ABSTRACT
Increasingly, ecocultural identities are mediated by techno-scientific practices – particularly those that form around large, complex ecological systems. At the same time, these practices have come to play an important role in the production of subjectivities that orient people conceptually and socially toward ecological systems. In Chapter 17 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Trombley has three goals: first, to discuss the relationship between the techno-scientific practice of computational modeling and ecocultural identification; second, to examine ways that computational modeling as an identification practice intersects with processes of ecological subjectivation; and, third, to explore the use of computational modeling to produce alternatives to the neoliberal subjectivities that currently dominate environmental management. These discussions are informed by ethnographic research in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, located in the middle-Atlantic region of the United States, which has been, for the past three decades, the site of an intensive nutrient pollution reduction effort informed by computational modeling. A watershed identity – characterized by a set of organizations structured around the identifiable geography of the watershed – has taken shape around this process that contributes to a neoliberal subjectivity that focuses on quantitative cost-benefit analyses. Trombley draws upon Guattari’s Three Ecologies to consider ways in which ecocultural identification, techno-scientific practices, and subjectivation intersect. Informed by this study, the author also provides some guidance toward potential ecosophical subjective techno-scientific productions.
