Ecologies of co-production in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The urgency, uncertainty and unevenness of the Anthropocene has foregrounded the spatial and temporal multiplicity of co-production between science and society. In this article, we draw together work in geography, science and technology studies and cognate disciplines concerned with ‘co-producing’ knowledge for environmental governance, and with the ‘co-production’ of science and politics. Yet these existing studies and approaches have tended to focus on discrete moments of co-production within bounded time-spaces. Building on work associated with ecologies of participation and geographies of science, we introduce the notion of ‘ecologies of co-production’ as a way to more faithfully attend to multiple co-existing co-productions and the interrelations between them. We define this as diverse interrelating practices and spaces of co-production which intermingle and are co-produced with(in) wider systems and political cultures in which they are situated. We set out how this opens up new ways of thinking about and attending to the spaces and interrelations, diversities and exclusions, histories and constitutions, and responsibilities and affects of co-productions between science and society in the Anthropocene. We suggest that this approach can make a difference in how we do co-production, how we analyse co-production and how we live, act and figure in an Anthropocene world.