Making Environments Computable: Digitalization, Climate Change and Environmental Governance.

Eitel K, Eckhardt D (2026)


Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Edited Volume

Subtype: Special issue of a journal

Publication year: 2026

Series: Kulturanthropologie Notizen

Book Volume: 88

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21248/ka-notizen.88

Abstract

From species observations and plant sensors to data centers and urban sustainability initiatives, environmental governance increasingly unfolds through digital infrastructures. This Special Issue examines these transformations ethnographically across Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, and Bangladesh. The editorial develops environmental computability as a way of bringing these transformations into analytical relation, asking how classifications, infrastructures, and epistemic commitments make environments computationally legible. The contributions trace these socio-material relations across sites: Artportalen reveals tensions between representational data and relational more-than-human encounters; Swiss smart farming shows how granularity is produced through collaboration and infrastructures; research in Dhaka exposes how technological solutionism is complicated by capitalist dynamics and inequality; and cloud infrastructures in Germany and Switzerland challenge narratives of digital dematerialization through hydrating, humming, and shuttling. Together, the contributions foreground the political and material conditions through which digitalization and climate change become increasingly entangled in environmental governance across sites and scales, while redistributing authority, resources, expertise, and possibilities for intervention in uneven ways worldwide.

Editors with CRIS profile

How to cite

APA:

Eitel, K., & Eckhardt, D. (Eds.) (2026). Making Environments Computable: Digitalization, Climate Change and Environmental Governance. .

MLA:

Eitel, Kathrin, and Dennis Eckhardt, eds. Making Environments Computable: Digitalization, Climate Change and Environmental Governance. 2026.

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