[spectre] (fwd) Call for Papers: The Ethics of Waste in the Information Society

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Call for Papers

Network Ecologies: The Ethics of Waste in the Information Society

Call for Papers for Vol. 11 (02/2009)
by Soenke Zehle, Matthias Feilhauer

Deadline for extended abstracts: May 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance to authors: May 15, 2009
Deadline for full articles: July 15, 2009
Deadline for revised articles: August 15, 2009
Publication: August 2009

Introduction

The (emergent) transnational network of organizing around  
environmental and social justice issues in the global networks of  
electronics production is arguably the most vital area of  'network  
culture' when it comes to broader ecopolitical concerns. Given the  
fetishization of dematerialization-through-technology of an earlier  
generation of cyberlibertarian theorizing, we consider these efforts  
to have significance beyond the already broad array of issues related  
to the toxicity of computers and its implications to workers, users,  
and the environment.

The contemporary environmental justice movement has  already (and  
successfully) criticized conceptual frameworks that consider  
environmentalism a post-materialist luxury rather than a matter of  
survival, and made  visible the 'coloniality' of a wilderness  
tradition that had underwritten territorial expansion across the US  
and in other parts of the world. Yet while its organizational dynamic  
already incolves questions of historial and political epistemology,  
few people look to ecopolitics as a vehicle to advance broader causes  
of (cultural, economic, political, social) justice.  Which is why, for  
this issue of IRIE, we would like to invite suggestions on how our new  
(and old) networking machines might become the pragmata of a new  
ecopolitics, true ?matters of concern? (Bruno Latour) of info-ethical  
reflection.

With this issue, IRIE, dedicated to the development of information  
ethics as reflexive practice and conceptual horizon, aims to engage  
the broad range of materialities involved in acts and processes of  
communication, information, and knowledge production. This includes,  
but is not limited to, the very instruments we employ, use, and  
discard in ever-shorter cycles of consumption, outpacing our efforts  
to develop appropriate mechanisms of disposal and recycling : from old  
television sets to lcd and plasma displays, from old disk drives to  
flash cards and rfid chips. Used locally, but designed, produced, and  
discarded across the world, the usage of these instruments ? things -  
raises a host of questions whose technical and political questions are  
increasingly being explored, but whose info-ethical dimensions deserve  
greater attention as they may requires us to revisit cherished  
assumptions regarding the scope and desirability of  
information-societal developments as we know them.

Electronics activism has already defined an agenda of environmental  
and social justice, drawing on number of perspectives such as  
environmental debt, environmental and resource rights, political and  
social ecology, resource efficiency, and occupational health and  
safety. In addition to giving rise to concrete initiatives in the  
areas of fair production, procurement, and disposal, these activisms  
also encourage a reappropriation of notion of sustainability. Since  
the UN 'Earth Summit' in 1992, sustainability has featured prominently  
in policy initiatives. And while for some, it has been discredited by  
its vagueness and widespread subordination to corporate visisons of  
self-regulation it might be revitalized to refer to the outcomes of  
(inevitable) ecological distribution conflicts, encouraging  
ecopolitics to venture beyond consensus-oriented paradigms of  
environmental governance. Such broader ecopolitical perspectives (or  
network ecologies, the term we would like to suggest as an umbrella  
concept) can serve as an integrative idiom to combine important  
vectors of inquiry that open up more general descriptions of the  
contemporary conjuncture.

We therefore invite contributors to reflect on the question of a  
'sustainable' information society from within an ecopolitical,  
info-ethical horizon. Suggested topics include:

No single injunction to reuse or reycle will resonate across all  
net.cultures. What role do questions of translation, inter- and  
transculturality play in the articulation of new ecopolitical  
perspectives?

Can info-ethics avoid the conceptual deadend of a culture/nature  
divide in its exploration of a politics of nature by way of engaging  
process-oriented, procedural perspectives on political ecology? If so,  
how does it address questions of agency and accountability?

What is the link between such network ecologies and aesthetic regimes,  
from postcolonial analysis of how 'we' have looked at nature to  
artists developing an ecopolitical aesthetics of disappearance?

What role might the open, decentralized creation of hard- and software  
play in the creation of sustainable ICT infrastructures?

The transnational networks of design, production, and disposal involve  
large numbers of migrant workers, often concentrated in  
export-orientated economic zones partially exempt from national  
(environmental, social) regulation. What role do questions of labor  
and the transformation of sovereignty play in the articulation of new  
ecopolitical perspectives?

What role do ICTs play in other ecopolitical controversies (climate  
change, water, food security)?

References

Greenpeace. Chemical contamination at e-waste recycling and disposal  
sites in Accra and Korforidua, Ghana. 2008.

Grossmann, Elizabeth. High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics,  
and Human Health. Washington et al: Island Press, 2006.

Latour, Bruno, and Peter Weibel, eds. Making Things Public:  
Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

Latour, Bruno. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into  
Democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard  
University Press, 2004.

Pellow, David Naguib. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental  
Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy. New  
York: New York University Press, 2003.

Smith, Ted, et al., eds. Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and  
Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry.  
Philadelphia: Temple U niversity Press, 2006.

Stengers, Isabelle. ?Un engagement pour le possible.? Cosmopolitiques  
1 (Juin 2002). 27-36.

UNEP-Vital-Graphics. Vital Waste Graphics. E-Waste - The great e-waste  
recycling debate. October 2004.  
<http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/waste/page/2868.aspx,>

Schauer, Thomas, Markus Neuvonen, Matti Penttilae, eds. Information  
Technology, Competitiveness and the Environment.  
<http://www.clubofrome.at/archive/helsinki06.html>

Schauer, Thomas. The Sustainable Information Society - Vision and  
Risiks.  
<http://www.clubofrome.at/archive/sustainable-information-society.html>

Organizations

Good Electronics Network <http://goodelectronics.org>
SACOM <http://sacom.hk/>
Taiwan Environmental Action Network <http://www.iepanet.org/>
Toxics Link <http://www.toxicslink.org/>
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition <http://www.etoxics.org>
Basel Action Network <http://ban.org/>

Abstracts and Submissions

Potential authors must provide an extended abstract (max. 1500 words)  
by May 1, 2009. Abstracts may be submitted in the native language of  
the author though an English translation of this abstract must be  
included if the chosen language is not English. IRIE will publish  
articles in English, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish. The  
author(s) of contributions in French, Portuguese, or Spanish must  
nominate at least two potential peer reviewers. Abstracts will be  
evaluated by the guest editors. The authors will be informed of  
acceptance or rejection by May 15, 2009. Deadline for the final  
article (usually ca. 3.000 words or 20.000 characters including  
blanks) is July 15, 2009. All submissions will be subject to peer  
review. Therefore the acceptance of an extended abstract does not  
imply the publication of the final text (August 2009) unless the  
article has passed the peer review. For more information about the  
journal see: <http://www.i-r-i-e.net>.

Please send your abstracts to the guest editors at:

Soenke Zehle <s.zehle at mx.uni-saarland.de>
Matthias Feilhauer <matthi at stdio.info>