ABSTRACT

Environmental sociology, practice theory, the ‘new catastrophism’, and other future-oriented social science approaches have only begun to influence global policy with their diagnoses of humanity’s failure to address the threat of a collapse of civilization around climate change, environmental degradation, anti-microbial resistance, and conflict. Data have become Kafka-esquely noxious, erratically splintering freedom, tolerance, equality, social solidarities, and values in surveillant assemblages, while cultural memes circulate, infiltrate, and shape cultural politics of (un)truth and emotion that inhibit understanding of systemness and risks. Post-disaster reports routinely blame a lack of information, inadequate organizational, legal, and technological interoperability, and social, cultural, or political reluctance to share information for failures. Discourses of command and control or security and calls for ‘Big’ data veil a social and political unwillingness to acknowledge how the privileges of the few are on the same map as the suffering of the many.