At TaSTI, we want to understand these challenges and the measures that are needed. For example, energy infrastructures, waste management and transportation patterns essentially structure contemporary forms of life. How are they changing right now, and, perhaps more importantly, what directions should they take in the future? While the situation produces tensions and political agitation, it also provides opportunities for societal renewal. We ask questions as such: How do the leaky realities of waste help us critically examine the circular economy? How do cities in Finland respond to the need to make strategic decisions about their future practices in the context of persistent and worsening ecological problems? Which are the functioning models of governance and co-design to overcome unsustainable patterns of civil aviation in Africa? How does insurance business financialize environmental uncertainty? How is climate change mitigated and adapted to through insurance technologies?
Keywords: environment, more-than-human relations, climate change, sustainability, circular economy
Contact person: Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Researchers: Mika Kautonen, Sonja Lampinen, Taru Lehtokunnas, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Ella Lepistö, Olli Pyyhtinen, Anna Rajala, Tapio Reinekoski, Niina Uusitalo, Tiina Vaittinen
Selected publications:
2025
- Salomaa, A., Reinekoski, T., Salminen, H., Krivochenitser, K., Hukkinen, J. I. & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2025) Disjointed modes of building resilience to socio-environmental crises. Ecology & Society.
2024
- Pyyhtinen, O. & Zavos, S. (2024) Containment and leakage notes on a general containerology. Theory, Culture & Society.
- Pyyhtinen, O. (2024) Against common sense: On the utopian aspect of concepts. Human Studies.
- Zavos, S. & Pyyhtinen, O. (2024) The limits of waste as a resource: A critique and a proposition towards a new scalar imagination for the circular economy model. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society.
- Zavos, S., Lehtokunnas, T. & Pyyhtinen, O. (2024) The (missing) social aspect of the circular economy: A review of social scientific articles. Sustainable Earth Reviews.
2023
- Lehtokunnas, T. & Pyyhtinen, O. (2023) Biowaste as fluid matter: Valuing biogas and biofertilisers as assets in the Finnish biogas sector. Journal of Cultural Economy.
- Lehtonen, T.-K. (2023) Latour ja ekologia [Latour and ecology]. Sosiologia.
- Olsson, T., Pyyhtinen, O., Rantasila, A., Laaksonen, S.-M., Vigren, M., Ylipulli, J. & Shawney, N. (2023) A user-centered lens into digital excess: Exploring the superfluity and environmental burden of the digital world. LIMITS, Ninth Computing within Limits 2023.
- Pyyhtinen, O., Zavos, S., Onali, A., Sutinen, U.-M. & Uusitalo, N. (2023) The decaying stuff of the Anthropocene: Exploring contemporary trashscapes through ruination. Digithum.
- Pyyhtinen, O. & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2023) The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers. Anthropological Theory, 23 (2) 209–231.
- Pyyhtinen, O. (2023) Living with unruly waste matter: On more-than-human relationships. In A. Franklin (ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies. Routledge.
- Reinekoski, T., Lahikainen, L., Virtanen, M., Sorsa, T. & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2023) Frictional rhythms of climate work in city governance. The Sociological Review.
2022
- Hasu, O. & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2022) Indexing the soil. In K. Booth, S. French & C. Lucas (eds) Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance: Capacities and Limitations. Routledge.
- Lehtokunnas, T. & Pyyhtinen, O. (2022) Food, excess, wastage and waste: An ethnography of the practices of framing food products in the Finnish retail sector. Geoforum.
- Lehtonen, T.-K. (2022) Latour ja maapolitiikka. [Latour and geopolitics.] Foreword in Latour, B. Matkalla maahan – Politiikka ja uusi ilmastojärjestys, trans. by P. Malinen. Vastapaino.
- Pyyhtinen, O. (2022) Lines that do not speak: Multispecies hospitality and bug-writing. Hospitality & Society.
- Virtanen, M. J., Reinekoski, T., Lahikainen, L. & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2022) Travels and trials of climate knowledge in Finnish municipalities. Science & Technology Studies.