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Cities are crucially but problematically positioned to take on the climate crisis. Although local governance seems an appropriate scale for adaptation and mitigation measures, numerous barriers to implementing them effectively have been diagnosed. We argue that a focus on pinpointable barriers neglects the intrinsic organisational dynamics that often impede effective climate action. Drawing on interviews with climate specialists in Finnish municipalities, we engage with local governance practices and study how the interviewees experience and negotiate the complexities of climate work. Using Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, we find that municipalities treat climate issues as auxiliary concerns and subsume them as separate, precarious projects. The various and conflicting rhythms that constitute the relations of organisational practices leave climate and environmental experts in a contentious state. They must not only endure constant sidelining by the core functions of their organisations but also devise strategies to keep climate issues on the agenda. We suggest that organisational practices are constituted by diverging and often conflictual rhythms. Analysing their expressions in everyday climate work, we show how a composed functioning of municipal organisations serves to persistently defer a change of pace towards achieving ambitious climate goals.

We examine why implementing climate aims has proven challenging for municipalities. Recognising that climate policy research identifies ‘barriers’ to the forward motion of environmental knowledge, we use STS tools to dismantle ‘barrier thinking’ and analyse the dynamics of climate knowledge in municipal organisations. The primary data are 21 interviews with climate change and risk management experts in Finnish municipalities. We employ the idea of ‘trials of strength’ to analyse not mere barriers but gatherings, translations, and implementations of environmental knowledge. We argue that four kinds of trials are crucial in transforming climate knowledge so it can cohere with ongoing processes: it is gathered and condensed at the organisation’s borders; climate experts embody and transmit the knowledge; meeting tables form obligatory passage points for its implementation; and road maps draw actors together to circulate it. While traveling around municipal organisations, climate knowledge is often sidetracked but can sometimes become unexpectedly effective.

Our review essay contributes to the long-standing and vibrant discussion in science and technology studies (STS) on methods, methodologies, and theory–method relationships. We aim to improve the reflexivity of research by unpacking the often implicit assumptions that imbue research conduct and by offering practical tools through which STS researchers can recognize their research designs and think through them in a new way. To achieve these aims, we analyze different compositions of theories, methods, and empirics in three different STS approaches—actor–network theory, the biography of artifacts and practices, and ethnomethodology—by employing the concept of a theory–methods package (TMP). A selection of theoretical cornerstone texts and case studies in infrastructure research from each tradition serves as our material. Our findings point, first, to differences between the TMPs of the reviewed approaches and to the internal diversity of theory–method relationships in each approach. Second, we found some intriguing similarities between the approaches and discuss potential complementarities of their theory–method fits.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: Lopun aikojen sieni. Elämää kapitalismin raunioissa (The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins). Suomentanut Anna Tuomikoski. Tutkijaliitto, Helsinki 2020. 372 s. Lopun aikojen sieni on matsutake eli tuoksuvalmuska. Kalifornian yliopiston antropologianprofessori Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing seuraa matsutakea sen matkalla ekologisista mahdollisuusehdoistaan eli rihmastoista irrotetuksi ja koriin poimituksi sieneksi, joka laivataan Japaniin luksusruoka-aineeksi. Tsingin teos on eräänlainen matsutaken reittejä seuraava matkakirja, jonka kohteet sijaitsevat Japanin lisäksi Yhdysvaltojen Oregonissa, Kiinan Yunnanissa ja Suomen Lapissa. Kööpenhaminassa haastatellaan mykologia ja tieteellisissä tapahtumissa vieraillaan eri puolilla maailmaa.

Funding Information: We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Academy of Finland's Strategic Research Council Grant no. 312623, 312624, 312625, and 312626 and Academy of Finland Grant no. 338553 and 338558. Funding Information: We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council Grant no. 312623, 312624, 312625, and 312626 and Academy of Finland Grant no. 338553 and 338558. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors The magnitude and speed of change in complex human-environmental systems pose a systemic dilemma for societies. Human-induced environmental changes have pushed Earth's socio-ecological systems into an era of chronic, complex, and rapid disruptions, which call for quick intuitive decisions and effective implementation. Yet the complexity, interconnectedness and long lead times of the problems would require thoughtful and time-consuming weighing of evidence by a broad range of experts. To address the dilemma, we develop a framework, the Policy Operations Room (POR), for simultaneous practice and analysis of decision-making that prevents decisions made under time pressure from leading to unwanted socio-ecological disruptions decades ahead. The POR framework is based on earlier research on control rooms of critical infrastructures and simulation exercises of emergency response, and preliminary data from our first experiments with PORs. It immerses the policymakers in a simulated “time machine” that combines the real-time reliability management of control rooms with the long-term planning for crisis avoidance and preparedness. The POR framework can contribute significantly to novel styles of decision-making by policymakers, engineers, and corporate strategists responsible for developing urgent, forward-looking, and evidence-based policies to cope with the coming challenges of human-environmental interaction.

The evolution of computer tools has had profound impacts on many aspects of control rooms and control room studies. In this paper, we discuss some key assumptions underpinning these studies based on a new case of the electricity distribution control rooms, where the reliability of the electricity infrastructure is managed by a combination of planning and real-time maintenance. Some of these practices have changed remarkably little over the past decades – partially because they have been considered to have been ‘digitalized’ since the 1950s and have continued to amass digital solutions from different periods. Hence, the gradual transformation of control room work demands nuanced attention, both conceptual and empirical. To outline a framework for this work, we provide a conceptualization of organizational routines, habits, and reflectivity and synthesize existing CSCW and control room literature. We then present an empirical study that demonstrates our concepts and shows how they can be applied to study cooperative work. By addressing these aims the paper complements, and advances, the important topics recognized in this special theme issue and hence develops new research openings in CSCW. We address the necessity to avoid implicit determinism when analyzing new digital support tools and suggest focusing on how working habits mediate social changes, distribution, and decentralization in representing the power distribution in control rooms.