Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
political division between this nature and the social is both subjective and contestable.
'Being' is conceived as external, with non-human actors unable to speak. Nature
has been a silent partner in the development of human civilizations. It has been
scientists, politicians, academics and others located in the political sphere who have
consequently spoken for nature. For Latour, political ecology means critiquing, or
destroying, this notion of nature, while rendering political all those practices that
'naturalize' this way of thinking, doing and being. Another aspect of Latour's project
is to recognize the complexity of all those socio-natural actors, instruments and
practices that address common matters of concern. Science has an important role
to play here, but it is not alone. Reality is assembled more or less experimentally
from the practices of both human and non-human actors. It 'grows' as new coalitions
of fact, value, being and recognition are created, and this has profound ethical
implications for how we conceive of politics, act politically and communicate
democratically. Latour also believes (2004b) that critique has gone too far, that
social constructivism has gone too far. The world should not just be understood
and valued in human terms. Global warming is fact - admit it, say it, stop disputing
it or asking 'What do we mean by?'. There have been too many instances where
objective fact has been viewed, or represented, as ideological prejudice resulting from
'greenwashing' or the naked exercise of power by those interests who are, or feel,
threatened. So if critique, dialogue and deliberation is to be renewed, critical analysis
must direct itself to 'matters of concern' rather than to 'matters of fact', which are
always partial, rarely revealing themselves in full to our understanding and experience.
Matters of concern and matters of fact are not necessarily distinct or separate, but
the former are things we care about, which are important to us, which we value,
in which our past, present and future is engaged - in other words, which matter -
like climate change, poverty, injustice, the future.
Latour has been influential in developing and promoting what has become known
as 'actor network theory' (ANT). Not only subjects (people) are active, and not only
objects are passive, in relations between (social) agents and (natural) conditions
or (science-based) technologies. At least initially, all three should be considered as
equal participants in a range of heterogeneously complex networks constituting the
world we have shaped, know and relate to. As such, ANT is concerned with both
desocialization and denaturalization, thereby either bridging, or eradicating, such
conceptual divides as human vs. environment or local vs. global. Things can only
be defined in relation to other things, and they become what they are, and what
they mean, through those social and ecological relations and networks. Latour uses
the term 'performativity' to describe this process. This network approach to under-
standing the world has some profound implications for sustainable development and
for environmental politics. From an ANT perspective, opposing genetic modification
(GM) or nanotechnology on the grounds of their not being 'natural' is neither
feasible nor logically conceivable. Everything human beings help shape may be seen
as 'unnatural'. Art and architecture are unnatural. So, given this, the problem really
boils down to what 'unnatural' meaningfully signifies in our everyday speech and
academic specialized discourse and how we understand the implications of such
understandings. There are some key questions about how decisions are made, what
they are, who benefits and who suffers. These questions, like the process of sustain-
able development itself, are themselves political, and this is probably why Latour's
(2004a) intellectual journey has taken him from science to social science and
