Peripheral sustainability expertise on technology: an autoethnography amidst the polycrisis

Abstract

Professional expertise is a legitimate cornerstone of modern global culture. The unfolding of the polycrisis, however, arguably destabilizes expertise as a privileged and uniform position of knowledge production. Even sustainability expertise, while considered part of the solution, is arguably part of the problem, due to its structural links to environmentally detrimental technological practices. Hence technology relations in expertise are explored by autoethnography. Expert attitudes towards technology are traditionally demarcated between optimistic technocrats and critical humanists, but a third category is suggested, which embodies determined technology criticism, anti-colonialism and post-professional ethos. This peripheral expert position, labelled spurner, may seem dubious and dark from the point of view of paradigmatic expertise. But since the polycrisis calls for plural and inclusive modes of expertise, peripheral knowledge and skills should be seen as one end in the spectrum of possible sustainable expertise. True plurality means that hardly any final unification or mutual consensus in sustainability expertise seems plausible or even desirable. However, due to the polycrisis, many experts may have to reconsider what role their professions and technological progress in general play in the unfolding events. Recognizing peripheral “grey zone” expertise may foster such self-reflection in individual experts and in expert cultures.