Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things

This paper aims to encourage an ethos of care in the study of science and technology. It starts with a reading of Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘matters of concern ’ as favouring an awareness of the ethico-political effects of constructivist accounts in STS. Introducing attention to concern brings us closer to a notion of care. However, there is a ‘critical ’ edge to care that Latour’s politics of things tends to disregard. Drawing upon feminist knowledge politics, I propose to treat matters of fact and sociotechnical assemblages as ‘matters of care ’ and argue that engaging with care requires a speculative commitment to neglected things. Keywords care, constructivism, feminist thought, knowledge politics, ‘matters of concern’ Our beautiful planet is sore, and bearable living conditions continue to be inaccessible to many. The joint fortune that all forms of life share with human technoscience is no longer news. Developing more scientific research and technological solutions continues to be the dominant response to problems, both globally and locally – whether they concern climate change, economic recession, hunger, infertility, access to healthcare or to infor-mation. Science and technology studies (STS) of all kinds thrive in this environment. From the everyday life corners of laboratories, households and gardens to the most arcane and techno-hyped spaces, our world has become a research space for network ethnographies and constructivist theories. In these circumstances, this paper aims to encourage an ethos of care within the study of science and technology. Today, calls for care are everywhere, from the marketing of ‘green ’ products to dis-cussions of moral philosophy on the ‘ethics of care’. Here I will be thinking through possible meanings of care for knowledge politics in STS. How can an ethico-politica