Download full text
(323.2Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.47.2022.37
Exports for your reference manager
Spaceship or Stewardship: Imaginaries of Sustainability in the Information Age
'Spaceship' oder 'Stewardship': Vorstellungen von Nachhaltigkeit im Informationszeitalter
[journal article]
Abstract This paper contrasts two approaches to implementing the notoriously ambiguous ideal of sustainability: one driven by the centralized, managerial metaphor of Spaceship Earth, and the other by a notion of stewardship that foregrounds the values of care and obligation. Both approaches depend on infrast... view more
This paper contrasts two approaches to implementing the notoriously ambiguous ideal of sustainability: one driven by the centralized, managerial metaphor of Spaceship Earth, and the other by a notion of stewardship that foregrounds the values of care and obligation. Both approaches depend on infrastructures to enable them, but these are built on different combinations of the material, the social, and the moral. Viewing Earth as a spaceship amenable to human guidance and control makes sense only if we also accept the power of dominant "centers of calculation" that gather and disseminate standardized knowledge instrumentally to ensure global coordination. Stewardship, by contrast, relies on infrastructures of locally shared values and distributed innovation in human-nature relations rather than on universal scientific knowledge or technology. Stewardship is often propagated by social movements seeking to promote globally sustainable ecological practices. The two approaches have markedly different implications for designing future infrastructures to promote transformations to sustainability.... view less
Keywords
climate change; environmental consciousness; environmental behavior; sustainability; information society; responsibility; human-environment relationship; sociotechnical system; infrastructure; knowledge
Classification
Ecology, Environment
Technology Assessment
Free Keywords
coproduction; geoengineering; sociotechnical imaginaries; spaceship; stewardship; Spaceship Earth; technology; Science and Technology Studies; Transformation; future
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 29-47
Journal
Historical Social Research, 47 (2022) 4
Issue topic
Ruptures, Transformations, Continuities: Rethinking Infrastructures and Ecology
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed