TY - JOUR

T1 - Indeterminacy and More-Than-Human Bodies

T2 - sites of experiment for doing politics differently

AU - Waterton, Claire Frances Jane

N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Body and Society, 23 (3), 2017, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Body and Society page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/bod on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

PY - 2017/9/1

Y1 - 2017/9/1

N2 - This article analyses research that has explored the potential of a focus on indeterminate bodies for decision making, policy and politics. Drawing on different ways of conceptualising indeterminacy in scientific and policy domains it describes the Loweswater Care Project, a participatory ‘knowledge collective’ that attempted to avoid converting the complexities of vital cyanobacterial bodies into a purely social or managerial set of questions around water quality. Through a commitment to opening out the nature of ‘things’, participants in this collective honed new questions and avenues of inquiry around cyanobacteria and its relations. The Loweswater Care Project was a kind of ‘open’ in Haraway’s sense, where questions and demands are put to bodies, and to the apparatus that allows us to sense them, in ways that do not shy away from the probabilistic character of entities and their relations. The implications of generating indeterminacies in this setting are explored for environmental decision making, policy and politics.

AB - This article analyses research that has explored the potential of a focus on indeterminate bodies for decision making, policy and politics. Drawing on different ways of conceptualising indeterminacy in scientific and policy domains it describes the Loweswater Care Project, a participatory ‘knowledge collective’ that attempted to avoid converting the complexities of vital cyanobacterial bodies into a purely social or managerial set of questions around water quality. Through a commitment to opening out the nature of ‘things’, participants in this collective honed new questions and avenues of inquiry around cyanobacteria and its relations. The Loweswater Care Project was a kind of ‘open’ in Haraway’s sense, where questions and demands are put to bodies, and to the apparatus that allows us to sense them, in ways that do not shy away from the probabilistic character of entities and their relations. The implications of generating indeterminacies in this setting are explored for environmental decision making, policy and politics.

KW - environment

KW - experiment

KW - indeterminacy

KW - more-than-human body

KW - policy

KW - politics

U2 - 10.1177/1357034X17716522

DO - 10.1177/1357034X17716522

M3 - Journal article

VL - 23

SP - 102

EP - 129

JO - Body and Society

JF - Body and Society

SN - 1357-034X

IS - 3

ER -