Revitalizing science and technology studies: A Marxian critique of more-than-human geographies

Abstract

This article revisits Marx’s philosophy of history with respect to technological change, outlining some elements for the elaboration of a research agenda for materialist studies of science and technology. I argue that dominant thinking on the subject has been insufficiently attentive to relations of production and to the constitutive role of practical, transformative activity. The article suggests that a focus on class relations not only foregrounds the eminently open and contested nature of technology but also renders into view the multiplicity of actors and agencies involved in the making of natures. I draw from a subterranean strand of Marxist theorists of technology to develop a more-than-human approach to political agency through an interrogation of the complex interactions between human and machine in the everyday, experiential practicalities of the labor process. On this basis, the article contends that foregrounding the class preconditions for an alternative scientific praxis should assert itself as the starting point and horizon of a materialist Science and Technology Studies.