Assembling Resilience: Expert Systems and Knowledge Infrastructures in Climate Change Governance

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Resilience has become a central topic in discussions about how to respond to global climate change. This project examines the politics of resilience as an emerging terrain of government. Up to this point, social science discussions have been speculative, based largely on theoretical definitions of resilience. But with the recent implementation of a growing number of resilience initiatives around the world—from flood barriers and green infrastructure to community development programs—the social sciences are now challenged to track how this concept is being turned into a practical framework for planning and governing in an epoch of climate change. To understand the emerging politics of resilience, we need tools to analyze underlying expert systems, techniques of valuation and knowledge production, and financial infrastructures. The team will build on its members' specialization in the anthropology of expertise, the sociology of valuation, science and technology studies, and city planning.