This workshop addresses representation, both as a concept and a set of practices, as it is simultaneously challenged and transformed by the global transformations captured by the concept of the Anthropocene. Two issues, which, due to disciplinary differentiation, have so far been largely discussed separately, are brought into conversation. First, as scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has shown, scientific representation does not merely describe the world but calls entities associated with Nature into existence—raising questions about how non-human entities are made visible and legible, enrolled, and stabilized through knowledge practices. Second, as political theory and democratic thought have long grappled with, political representation raises fundamental questions of voice, mandate, and standing, and, increasingly, of who or what counts as a legitimate political subject, i.e. how those same entities come to be recognized as actors with interests that need to be voiced and defended. In the Anthropocene, the boundaries between science and politics—and thus also between scientific and political representation—are becoming increasingly blurred. New practices of scientific-political representation give rise to new epistemic entities that claim political standing: water bodies, species, ecosystems, landforms, climates, the subterranean. The workshop asks: What are the meanings, practices, and effects of representation in science and politics? How are these becoming contested, reshaped and mutually constitutive in the Anthropocene? And what alternative forms of representation—conceptual and institutional—might be adequate in a more-than-human world? 

The workshop is organized by Julian Purrmann and Alain Müller (Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Basel) together with Basil Bornemann (University of Zurich), and is part of the STS-CH 25th anniversary Event Series. It is supported by a Scientific Exchange grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Location

September 24: Botanik Hörsaal 00.003, Schönbeinstrasse 6, 4056 Basel
September 25: Pharmaziemuseum, Grosser Hörsaal, Totengässlein 3, 4051 Basel

Registration
Please register before September 15 2026 by writing a short Email to: anmeldung-kw@clutterunibas.ch

For more details please see here.