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Place-making practices refer to the ways in which people create and define physical spaces as meaningful and significant through their everyday activities and social interactions.[1] In Ethnography, the study of these practices is often referred to as ‘ethnography as place-making,’ which involves the exploration of the cultural meanings and practices that shape the physical and social environments in which people live. This can include examining how people create and maintain social boundaries, how they express their identities and values through the built environment,[2] and how they negotiate power and control over the spaces they inhabit.

This place in Gröpelingen is made a place through the interaction of the people tending to the urban gardening project. 

1. Pink 2008, 178ff. 

2. See: urbanization 

3. Pink 2008, 190. 

Denial → {Bhopal} →  stewardship → Disavowal

Disavowal is a way out for corporations who can no longer deny - they just aggressively ignore and separate, making it possible to still shout about their “goodness” and avoid taking responsibility for their risk. The scientist-President is doing her job as a scientist but positioned structurally within the hotbed of corporate manufacturers - how does this constrain her thinking and acting?

Ad campaigns - 360*, from big-name companies like O&M. Getting involved in the scientific community that is meant to be working against them to regulate and mitigate the risk they propose to society.

Not really portrayed in that way here. The scientists are portrayed as genuinely caring about society, but being humble about what their data can and cannot say and why, and it seems they see themselves as part of the society.

In the first phase it seems it was just being modern, perhaps productive. They deny there is any risk to be responsible for. The middle is about the self-managing of risks they can no longer deny exist. The final one has disavowed responsibility but position themselves as essential for life as we know it, so we don’t focus on the ethics.

The self-governance in the stewardship phase immediately after Bhopal was positioning as authority to manage their own risk to society and environment. And the ad for India had a hint of this - the plant having the authority to usher in a particular kind of modernity back in the 50s and 60s. To the extent that the corporate position of the Exposure Science org’s president counts as CSR, they are also working to define exposure and connect it with legislation.

As they sustain in their web page, their goal is: no poverty, zero hunger, good health weel being, quality educational, gender quality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastucture, reduced inequality, sustainable cities, partnership goals, peace, justice, strong institucions, life below water, and much much more.

What is more they divide their focus, though, on three ways: sustainable development, democratic governance and climate and disaster resiliance.