22: STI policies for just and reparative futures: Advancing towards better worlds (Míriam Acebillo-Baqué, Diana Velasco, Alejandra Boni, Bipashyee Ghosh)
Reparation is a keyword for current and future possible worlds. Situational and contextual challenges are ever-pressing, while at the same time, current shocks and macro trends such as migration, racism, pandemics, climate change, and wars are compelling humanity to take action toward systems change (Johnstone & Schot, 2022). Approaching such planetary challenges demands innovation, as there are no single, readily available solutions to fix complex problems. We need the realisation of desirable worlds reached through a just transition.
Conceptually, just transition emerges to challenge the theories of change that are blind towards existing injustices in the world (Swilling, 2020; Henry et al., 2021). Common types of justice mobilised in transitions scholarship are: 1) recognitional justice (all members of society should be valued, irrespective of gender, class, race, sexual orientations, and ethnicity); 2) procedural justice (affected parties should be meaningfully and continually consulted in the transition process); 3) distributive justice (benefits of the transition should be shared fairly and equitably) (Jenkins et al., 2016). Lately, other forms of justice are conceptualised such as restorative, cosmopolitan, and reparative justice (Hazrati and Heffron, 2021). A better world –one that is desirable by all– is not possible without justice of diverse forms, in the process of transition as well as an outcome of transitions. A just transition is also not possible without attention to mitigating past injustices –that connects to the idea of repair. That is how we come to the notion of science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy and its critical role in enabling transitions to just and reparative futures (Velasco et al, 2023). Precisely, in this track, we explore how STI can contribute to defining and enabling just and reparative futures. These visualise multiple futures departing from a historical account of knowledge, practices, traumas, and shocks that are present and embodied in multiple pasts and that must be acknowledged to prevent the reproduction of past injustices. Facilitating learning spaces for people to share and engage with different stories and pasts is the way to co-produce such envisioned futures (Sriprakash et al., 2020). At the same time, we need to make judgments about what is reparable and what is irreparable. Therefore, we must be willing to acknowledge when something is beyond repair (Spelman 2002). Only then, a complete realisation of a just transition can fully emerge, considering the singularities, complexity and uncertainty embedded in a shared relational space.
This track calls for full papers, early-stage research contributions, and speed-talks on examples of STI policies seeking to realise just and reparative futures in different geographies and contexts. We particularly welcome:
- Methodological contributions for discovering, envisioning, and evaluating just and reparative futures.
- Failures, conflicts, and learned lessons in defining just and reparative futures.
- Theoretical discussions on the idea of just and reparative futures in contrast with other future-design approaches.
- Normative discussions on which values are relevant to enable and trade-offs of just and reparative futures.
- Inclusion and exclusion of knowledges in defining just and reparative futures in STI policies.
Keywords: just and reparative futures, just transition, science, technology and innovation (STI), policy reparation, justice