Environmental Technology and the Absence of Maintenance
A.R. Gammon (TU Delft - Ethics & Philosophy of Technology)
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Abstract
This article considers the general absence of the theme of maintenance in environmental ethics and philosophy. Despite an environmental orientation at least partially motivating much of the growing literature on repair and maintenance, there is a lack of work that brings environmental topics, sites, applications, or infrastructures under direct consideration. I interrogate why the notion of maintenance is missing from environmental ethics and philosophy, eventually arguing that the way technologies have been conceptualized in the environmental ethics and philosophy literature precludes the possibilities of maintenance in two ways. I suggest that maintenance is a promising and apt lens for thinking through human-environmental relationships, which are ongoing, co-constructive, and laborious.