Pickering explores examples of acting-with from around the globe and argues that acting-with intimately and gracefully plugs us into nature, undercuts the Anthropocene from below, and offers a constructive approach to addressing otherwise intractable wicked problems.

In the Anthropocene our actions are coming home to roost. Global warming, species extinctions, and environmental disasters are the dark side of our mastery of nature. In Acting with the World, Andrew Pickering identifies a different pattern of being and doing that can evade this dark side, a pattern that he calls acting-with the world. In contrast to our usual practice of acting on the world, acting-with foregrounds nonhuman or more-than-human agency and aims to attune our practices to the propensities of nature. Pickering explores examples of acting-with from around the globe, including flood control on the Mississippi River, ecosystem restoration on the Colorado River, the Room for the River project and rewilding in the Netherlands, natural farming in Japan, Aboriginal fire techniques in Australia, and Amazonian shamanism. Pickering argues that acting-with intimately and gracefully plugs us into nature, undercuts the Anthropocene from below, and offers a constructive approach to addressing otherwise intractable wicked problems.

Autorentext

Andrew Pickering is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Philosophy at University of Exeter, UK. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and universities including MIT, Princeton, and Durham. He is a leading figure in science and technology studies and has published widely on the history, sociology and philosophy of science, technology and mathematics. His writings have been translated into many languages, including Chinese translations of his books Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (1984), Science as Practice and Culture (1992), and The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science (1995). His most recent book is The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (2010). He is now working on cybernetic relations with nature and cybernetic art.

Inhalt

Preface ix
Introduction. Acting on or with the World 1

1. Eels: The Dance of Agency 16
2. The Mississippi: Enframing and Letting Go 20
3. Erosion: Poiesis 29
4. The Colorado 32
5. Water: A New Paradigm 46
6. Natural Farming 56
7. A Choreography of Fire 77
8. Spirits 91
   Conclusion. Poiesis 97
   Notes 107
   References 135
   Index 151