Metabolism studies: materiality and relationality in the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene period is characterized by an increasing use of materials and energy. The notion of metabolism enable to document this intensification of the materiality of human habitation. It focuses on the cycles of material transformation from a purely material perspective, with an analysis of flows within the whole world. But it also documents matter in its socio-political and symbolic dimensions, including the study of power relations, ideologies and representations that shape it. The use of the concept of metabolism, which originated in the medical sciences in the 19th century, is growing in the human sciences. Since the work of Abel Wolman, the reappropriation of the concept by ecologists and then by urban studies, industrial and territorial ecology or political ecology has shown a tendency to use the metabolism to work on spatial objects (cities, regions) as well as on flows, circulations and transformations of materials and capital. Metabolism thus constitutes a way of putting the material world in order by integrating the social, political and cultural dynamics that organize it. The definition proposed by Anne Rademacher (2015) is sufficiently general to correspond to the sprawling nature of the notion without neglecting the core of what makes metabolism, i.e. the insistence on circulation (of capital, information, matter) and the interaction of (non-)humans with their environment, understood as “biogeochemical cycles and biophysical processes”. Without excluding input/output or life cycle approaches, which represent the majority of studies on metabolism, the objective of this conference is to propose an inventory of what could be called “alternative approaches” to metabolisms. Sometimes more theoretical or even epistemological than applied, sometimes very exploratory, we wish to propose a reading of metabolisms by their margins. By engaging in a discussion on the plasticity and the heuristic potential of the notion, by encouraging a dialogue, even a confrontation, between various approaches, the idea is to debate the increasing use of this term in different meanings. The idea is to shed light on the notion through a dialogue of specific fields (for example, islands and cities), new methodologies or approaches (for example, around embodiment) or medical advances on metabolism. On an epistemological level, we would like to consider metabolic studies as a possible new field, in the Bourdieusian sense, and to question the term itself: is it a notion or a concept? Can we talk about metabolic studies? Beyond the term itself: what does the interest in metabolisms say about contemporary science? Many themes, studies and researchers are linked with metabolisms without explicitly claiming it, or perhaps without even knowing the term. Whether it is a question of energy, mobility, biodiversity, matter, water, relations to the environment, food, modelling, health, transformation... All approaches that combine a study of the relationality of a phenomenon with its materiality can feed a reflection on metabolisms. Thus, the organizing committee has chosen not to limit the call to researchers for whom the notion is central and explicitly mobilized. In other words, the idea takes precedence over the name. “Metabolic questioning” goes beyond the explicit study of metabolisms. And there are many ways to enter into a metabolic questioning. These metabolic questions may concern the epistemology of the notion (use of the organicist metaphor, circulation of the notion within different scientific but also professional fields, semiological or vocabulary issues, etc.); the scalar issues linked to its use (from the plastic nanoparticle to the global dynamics of the market, which “metabolic scales” are relevant, how to move from one to the other? How to define a “metabolic fact”?); on its relationship to complexity (what difference does it make to relational or environmental approaches?); on the way to study it (what methodologies, what field practices?) or to represent it. We can also question the interest of the notion: is it a tool for thinking about complexity or a weak concept? It is therefore a way to question the science produced by and for metabolism and, in fine, the possibilities and impasses of the use of the notion. Although the conference is primarily aimed at the arts, humanities and social sciences, interdisciplinary proposals or proposals from other disciplines are welcome. These proposals may be epistemological, methodological or conceptual, or they may present concrete results of past and current research. In addition to territorial and environmental studies, information and communication sciences, ergonomics, anthropology, biology, political science, law, philosophy, design and architecture are invited to take up the theme of metabolism, in its spatial or temporal component.