China at the Intersection of Digitalisation and Green Transition, October 2022, Oslo
Host
IT University of Copenhagen
Organizers
University of Oslo
Fudan University
Supporters
Fudan-European Centre for China Studies, the University of Oslo
Moving Data-Moving People Independent Research Council Denmark
National Natural Science Foundation of China
☉ The participation to this event has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Research Grant 2020-2022 (ID 6201101276)
As countries attempt to make a green transition, employing digitalization as a driver of change, they bring together contrasting logics of management of and care for the natural world. This workshop focused on China’s digital and green transition, interrogating the
understandings of nature and data that inform current responses. Two intertwined questions were asked:
• First, How do cultural understandings of nature inform both its management and its transformation into data?
• Second, How do different logics of data and digitalization shape the initaitves that different social actors create to engage with the green transition?
To answer these questions, scholars from across disciplines were brought together such as geography, anthropology, sociology, China studies, organization studies, critical data studies, corporate social responsibility, science and technology studies and cultural history to examine the meeting points where nature is made into something upon which we can invervene. We are interested in the technologies – interpersonal, moral, bureaucratic, managerial, digital and quantified – through which these transitions are being enacted.
In particular, Associate Professor Francesca Valsecchi, head of our lab, has been invited for a presentation titled “Citizen Science as a driver of Ecological Literacy in China”.
This presentation looks at the space of urban/nature definition and interaction from a design perspective: 1) how participation and citizens engagement is crucial for the development of “green cities”; and 2) how technology literacy of the “smart city” could and should be built in favour of a “smart and ecological citizenship”. Francesca also discussed research and education cases that utilise the strategy of Citizen Science beyond the value of raw data collection, and instead towards strengthening the ecological awareness of urban communities, arguing that ecological citizenship is a necessary software component of the current urban green infrastructuring.
Francesca also participated in another following workshop, which focused on the development of draft papers, generating cross workshop themes with designated respondents.