Skip to main content
To KTH's start page To KTH's start page

Environing workshop

Photo: blue, nature and abstract by NASA

In this workshop we will discuss the concept environing technology. The concept was introduced when the Environmental Humanities Lab was created at the Division in late 2011 and early 2012 as one of four streams.

Time: Mon 2023-11-20 13.15 - 16.00

Location: Large seminar room, Teknikringen 74D, Floor 5

Language: English

Export to calendar

Registration

If you wish to participate please write to Nina Wormbs at nina@kth.se .

In the following years "environing technology" entered into different research projects as a perspective or a tool. Recently it has attracted some attention and also been expanded and/or developed further within the field of media theory. However, we have never had any comprehensive discussion on this concept, its merits and its weaknesses. On November the 20th 13.15 – 16 we will.

The reading is the 2018 article by Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormbs. Link here: doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2018.1548066 . But anyone is of course welcome to also read anything else that has importance for this discussion. Below is a short and non-exhaustive list of publications that deal with environing in some way.

The workshop will start with an hour of introductions. First Paul Ward will talk about environing without either technology nor media. After that Sverker Sörlin will talk about how the concept been used in publications the last few years. Next Adam Wickberg will talk about the work on environing media, and finally Tirza Meyer will talk about how to apply environing technology. We will then divide into groups of 3-4 and discuss the concept for an hour, and finally reassemble and have the different group discussions meet for a longer conclusion.

Non-exhaustive bibliography

  • Sverker Sörlin & Paul Warde, ”Making the environment historical – an introduction”, in Nature’s End: History and the Environment, eds. Paul Warde & Sverker Sörlin, (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), pp.1-19.
  • Paul Warde, "The Environmental History of Pre-industrial Agriculture in Europe", in Nature’s End: History and the Environment, eds. Sverker Sörlin & Paul Warde, (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), pp. 70-92.
  • Nina Wormbs, “Sublime Satellite Imagery as Environing Technology”, Azimuth, VI, nr 12, 77-91, 2018.
  • Sverker Sörlin & Nina Wormbs, “Environing Technologies: A Theory of Making Environment,” History & Technology 34(2018):2, 101-125.
  • Johan Gärdebo, Environing Technology: Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment 1969-2001, diss (KTH, Stockholm: 2019.
  • Adam Wickberg & Johan Gärdebo, eds. Environing Media, Routledge Environmental Humanities (London & New York: Routledge, 2023), including for example
    • Wickberg & Gärdebo, “Editors’ Introduction: What is Environing Media?”;
    • John Durham Peters and Adam Wickberg, “Environing Empires and Colonial Media”;
    • Sverker Sörlin, “Environing and the Human-Earth Relationship: Synchronizing Geo-Anthropology”;
    • Susanna Lidström, Adam Wickberg and Johan Gärdebo, “Ocean Environing Media: Datafication of the Deep Sea”;
    • Nina Wormbs, “Environing Time: Mediating Climate Modeling”;
    • Erik Isberg, “Timing the Ocean Floor: Environing Media and the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition (1947-1948)”.
To the calendar