China, Technology, Planetary Futures: Lessons for a World in Crisis? is a panel and workshop for the 2020 European Association for the Studio of Science and Technolgy and Society for Social Studies of Science conference. Sessions were co-chaired with David Tyfield and Andrew Chubb of Lancaster University.
First and foremost, in the Anthropocene, are issues of environmental crisis at planetary scale, and what this means for a global economy and associated model of science and innovation premised upon ever-accelerating exploitation of natural resources. Secondly, and in comparison, a highly neglected issue in the mainstream (still largely Western) discourse remains the rise of China. How will these two issues come together and shape the 21st century, as their conjunction is likely to prove increasingly influential? This session panel involves contributions from researchers and others involved in Chinese socio-technical projects (in China or overseas, e.g. via the Belt Road Initiative (BRI)) for insights into how these two ‘mega-trends’ may be coming together; and what may be learned from China, positively or negatively, to confront the current apparent impasse(s) regarding the global crisis.