Sebastian Uretas’s article is a beautiful ethnographic work in a distant and unknown geography: the desert of northern Chile. It also focuses on the crossroads between environmental degradation, the emergence/reconfiguration of a subaltern scientific field (in the triple sense of a relatively marginal scientific field, regarding the object of study and the -peripheral- community analyzed). It illuminates the need for ruination science or a science, based on ruins, that embraces impurity. This article paves ways for thinking about “science otherwise” which is needed to go beyond controlled experiments for healing a damaged planet. It talks about a reality of doing science in laboratories of Global South that faces resource constraints owing to imperial and colonial practices that allows accumulation of resources in Global North.
Indeed, the concept of “ruination science” is a very promising one and it can be a practice, as well as an agenda relevant to various countries and sites that are generating, experiencing, or ignoring ruination. As a method for analysis and engagement, “ruination science” can be taken up for many scientific disciplines and environmental/political contexts.
