CfP – “The environmentalization of economics” – EASST conference

A la suite du séminaire “Expertises Economiques et Actions Environnementales“, Béatrice Cointe, Kewan Mertens et Alexandre Violle organisent un panel à EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology) intitulé « l’environnementalisation de l’économie ». Ce panel vise à étudier comment les tentatives de prise en compte de l’environnement modifient les pratiques, les outils et les épistémologies de l’économie.

La date limite pour envoyer les propositions est le 12 février 2024.

Short Abstract:

The “environmentalization of economics” investigates how attempts to account for the environment are changing practices, tools and epistemologies in economics. This invites us to question which economy and which environment are being jointly produced, and what possibilities may thereby be ruled out.

Long Abstract:

It is hard to escape economic methods, models and concepts when considering environmental problems. We find them in the valuation of ecosystem services, the design of carbon markets and renewable energy support schemes, the “greening” of finance, or attempts to weigh the costs and benefits of climate action… Economics underpins a large part of environmental action, and is simultaneously blamed for its contribution to environmental crises.

The STS literature has mainly approached the relation between the environment and economics by studying processes of economization and valuation, that is, how environmental entities (carbon, forests, ecosystems…) are transformed into objects of economic analysis and valuation. Concepts such as economization, commodification, marketization or assetization have grasped the expansion of economic ways of thinking and their performative effect on the environment.

But this relation is not a one-way street. With the notion of “the environmentalization of economics”, this panel aims to open up thinking on the joint production of the economics and the environment as we know them, with a particular focus on knowledge production processes, practices and devices. How is economics transformed when it grapples with the environment? How do economics and environmental sciences meet? Which economies and environments does this perform and what possibilities may thereby be ruled out?

Topics of interest include: what happens when the environment is not amenable to concepts and methods of economics; the translation of methods and tools from environmental sciences into economic reasoning; the emergence of hybrid economic/environmental objects and epistemologies; the entanglement of ontologies and normativities that characterizes environmental problems.

Sidonie Naulin

More Posts - Website