tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867901930347817118.post6631302325290239794..comments2024-03-19T03:30:21.722-07:00Comments on Topograph: Territorial futures and the future of governmentalityMartin Mahonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289860645985022996noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867901930347817118.post-16845091461639545692012-05-21T06:48:06.524-07:002012-05-21T06:48:06.524-07:00Thanks for your reply Martin and also for the link...Thanks for your reply Martin and also for the link on critical cartography - very inspiring!Maudnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867901930347817118.post-44962991402371999132012-05-15T06:21:35.967-07:002012-05-15T06:21:35.967-07:00Thanks for the comment Maud. The 'Mapping Life...Thanks for the comment Maud. The 'Mapping Life' project looks pretty interesting - a nice example of the cartographic 'global gaze' which is so central to our political imaginations. <br /><br />Your question about the social life of predictions is one that I'm really interested in. By reading prediction through a governmentality lens, one is drawn towards the instrumental use of territorial predictions in decision making. Exactly how widespread this practice is I don't know, although it's prevalent enough to have prompted Mike, Suraje Dessai and others to criticise the colonization of adaptation politics by predictive techniques. I want to extend this critique to think about the representation of space in predictive knowledge making.<br /><br />However, there is indeed this other use of predictions as heuristic devices to enable exploration, imagination, challenge and critique (perhaps we can think here in terms of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic strategies?) Jerry Ravetz wrote a nice chapter called 'Models as Metaphors' where he argued for the heuristic potential of prediction (I have the book if you're interested). But even in the more heuristic field of scenario generation - which originates I believe somewhere at the nexus of national security and the energy industry - territorial and hegemonic imperatives have been pretty central.<br /><br />There are interesting comparisons to be made between prediction of climate and biodiversity. Both phenomena transcend national political territories, but employ cartographic strategies to 'territorialize' the politics. Temperature change - beyond GMT - has a spatiality which is largely independent of human action, yet the spatiality of biodiversity change is intrinsically linked to human spaces and the disappearance of an imagined 'wilderness'. And so on...<br /><br />I think there's certainly some mileage here in pursuing what we might call a 'critical cartography of the future' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_cartography)Martin Mahonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06289860645985022996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867901930347817118.post-26120570852753789832012-05-15T05:44:15.301-07:002012-05-15T05:44:15.301-07:00I like this idea of "territorial futures"...I like this idea of "territorial futures" - it is fascinating to see how prediction has become such an essential component of knowledge politics. I remember that for Sheila Jasanoff it is one of the key characteristics of regulatory science (as she explains in the "The Fifth Branch").<br /><br />In the field of biodiversity governance, it is quite striking to see that scenarios are also being developed everywhere. For instance there were 6 different scenarios developed in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, showing changes in ecosystem services under different conditions. On one hand it is interesting to see how these predictions are (as you said) new epistemic objects - for instance maps that are produced don't follow administrative regions but ecosystems' distribution (more or less) and are new ways of representing and projecting the territory. On another hand, I am curious to see how these predictions are used. Do you think that they are often used as "pure" epistemic objects, providing the basis for "evidence-based" policy making? I mean as if they really allowed us to choose/control our future.<br /><br />For me it seems that these predictions, especially scenarios maybe, can generally be used in the context of wider advocacy strategies. Maybe as new ways to advocate for certain types of futures?<br /><br />On another matter, I just discovered this project: http://www.nature.com/news/map-of-life-goes-live-1.10621. When talking about biopolitics and knowledge about human population, here it is about "Mapping life" and making visible as many species and their distribution on Earth.Maudnoreply@blogger.com