2nd December 2024
‘Geoethics in the Anthropocene’
Speaker: Robert Braun, Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna
2:00 – 2:30 PM, School V
Please join us on Monday, December 2nd, at 2:00 PM in School V for a discussion on ‘Geoethics in the Anthropocene’ by Dr Robert Braun, Senior Researcher for Science, Technology, and Social Transformation (STS) research group at the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna and Associate Professor at Masaryk University, Brno. This event is sponsored by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Exposition
The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) has rejected the proposal of its Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) to include the Anthropocene as a new, formalized epoch in the Geological Time Scale (GTS). The decision, later ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and its mother organization the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) sparked controversy within and beyond the geosciences. Analyzing contentious moments in science reveals the underlying dynamics of science and its interaction with broader society. Looking at what I call the “Anthropocene controversy” sheds light on the politics of geoscience, illustrating how science functions as a political process. The talk will focus on a geo-ethical stance rooted in what Isabelle Stengers calls “slow science,” a thoughtful approach to considering unknown matters and their connections to existing knowledge. I suggest a Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ethnomethodology-inspired critical/radical reflexivity as an ethical method, emphasizing insecurity regarding basic assumptions, discourse, and practices used in describing reality. A geo-ethical stance reflective of our critical juncture in Earth’s history should integrate radical conceptual implications of revolutionary ideas, such as quantum theory interpretations, rather than avoid them. The main goal of a quantum-inspired geoethics is to decenter the universal and hegemonic Newtonian/Cartesian worldview and offer a radically constructivist and STS-inspired critique of the politics of reality enactment. Thus, I propose a geo-ethics attuned to becomings, matterings, and more-than-human events, recognizing various agential possibilities that give rise to new forms of temporality and spatiality, also in constituting and instituting geological time and space.
Speaker Biography
Robert Braun completed his PhD in philosophy in 2002 and his Habilitation in sociology 2021. He is senior researcher at the research group Science, Technology and Social Transformation at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, and associate professor at Masaryk University, in Brno. His research focus is the ontological politics of science and technology transitions and Anthropocene violence. Among his books Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility (CEU Press, 2019) has been selected as one of three best books of 2019 by the European Management Academy (EURAM). He has published, inter alia, in History and Theory, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences Communication, Journal of Responsible Innovation, Mobilities, Mobility Humanities and Transfers. His last book, Post-Automobility Futures (with Richard Randell), is published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2022. They currently work on a new book project on the World of Anthropos: Sovereign Power and Anthropocene Apparatuses.