite abstracts for a workshop on “Making Future(s): Green alternatives
and STS Interventions” which will be held at Adam Mickiewicz University in
Poznań, Poland, 24-25 November 2017. The workshop is funded by the European
Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).

During the workshop we want to reflect on problems of environmental
degradation and its threat to livelihoods. Remedies to such problems come
predominantly in the form of various techno- and market-fixes.
Eco-modernist perspectives shape mainstream politics and policies with
regard to environment. A good example is the Breakthrough Institute’s
Ecomodernist
Manifesto (Adafu-Adjaje et al., 2015). Many agendas advocate capitalist
'acceleration' in the name of going beyond the current system. These would
develop technologies 'which free us from biological and environmental
constraints', as well as from conventional work (Srnicek and Williams,
Accelerationist
Manifesto 2013 and Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without
Work, 2015).  Amidst policy frameworks promoting new infrastructure for
economic growth, alternatives propose 'green infrastructure' in various
forms (e.g. The Case for Green Infrastructure, 2013).

However, alternative visions of the future and solutions to environmental
challenges have also been proposed by social movements, local communities
and different other kind of social groups and groupings. For example,
social movements demand environmental justice and ‘system change’.  A
number of local communities and indigenous peoples, both in the global
North and South, have devised lifestyles according to alternative
cosmologies that try to escape capitalist notions of nature, politics and
economics.  The concept of buen vivir, good life, have become something
more than just a slogan inviting to join a consumerist comfort. It has
taken shape as an anti-capitalist and environmentalist agenda.

STS has a potential to critically engage with the dominant visions in order
to advance politics of creating our common future.  Through this workshop
we aim to advance STS theoretical and methodological interventions into
both reflecting on and making ‘green futures’. The main questions to engage
with are:

(1) What theoretical and methodological approaches in STS have proven to be
most fruitful for studying how various visions of ‘green futures’ are made
and how they stabilize into social orders? We are interested in
conceptualizing technologies for making ‘futures’ and ‘the predictions of
future’, new agencies, as well as new socio-technical orders, their scales
and temporalities.
(2) How can we advance the current STS approaches to studying the making of
the future(s)?  How to analyse the various socio-political constructs of
the ‘uncertain’ and ‘green’ futures that dominate the discussion about
creating what comes after the present?
(3) What concepts of nature, technology and society underlie these visions?
(4) How do various remedies for the environmental crisis engage with the
neoliberal order of contemporary capitalism, either by strengthening or
subverting it? In other words, we are also interested in the politics of
making diverse future(s).

Deadline for abstracts of 300 words, proposing theoretical, empirical and
methodological interventions, is May 15th, 2017. Abstracts should be
submitted by e-mail to ALL THREE email addresses: Aleksandra Lis
[log in to unmask], Agata K. Stasik [log in to unmask]  and Małgorzata
Kowalska [log in to unmask]

Successful applicants will be notified by June 30th, 2017. Full paper
drafts should be submitted by November 1st, 2017. A post-workshop
publication of the papers is planned. All paper-giving participants will be
hosted at a university housing facility for up to two nights. A limited
number of travel bursaries is available upon request.

The organizing team comprises of local and international scholars actively
shaping the field of STS: Aleksandra Lis (Adam Mickiewicz University in
Poznań, Poland), Małgorzata Kowalska (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań,
Poland), Piotr Matczak (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland),
Agata Stasik (Koźmiński University, Warsaw, Poland) Les Levidow (Open
University, UK), Luigi Pellizzoni (University of Pisa),
Invited speaker: Ingmar Lippert (IT-University of Copenhagen)

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