Peripheral sustainability expertise on technology: an autoethnography amidst the polycrisis

ABSTRACT

Professional expertise is a legitimate cornerstone of modern global culture. The unfolding of the polycrisis, however, arguably destabilizes expertise as a privileged and uniform position of knowledge production. Even sustainability expertise, while considered part of the solution, is arguably part of the problem, due to its structural links to environmentally detrimental technological practices. Hence technology relations in expertise are explored by autoethnography. Expert attitudes towards technology are traditionally demarcated between optimistic technocrats and critical humanists, but a third category is suggested, which embodies determined technology criticism, anti-colonialism and post-professional ethos. This peripheral expert position, labelled spurner, may seem dubious and dark from the point of view of paradigmatic expertise. But since the polycrisis calls for plural and inclusive modes of expertise, peripheral knowledge and skills should be seen as one end in the spectrum of possible sustainable expertise. True plurality means that hardly any final unification or mutual consensus in sustainability expertise seems plausible or even desirable. However, due to the polycrisis, many experts may have to reconsider what role their professions and technological progress in general play in the unfolding events. Recognizing peripheral “grey zone” expertise may foster such self-reflection in individual experts and in expert cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Expertise
• skills
• technology
• sustainability
• autoethnography
• polycrisis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and the special issue editor Johanna Hohenthal for their encouraging and insightful comments during the writing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Also more generally we question the possibility of non-use of culturally prevailing technologies to express genuinely “non-confrontational” (Puech 2017) or “free” relation to technology, as suggested, e.g. in some interpretations of the Heideggerian idea of Gelassenheit (Dreyfus 1997). Based on our personal experience, regardless of non-confrontative intentions, such non-use is repeatedly challenged and questioned in everyday life and professional practice – the dominant culture “demanding explanation” – thus almost inevitably resulting in antagonism.

2 Not meaning following of Humean philosophy, as sometimes uttered, but humus-oriented (post-)humanism.

3 The full name of the event “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations”, underlines the emphasis on latest achievements in technology and science.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation under grant 202100031 and the Research Council of Finland under grant 343277, Skills of Self-Provisioning in Rural Communities.