TY - JOUR

T1 - What is 'Cosmic' about Urban Climate Politics?

T2 - On Hesitantly Re-staging the Latour-Beck Debate for STS

AU - Blok, Anders

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - While Bruno Latour’s criticism of Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitanism helped set the stage 15 years ago for the highly productive research approach of cosmopolitics, including as concerns urban ecological politics, a nagging doubt remains that more blood was spilled than necessary in the exchange. In this short discussion piece, I re-stage the Latour-Beck debate as part of on-going inquiries into the morethan-human politics of climate adaptation in Copenhagen, exploring what exact senses of ‘cosmos’ might be helpful in making sense of this increasingly common-place situation. At issue, I suggest, is the question of what it means to say that ‘natures’, in the plural, are put at stake in such settings. Far from any synthesis, in turn, I conclude that scholars in STS and beyond might do well to extend a shared hesitation towards both sides of the debate - cosmopolitics, cosmopolitanism - and thus take the opportunity to share unresolved conceptual tensions in the service of posing better problems.

AB - While Bruno Latour’s criticism of Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitanism helped set the stage 15 years ago for the highly productive research approach of cosmopolitics, including as concerns urban ecological politics, a nagging doubt remains that more blood was spilled than necessary in the exchange. In this short discussion piece, I re-stage the Latour-Beck debate as part of on-going inquiries into the morethan-human politics of climate adaptation in Copenhagen, exploring what exact senses of ‘cosmos’ might be helpful in making sense of this increasingly common-place situation. At issue, I suggest, is the question of what it means to say that ‘natures’, in the plural, are put at stake in such settings. Far from any synthesis, in turn, I conclude that scholars in STS and beyond might do well to extend a shared hesitation towards both sides of the debate - cosmopolitics, cosmopolitanism - and thus take the opportunity to share unresolved conceptual tensions in the service of posing better problems.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Latour-Beck debate

KW - cosmopolitics

KW - cosmopolitanism

KW - natures

U2 - 10.23987/sts.84500

DO - 10.23987/sts.84500

M3 - Journal article

VL - 33

SP - 50

EP - 59

JO - Science Studies

JF - Science Studies

SN - 0786-3012

IS - 4

ER -