Temporalities In Agriculture and the Environment: Rethinking Technologies, Socionature, and Alternative Futures

We invite papers that use a frame of temporalities to understand social phenomena, particularly as they relate to technologies, socionature, and the everyday aspects of agriculture and the environment. In developing the session, we draw inspiration from Doreen Massey’s concept of space/time, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s temporalities of care, and James Bridle’s work on digital technology and the end of the future. In addition, we note an expanse of work on anticipation and future-oriented imaginaries, all within a popular context of urgency brought about by climate change, accelerationism advocated in the tech sector, and counter notions of slowness, care, and degrowth. We would like to look at these together, and question how power is related to temporalities in material and ecological practice.

We invite empirical work that deals with temporalities, and can add nuance, complexity, or clarity to the temporal dimensions of past, present, and proposed future technological developments. In particular, we invite papers that grapple with temporalities and technologies in relation to power, and in a context of agriculture and the environment.