Theorising Futurity from the Fringes, EASA, 23 July, 2024

Our panel, Theorising Futurity from the Fringes, was invited to the European Association of Social Anthropology meetings this summer in Barcelona. Together with panel convenors, Darcy Alexandra (University of Bern), Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar (University of Cambridge) and Carolina Domínguez Guzmán (IHE Delft), we asked:

How do we theorise the future from the vantage point of ecological fringes, peripheries and border zones? This panel seeks to highlight forms of radical worldmaking and futurisms which occur in environments oft obscured, neglected or otherwise relegated to the past. Multimodal approaches encouraged.

Long Abstract:

Tech hubs, state of the art laboratories, and smart farms are often invoked as spaces where the future is actively ‘being made’. Such sites tend to conjure notions of cutting-edge technologies – of AI, robotics, drones, and IoTs – linking scientific practice with precision and control. In this panel, we aim to rezone the sites where future-making occurs – particularly in relation to environmental science and ecological practices of care. We turn towards peripheral and fringe spaces to apprehend and question theories of futurity. Through close examination of the quotidian, these theories are encountered in practices of doing and undoing, experimentation, and within tensions of worldmaking projects. Embedded in mundane forms of engagement – from acoustic surveys, groundwater technologies and habitat restoration to camera trap data collection – are imaginaries of prospective legal, social, and/or political impact. As extractivist, capitalist, and military projects mobilize theories of the future, often promoting tech-solutionism, devaluation of human and non-human labor and a post-humanist ideal, it is pivotal for scholars to question these frameworks, forging alternative visions and stories.