Nature(s) in Planetary Designs

At the 2020 Society for the Social Studies of Science Conference, participants explored how images of “nature” and the “natural” are assembled through contemporary cosmogrammatics, ranging from technical manuals, architectural plans, and logistical patents to policy documents and speculative design fictions. Responding to the recognition that the environment is now widely perceived as being in an irreversible state of crisis, the panel examined how efforts to grasp the essence of, rescue, reclaim, reinstate, or repair the world’s natural (dis)order increasingly take on infrastructural form. Shifting attention from the material realizations of these projects to their imagined possibilities, participants presented case studies of the tools and technologies through which such planetary designs are conceived.