Performing control

Abstract

AbstractDuring an unprecedented crisis of bushfires, the staff of emergency management control centers in southeast Australia pause to perform rites with their political leaders. They reenact decisions that have already been made and generate divinations of fiery futures that are unlikely to occur. Their work, like that of others in large centralized technical infrastructures, is made possible by ritualized structures and practices that constitute a double bind. Emergency managers know their performances of control over open systems will inevitably fail to command the world's hazardous surprises. Yet they must maintain these performances, even though they create impossible expectations and forestall self‐critique or desired transformations. Attending to this situation, these sites, and their inhabitants reveals persistent attachments to systems of control in our late‐industrial age and changing climate.