Eurograd message

                Dear list members,
We are pleased to share a Call for Abstracts for our panel entitled "In search
of the good chemical: chemosocialities of sustainability transitions" for this
year's 2025 Nordic STS conference in Stockholm, taking place June 11th-13th.
Our panel seeks out the chemical elements that have entered the public
limelight as part of sustainability transitions, including carbon, nitrogen
and hydrogen. We seek to raise the question of what constitutes good  or
bad  in the practices in which chemical elements and compounds are handled.
How are judgments being made about good chemicals? Whose interests,
concerns, and knowledges are considered when valuing chemicals? And how may we
empirically and ethically explore this?
The submission portal is open from now until the first of March and can be
found by following this link and
abstracts are just 250 words.  Please feel free to contact any of us if you
have any questions and please see below the full Call for Abstracts.

Panel organizers:
Mandy de Wilde, Leiden University,
m.de.wilde@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Miriam Waltz, Leiden University,
m.h.a.waltz@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Thomas Franssen, Leiden University,
t.p.franssen@cwts.leidenuniv.nl
Rob Smith, Edinburgh University,
robert.dj.smith@ed.ac.uk

Full Call for Abstracts:
In search of the good chemical: chemosocialities of sustainability
transitions
As part of sustainability transitions a range of chemical elements are put
into the public limelight; hydrogen is central to renewable energy regimes,
carbon is sequestered and captured to mitigate climate change, and working
with and on the nitrogen cycle to develop healthy soils is key to regenerative
agriculture. A hopeful, open-ended engagement with chemical elements and
compounds characterises many such sustainability transitions.
This hopeful engagement aligns with recent work of STS-scholars that have
started to flesh out ambivalences as part of chemical exposures, pointing
towards chemicals as both potentially harmful and helpful, depending on what
is at stake in the practice of use (Khalikova 2016; Balayannis and Garnett
2020; Hardon 2021). These ambivalences have led some scholars to probe whether
chemicals can be explored outside of the framework of environmental injustice
and as part of a more comprehensive relational framework that values chemicals
 and their more-than-human companions  in varied ways. The concept of
chemosociality invites scholars to explore such altered, attenuated, or
augmented relationships that emerge within chemical exposures (Kirksey 2020:
23). And instead of conveying normative claims as scholars, it invites us to
explore how chemical normativities come about in practice as stakeholders
liaise by means of chemical features.
This raises the question of what constitutes good  or bad  in the
practices in which chemical elements and compounds are handled. How are
judgments being made about good chemicals? Whose interests, concerns, and
knowledges are considered when valuing chemicals? And how may we empirically
and ethically explore this? To answer these questions, this panel solicits
tools from the field of valuation studies. From valuation studies we learn
that what is qualified as good is an outcome of situated and practical
undertakings (Mol, Moser, and Pols 2010). The chemical good, then, is not
homogeneous nor an abstract good: depending on the stakes in a particular
situation, there are different registers of valuing (Heuts and Mol 2013) at
play. These registers indicate a particular relevance, while what is or is not
good in relation to this relevance may differ from one situation to another.
In carbon markets, for instance, good carbon maybe the result of a trade-off
between measurability and ecological value of different trees; in regenerative
agriculture, good nitrogen may be the outcome of an alignment between
between soil health and public health; while in energy transitions, good
hydrogen may manifest itself through climate mitigation while simultaneously
increasing the scarcity of water. Put differently, to value chemicals in
practice entails drawing heterogeneous registers of valuing together,
constantly, sometimes aligning them, often leaving them in tension, and at
other times trading them off.
As part of those alignments, tensions, and trade-offs, some chemical relations
will flourish, while others are marked as bad and thus will not. This raises
the question how alignments, tensions, and trade-offs between registers of
valuing are navigated in practice by the stakeholders involved. Whose
interests and which relations are at stake when navigating potentially
contrasting registers of valuing? What are the controversies involved? And how
may such practices of navigating different registers of valuing in practice
help us (re)think the political potential of those altered, attenuated, or
augmented relationships that are characterised by chemical features?
For this panel we are particularly interested in case studies and
ethnographies that:

  *
Examine the ways a plurality of registers of valuing are negotiated in
practice, with a particular emphasis on potential conflicts, tensions, or
alignments among different registers;

  *
Highlight the modes of knowing  from tactile, embodied and affective
knowledges to scientific standards, protocols, devices and formats  involved
when engaging (with)chemicals;

  *
Focus on those chemicals that are currently in the political limelight because
of their role in sustainability transitions, such as nitrogen, carbon,
hydrogen, and phosphorus.


References
Balayannis, A., & Garnett, E. (2020). Chemical kinship: Interdisciplinary
experiments with pollution. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 6(1): 1
- 10.
Hardon, A. (2021). Chemical Youth: Navigating Uncertainty in Search of the
Good Life. Springer Nature.
Heuts, F., & Mol, A. (2013). What is a good tomato? A case of valuing in
practice. Valuation Studies, 1(2), 125-146.
Kirksey, E. (2020). Chemosociality in multispecies worlds: Endangered frogs
and toxic possibilities in Sydney. Environmental Humanities, 12(1), 23-5
Khalikova, V. R. (2016). The Chemical Refrain: An #AmAnth2016 Panel Review.
Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1012-
the-chemical-refrain-an-amanth2016- panel-review
Mol, A., Moser, I., & Pols, J. (Eds.). (2010). Care in practice: On Tinkering
in Clinics, Homes and Farms. Transcript Verlag.

Thomas Franssen

Assistant Professor in Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Centre of Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University
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