Contested imaginaries of ‚future technologies‘: Geographical perspectives (1/3)

Abstract der Sitzung

The prospect of controlling the forces of nature by large-scale technologies has been one of the central projects of Western modernity. Regardless of the stated crisis of this specific modernity, different kinds of ‘future technologies’ are regarded as solutions for addressing current crises, from climate change over artificial pollination, to controlling food production and securing borders. The link between technologies, social power and future vision has thus been discussed for different fields and scales, among these energy technologies (Sovacool 2019), prospects for global geo-engineering (Sapinski et al 2021), smart city programmes (Marvin et al. 2016), or adaptation to climate change (Nightingale et al 2020). Across these debates, authors have sought to understand the defining, even disciplining role of technology, as well as its tendency to depoliticize urgent debate around planetary futures, while dismantling legitimation strategies related to technologies as ‘techno-optimism’ or ‘technological solutionism’ (Morozov 2103, Tutton 2021).

For assessing the complex links between technologies and societal futures, Sheila Jasanoff and other scholars of Science and Technology Studies (e.g. Sismondo 2020) have carved out the notion of sociotechnical imaginaries, in an early definition grasped as “collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific or technological projects” (Jasanoff & Kim 2009, 120). Even though the authors have later climbed down from their emphasis on the national scale (Jasanoff 2015, 4), and researchers have emphasised diverse and counter-hegemonic visions (Longhurst/Chilvers 2019), the spatial aspects of sociotechnical imaginaries have long been overlooked. Only recently, Chateau and others (2021) have proposed to link place imaginaries, idealised spaces and imaginaries of spatial transformation to thinking about technologies.

Seeking to expand this emergent conversation, we invite contributions that spell out the conflictive dimensions of future technologies, their underlying sociotechnical imaginaries and their role in the production of space. We invite papers that target the links between sociotechnical imaginaries and space, dealing with but not limited to

• the politics of framing the future in technological solutions and technologies in future visions
• learnings from and remains of ‘past’ future technologies
• the links between capital accumulation, technological fixes and spatialised visions of the future
• the relevance of sociotechnical imaginaries for space-making processes
• the relationship between sociotechnical imaginaries, militarization or peace building
• the coloniality of technological imaginaries and materialities
• technologies as solutions or drivers of visions for (sustainable) regional development
• discursive and material conflicts around ‘future technologies’ on different spatial scales
• visions and spatialities of democratic, decolonial, feminist, counter-hegemonic, or convivial technologies

We welcome submissions in both English and German.