Law, technologies, and living things in 'nature' exist in a relation of co-production.What happens, however, in practice when lawyers, technoscience, and 'nature' meet in transnational adjudication – Ecuador v Chevron being an ideal-typical case ? This panel will invite papers that consider Earth Law and normative spaces as co-productive worlds of configurations of legal practices, technoscientific practices, and living and lively agencies.

Argument

The conference 4S 2023 will be held in Honolulu on November, 8-11 - Theme : Sea, Sky, and Land : Engaging in solidarity in Endangered Ecologies

Law, technologies, and living things in 'nature' exist in a relation of co-production (Jasanoff). What happens, however, in practice when lawyers, technoscience, and 'nature' meet in transnational adjudication – Ecuador v Chevron being an ideal-typical case (Sawyer)? Emerging are new normative spaces (Lhuilier), each constituting a world of their own, but also form a 'world of many worlds' (de la Cadena/Blaser). In "normative spaces', transnational actors (private and public) produce diverse sets of extraterritorial, globalizing norms from choices of law technicalities (choices of jurisdictions, laws, but also of public order and normative hierarchies) through regimes of legal strategy, representation, or knowledge. Regulation and governance, doubly co-produced in a) constituting each normative space while b) configuring transnational governmentality, and vice versa, are now understood as Earth System Law (Kim) or Earth Law (Lhuilier) – the law of global governance in the Anthropocene era: As a new legal cultural infrastructure (Stingl) it obliges states and companies to prevent environmental and societal crises by mobilizing "scientific concepts" from STS, the social, ecological, and natural sciences (i.e. carbon footprint, non-human agency, etc.) applied via eliciting the "tools" of management sciences (planning, audits, accounting, etc.). This panel will invite papers that consider Earth Law and normative spaces as co-productive worlds of configurations of legal practices, technoscientific practices, and living and lively agencies in three instances (Panel 1: Living Worlds of the Blue Economy, Panel 2: Multispecies Worlds, Panel 3: Interstitial Worlds of Extraction and Ecosystems) Proposed Format: 4 papers, 1 discussant per panel.

We embrace 4S’s long-standing commitments to social and environmental justice across overlapping and diverse intellectual communities to encourage innovative contributions attentive to the problems of dwelling in polluted waters, colonized landscapes, and militarized spaces; of airborne transmission and breathing in asphyxiating economies; or of speaking through undersea cables, underground data centers, and online systems. We welcome STS insights into technoscientific practice and knowledge, the nature of expertise, and whose knowledge claims count and how.

Submission guidelines

There are several ways to participate in the 4S 2023 conference: presenting an individual paper, organizing or participating in closed panels, commenting on papers, and presenting in a Making & Doing session. We will also be accepting proposals for roundtable discussions and meet-ups in a separate call on July 24.

In order to enable many people’s participation, the conference chairs will follow the following guideline. Each participant will be limited to one paper as a presenter and two additional non-presenter roles at the conference. Non-presenter roles include organizing or chairing a session, being a commentator in a session, organizing or participating in roundtables, and participating in a Making & Doing session.

Submission deadline : May 26th, 2023

The submission must be done on the 4S website

Submitting a paper to an open panel

Paper submissions to open panels should be presented in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. They should include the main arguments, methods and contributions to STS. When submitting your paper, you will be asked to designate one or more areas of STS research and add keywords. In addition, you will select up to two accepted open panels to host it. In this way, we reinforce the possibility of your papers being in thematically connected sessions, thus facilitating networking and scholarly discussion.

Submitting an individual paper

Individual paper submissions should be presented in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. They should include the main arguments, methods and contributions to STS. When submitting your paper, you will be asked to select one or more areas of STS research and add keywords. Whenever possible, please select one or more open panels suitable for your paper. If you do not want your paper to be considered for any open panel, please select "Individual Paper Submission" at the first panel selection screen. The Program Committee will organize individual papers not associated with closed or open panels into panels, or direct them to the organizers of appropriate open panels for their consideration.

Submission form

Organizing a closed panel

Submissions for closed panels should contain an abstract and a justification of up to 250 words, including a brief discussion of their contribution to STS. A panel proposal must contain a minimum of three paper abstracts that meet the above criteria. A maximum of six time slots per 100-minute session is available (e.g. 5 papers plus 1 discussant). A panel may be made up of a maximum of three sessions. The composition of panels will ultimately be determined by the Program Committee. If your proposal contains fewer than five papers, the Committee may (in consultation with you) allocate additional papers to your panel to optimize scheduling and participation.

The Program Committee will consider proposals for a limited number of Author meets Critics panels. It is suggested to discuss recently awarded books or books whose contributions are considered substantive or original. Diverse formats are welcome, for example discussing two books in a single Author Meets Critics panel in order to put the pair of books into conversation and structure a discussion of a domain. Please submit the Author meets Critics proposals as closed panels.

Submission form

Participate in Making & Doing

The STS Making & Doing program invites 4S members to submit experimental work and exploratory practices that are best presented interactively, outside of a traditional panel format. Making & Doing encourages STS researchers to share work that takes up speculative, participatory, reflexive and/or aesthetic approaches to the study of science, technology and society, as well as projects that experiment with frameworks for producing, sharing, and reconfiguring knowledge. Submissions for Making & Doing should include an abstract of up to 250 words, along with an additional technical requirements paragraph of up to 100 words, and a representative image. In technical requirements, please explain the preferred form of your presentation (a screening, a performance, a workshop, an installation), how much time a visitor would need to interact with your presentation, and any technical or spatial requirements. Participation in the Making and Doing event does not count toward limits on conference participation described elsewhere. While most presentations will be in person, proposals for online presentations will also be considered. Find galleries of past Making & Doing exhibitions here.

Submission form

Organization

Conference Co-Chairs :

• Aya Kimura (Co-Chair)
• Grant Jun Otsuki (Co-Chair)

Local Organizing Committee Co-Chairs :

• Joan Fujimura (Co-Chair)
• Misria Shaik Ali (Co-Chair)

Conference Secretary : Callan Sait

Making & Doing Committee Chair : Yelena Gluzman

Program Committee

• Anne Pollock (Chair)  (King’s College London)
• Onur Aslan (University of California-Davis)
• Jess Auerbach (University of Cape Town)
• Xan Chacko (Wellesley College)
• Melissa Creary (University of Michigan)
• Amanda Domingues (Cornell University)
• Nadine Ehlers (University of Sydney)
• Mascha Gugganig (Technical University Munich)
• Lea Happ (King’s College London)
• Klaus Høyer (University of Copenhagen)
• Noela Invernizzi (Universidade Federal do Paraná
• Chihyung Jeon (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
• Koichi Kameda (Université de Paris)
• Jaya Keaney (University of Melbourne)
• Tania Perez-Bustos (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
• Thao Phan (Monash University)
• Matthew Sample (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
• Mitali Thakor (Wesleyan University)
• Natali Valdez (Purdue University)
• Natasha Vally (University of Cape Town)
• Tomiko Yamaguchi (International Christian University

Contact

If you need help with accounts and login, please contact info@4sonline.org.

If you have substantive questions about the meeting program and procedures, contact meeting@4sonline.org

We look forward to your participation!