Global Studies

Undone science refers to missing areas of scientific knowledge needed for decision-making or public policy. Though the term has become ubiquitous in STS research, it is hard to distinguish undone science from other possibilities like uncertainty, secrecy, or even unknowability. This paper advances a framework for distinguishing undone science from these other scenarios and applies it to the case of glacier management in Chile. Drawing on observations of glaciology science and regulatory documents, the authors compare how glacier science informed decisions on two Environmental Impact Assessments about new mines, nearly 20 years apart: Pascua Lama and Los Bronces, approved respectively in 2006 and 2023. The comparison shows a shift in Chilean glacier management, from a classic case of “undone science,” defined as that needed by specific mobilized or marginalized groups to advance their cause, to one of scientific controversy. In this second moment, contests over uncertainty or what counts as good or bad science dominate, creating a risk of leaving new areas of research undone. The analytical framework helps identify contests over scientific autonomy, validation, and pluralism and advances a clearer picture of how power is exercised, who holds it, and what science is (and is not) useful for.

Is globalization still a proper descriptor? Does globalization also include satellites and space shuttles in outer space? Recent work widens the definition of globalization: ‘Globalization is the trend of greater worldwide connectivity of people over time and the awareness of this happening.’ This shift of emphasis to connectivity as the driving force and the key point, implies that globalization is just one of the many forms this takes. Important is not the form, which changes according to circumstances, but connectivity and what it aspires and achieves. In an era of comeback of geopolitics this may be an important course adjustment.

Abstract: This article presents an account of four different experiences of oil well decommissioning and abandonment along the Santa Barbara coast in California, together forming an ongoing process that began over a century ago and which has, more recently, become a component of statewide transition plans. The cases include the re-abandonment of nineteenth century wells in Summerland; offshore oil platform removal in the 1990s; and two different areas of operational closures due to infrastructure failures and bankruptcies. Informed by this history, we suggest that decommissioning must be actively managed through coordinated, well-funded, multi-agency action, grounded in historical awareness of policy trajectories. Additionally, the scale of the need together with the economics and policies in place mean that oil well decommissioning will be happening for a very long time, even if no new wells are built.

To achieve the dual goals of minimising global pollution and meeting diverse demands for environmental justice, energy transitions need to involve not only a shift to renewable energy sources but also the safe decommissioning of older energy infrastructures and management of their toxic legacies. While the global scale of the decommissioning challenge is yet to be accurately quantified, the climate impacts are significant: each year, more than an estimated 29 million abandoned oil and gas wells around the world emit 2.5 million tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In the US alone, at least 14 million people live within a mile of an abandoned oil or gas well, creating pollution that is concentrated among low-income areas and communities of colour. The costs involved in decommissioning projects are significant, raising urgent questions about responsibility and whether companies who have profited from the sale of extracted resources will be held liable for clean-up, remediation and management costs. Recognising these political goals and policy challenges, this article invites further research, scrutiny and debate on what would constitute the successful and safe decommissioning of sites affected by fossil fuel operations – with a particular focus on accountability, environmental inequality, the temporality of energy transitions, and strategies for phasing out or phasing down fossil fuel extraction.

Faced with the ecological crisis, environmental scientists are asking what else besides providing evidence can they do to steer needed processes of substantive change. We argue that such an exploration should start by recognizing their weakness regarding the forces aiming at slowing down the pace of change. Recognizing this weakness should lead scientists to a change of tactics, embracing forms of strategic action used for centuries by groups on the weaker side of power struggles: that is, guerrilla strategies. Avoiding simplistic celebrations of guerrillas—historically a form of warfare that has produced as much pain as gain—an appraisal of some of its strategic tenets could help scientists to sketch alternative forms of engagement with the ecological crisis. Instead of grand gestures and direct confrontations, they could focus on carrying out epistemic strategic actions, or initiatives centered on the strategic usage of environmental knowledge and knowledge infrastructures to reduce, neutralize, and/or redress the impact of the organizations and regulations blocking, diverting, or slowing down decisive action regarding the ecological crisis. These actions could involve producing novel forms of knowledge, exposing facts that are currently hidden, refusing to engage in the production of contentious knowledge or, in extreme cases, disrupting specially damaging knowledge infrastructures. Please refer to Supplementary Material for a full text Spanish version of this article. Ante la gravedad de la crisis ecológica, científicos de distintas áreas se están preguntando qué más podemos hacer -además de aportar evidencia- para motivar procesos sustantivos de transformación socioambiental. En este artículo, sostenemos que la exploración de formas alternativas de acción debería empezar por reconocer la posición de debilidad de los científicos frente a las fuerzas que buscan ralentizar o frenar los procesos de transformación. Reconocer esta debilidad debería llevarnos a un cambio de táctica, adoptando formas de acción estratégica utilizadas durante siglos por grupos en el lado más débil de las luchas de poder: las guerrillas. Evitando una celebración simplista de la guerrilla -históricamente una forma de conflicto armado que ha producido más dolor que logros- analizamos cómo algunos de sus principios estratégicos nos pueden servir para desde las ciencias esbozar formas alternativas de acción en relación con la crisis ecológica. En lugar de declaraciones públicas y enfrentamientos directos, los científicos deberíamos desarrollar novedosas acciones epistémicas estratégicas, es decir, iniciativas centradas en el uso estratégico del conocimiento ambiental y sus infraestructuras para reducir, neutralizar y/o corregir el impacto de organizaciones y normativas que bloquean, desvían o ralentizan las transformaciones urgentes en relación con la crisis ecológica. Estas acciones podrían implicar la producción de formas novedosas de conocimiento, la exposición de conocimiento actualmente oculto, la negativa a participar en la producción de conocimiento controversial o, en casos extremos, la disrupción de infraestructuras o procesos de conocimiento especialmente dañinos. La versión en español de este artículo se puede encontrar en Material Suplementarias.

AbstractThe term disruption has become a buzzword for our times, although there is little clarity over what the term means, how it is deployed, and towards what ends. In order to understand the analytical and political stakes that are embedded in the deployment of ‘disruption’ as a rationale for various sources of upheaval, in this article I argue that these three terrains of disruption should be understood as theories of governance, and term them ‘disruption from above’, ‘disruption from the middle’, and ‘disruption from below’. Each terrain of disruption embodies different ethoses, actors, and goals: the first connoting elite-driven creative destruction and innovation; the second obfuscating the capitalist imperative that produces world-systemic upheavals; and the third seeking to expose the structures of violence and inequality built into such practices. I illustrate these three terrains through a structural account that traces the popularity of the disruption discourse from its origins to its material application; analyse an illustrative example of the assetisation of infrastructure and how it bureaucratises governance and shifts relations of power; and conclude by examining infrastructural forms of protest against such forms. I argue that the confusion over what disruption means, who exercises it, and upon whom is not a coincidence: rather, disruption's polysemy is structurally produced as a way to disguise ongoing capitalist crisis as a technical problem that market innovations can solve.