Author: Florence Paterson

Discounting the Future. The Ascendancy of a Political Technology, by Liliana Doganova

A book by Liliana Doganova pubished by Zone Books

A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting.

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.

Michèle Dupré and Jean-Christophe Le Coze

January 23, 2024. The CSI Guests Seminar welcomes Michèle Dupré, labour sociologist, researcher at the Max Weber – UMR 283, and Jean-Christophe Le Coze, Research Director at the French national institute for industrial environment and risks | INERIS · Accidental Risk Division Department, to discuss their book
“Des usines, des matières et des hommes. De la sécurité industrielle dans la chimie”.

Carbon offsetting. Kamilla Karhunmaa and Céline Granjou

January 19, 2024. The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes Kamilla Karhunmaa (University of Helsinki and SPIRAL, University of Liège) et Céline Granjou (LESSEM-INRAE, Grenoble-Alpes University). This session explores the ways in which carbon offsetting mobilizes arguments and expertise from soil science, economics and other fields to produce new entities and recast the way existing objects such as soils tend to be understood.

Reflection on the Materiality of Transition

January 19, 2024. The extraction, importation, and transformation of raw materials play a crucial role in the low-carbon transition. The responsible management of raw materials becomes a crucial issue to ensure an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable transition. Three specialists discuss these topics: Damien Goetz (Centre Géosciences Mines Paris – PSL), Brice Laurent (CSI Mines Paris – PSL, ANSES) and Farah Benramdane (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne).

“Une journée avec Bruno Latour”: the event in videos, texts, drawings and pictures

The Center for the Sociology of Innovation held on October 23, 2023 a day-long tribute to Bruno Latour.

Bruno Latour has left a considerable intellectual legacy, many milestones of which he set during his twenty-five years at the CSI, where he was, in turn and in his own way, an anthropologist of science and technology, a political theologian and an investigative philosopher.
During this event, members of the CSI, Bruno Latour’s companions along the way and researchers whom he has inspired or baffled continued their conversation with his work.

Find out more about the day’s events on the “Une journée avec Bruno Latour” website, with video recordings of the panels, texts, drawings and images. […]

Thomas Beauvisage (Orange / SENSE)

December 18, 2023. The Center for the Sociology of Innovation (i3, UMR CNRS 9217, Mines Paris-PSL) has the pleasure of inviting you to attend the HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in STS (Sciences, Technologies, Societies) defense of Thomas Beauvisage, sociologist of digital technology, Senior Researcher at Orange’s department Sociology and Economics of Networks and Services (SENSE). Original dissertation title: “Sociologie du cookie publicitaire” [Sociology of advertising cookie].

Kristin Asdal and Tone Huse, “Nature-Made Economy”

December 12, 2023. The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre for Technology, University of Oslo) and Tone Huse (UiT The Arctic University of Norway). This session will be an opportunity to discuss their just-published book “Nature-Made Economy: Cod, Capital, and the Great Economization of the Ocean”. The discussion will be introduced by Clément Foutrel, (CSI) and Baptiste Parent (CIRED).

ALDIWO study day: “Low-tech, maintenance, limits”

The study day entitled “Low-tech, maintenance, limits:  how to rethink digital technology and its environmental impact”, held on September 20, 2023 at Mines Paris-PSL, was organized by Clément Marquet (CSI, Mines Paris- PSL, i3) and Florence Maraninchi (Verimag, Grenoble INP – UGA) as part of the ALDIWO (Anti-Limits in the Digital World) project funded by the CNRS MITI (read a summary of the project).

The morning session was organized around three presentations by Morgan Meyer (CSI, CNRS, i3), Jérôme Denis (CSI, Mines Paris- PSL, i3) and David Pontille (CSI, CNRS, i3), and Florence Maraninchi. […]