What is a ‘twin transition’? A commentary on the use and abuse of kinship metaphors

Friday Research Seminar with Steffen Dalsgaard from ITU.

A recent popular term within EU jargon is that of ’Twin Transition’. The term is one way to address in policy the hoped for alignment of the processes of digitalisation and green transition. The paper explores the origin, meanings and controversies over this term, and it discusses how well (or not) it represents the actualised relation between the latter two processes. Overall, the argument is that the term can be seen as an attempt to create a performative relationship (in the sense advocated by Callon, Mackenzie and others), yet to understand its appeal we should more likely treat it as a fantasy (in the sense used by Navaro-Yashin in her reading of Zizek). Connecting to classic anthropological debates, the paper will thus both try to take the use of the term seriously (as in the statement of ‘twins are birds’) but still propose a more accurate kinship metaphor, i.e. that of ‘marriage of convenience’.

Bio

Steffen Dalsgaard (PhD, Aarhus University) is Professor in Anthropology of Digital Technology at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he is heading the interdisciplinary Center for Climate IT. He has previously conducted long-term research in Papua New Guinea. He is now exploring the role of digital technologies in the green transformations undertaken around the world through the ERC-funded project DecouplingIT. He has published in journals such as HAU, Social Anthropology and Social Analysis, and he has co-edited the books Time and the Field (Berghahn) and The Cultural Complexity of Carbon (Routledge).

The research seminars are free and open to everyone interested.