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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 EASST's Eurograd mailing list -- eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net Archive: https://lists.easst.net/hyperkitty/list/eurograd-easst.net@lists.easst.net/ Edit your delivery settings there using Account dropdown, Mailman settings. Website: https://easst.net/easst_eurograd/ Meet us on Mastodon: https://assemblag.es/@easst Or X: https://twitter.com/STSeasst