Latour saves the earth once again, this time, at a workshop.
Bruno Latour and Environmental Governance
Call for Papers: submit abstracts by 16 March 2015
Workshop: 18-19 May 2015, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK
Since the 1980s Bruno Latour has attempted to supplant the prevailing image of science by proposing a pragmatic and anthropological perspective. According to Latour, scientific practices forge ‘objective’ and ‘accurate’ knowledge that speaks on behalf of the world. Latour has written extensively on climate change and ecological politics, and on the challenges posed by the figure of Gaia for thought and for scientific and political practice. However, he has made limited reference to the specifics of the work carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and similar institutions involved in mobilising knowledge for environmental governance.
The IPCC is the leading international authority for the assessment of climate change. Formed in 1988 by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the IPCC produces reports that assess and summarise scientific literature on the physical science of climate change, adaptation and mitigation.
The two-day workshop takes as its starting point the idea the Latour’s work can be used to explain and understand the workings of environmental governance, using the IPCC as a prime example.
Installing (Social) Order 
http://www.csisponline.net/2014/02/10/the-issue-of-politics-a-report-on-bruno-latours-politics-workshop/
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for all of the understandable/desirable interests that folks like Latour bring to have our governing processes reflect more of the complexities of actual life I’ve yet to see how this is to be done with actual governing processes (hell I think his own team’s efforts to run a different kind of research project with AIME is a powerful example of the all too real and familiar limits of our grasps), I’m not convinced that we even really have any sense of how to do (even frame) research that can handle much in the way of multiple factors in motion and interacting over time (in fields like computer-trading they can’t even tell if they are predicting, reacting, or shaping events with their algorithmical interventions).
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