Latour's Gaia – Not down to Earth? Social Studies of Environmental Management for Grounded Understandings of the Politics of Human-Nature Relationships

In a recent instantiation by Bruno Latour of how STS can engage with matters of concern, he conceptualises a changing relationship of humans with earth. For Latour, the scientists' notion `anthropocene' illustrates how humans accept that their industrial activities are not merely causing some surface environmental problems but that they establish a geological force. His proposal is that each of us must struggle inwardly to achieve a proper engagement with Gaia (Lovelock). Questioning this individualist take, this paper reviews STS studies on how humans and societies enact the imagery of `being able to manage' environments. We find conflict. I argue that studying the practices of so-called environmental management shows that through this activity environments are not merely known, but also enacted. This move implies that competing enactments of the subjection of environments to management are possible. Consequently, the performative capacities of environmental management emerge as a fundamentally politically and ethically relevant object of study.