Staying with the Planet - by Leman Çelik & Stefan Laser & Estrid Sørensen & Sandra Abels (Paperback)

About the Book

A refreshing visual and ethnographic dive into scientific data infrastructure--troubling an increasingly data-driven science's relations to the planet.

Book Synopsis

Hidden from view, data centres process and store scientific data while requiring extensive energy and metal extraction. How can science become sustainable, as it depends heavily on these data infrastructures? The authors of this volume trouble cultures of scientific competition, challenge institutional habits, irritate server procurement and regulations, question funding procedures, and confront global supply chains. It is a witty and thought-provoking engagement with practical everyday challenges of enabling a university to respond to the planetary. With original line art and ethnographic texts, they offer a refreshing take on the challenges data-driven science faces in times of climate change.

About the Author

Leman Çelik (Author)
Leman Çelik is a doctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained in sociology and political science in Istanbul, she conducted research in urban studies before expanding her focus to science and technology studies. Her work investigates data infrastructures and the knowledge production practices of diverse scientific fields, with a particular interest in the reciprocal relationship between data infrastructures and scientific knowledge.

Stefan Laser (Author)
Stefan Laser is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He has published widely on high-tech infrastructures, socio-ecological transitions, waste, and energy, and contributes to economic sociology, science and technology studies, valuation studies and discard studies. His research focuses on data centres and their planetary entanglement, from local siting to global value chains, in particular researching Asia-Pacific with a focus on the emerging chip industry in Vietnam.

Estrid Sørensen (Author)
Estrid Sørensen is a professor of cultural psychology and anthropology of knowledge at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She conducts research on the intersection of technology and knowledge production from a Science & Technology Studies perspective, and is the head of the RUSTlab, the Ruhr-University Science & Technology Studies Lab. Her ethnographic research addresses data infrastructures, particularly data centres. She inquires into university data centres as mediators between knowledge and the planet, and researches how they contribute to making knowledge (in)visible as planetary.

Sandra Abels (Author)
Sandra Abels studies social sciences at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and is a research student at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds. She is interested in science and technology studies, ethnographic research, and research at the boundaries between science and art. For her master's thesis, she is researching the restructuring of a museum's digital data base and the respective data infrastructure.