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New social and environmental obligations are now imposed on transnational companies. They are now responsible for the concrete implementation of these obligations and are developing a set of practices to measure, prevent and remedy their environmental impact. These “corporate transition policies” (Lhulier & Tenreira, 2023) are at the frontier of law, management and natural sciences (mapping, indicators, thresholds), thus constitutive of a new co-produced scientific-normative space. A qualitative Science & Technology (STS) analysis on the basis of corporate documents and other collective practices is useful in order to describe this “corporate assemblages” (Tenreira, 2023), especially using Jasanoff's four-tiered analysis. The case study analysis reveals that the firm Decathlon refers to the 9 planetary limits ("experts/identities" N°1). It also refers to "institutions" (N°2) such as Sciences Based Target. The analysis of the "discourses" (N°3) shows that Decathlon's commitment actually appears largely declarative. The firm falls short of adopting concrete methodologies for calculating its ecological footprint, thereby highlighting a gap between rhetoric and action. This discrepancy presents a unique "representation" (N°4) of science, which permits the company a considerable degree of latitude in employing or constructing scientific indicators according to its “discretion”. At this stage of the analysis, it is thus possible to “problematize” (Laurent, 2022) corporate objects as corporate assemblages. The next steps of the analysis would nevertheless require other methodological approaches to “assess reflexively” these assemblages regarding an “rhizomatic ecological reality”.

Image : Tomas Saraceno, "Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web", 2009, in Bruno Latour

Tenreira, Luca. 2023. "The construction of an episteme of objectification of corporate practices in the field of transition." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

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.