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Abstract
In examining a processes of environmental technology innovation this research investigated a particular processual idea, designing with ecosystems, and adopted a meso-level for investigating the socio-technological change processes. This project involved multi-sited ethnography which followed a diffuse array of actors through the spaces of their production of alternative technologies and new disciplines related to the idea of using ecosystems as a core element of design. The thesis is organized around an exploration of the histories and content of the two realms of Living Machines and Ecological Engineering, discussing the institutional, regulatory, capital and material constraints to their development. Drawing on the dual problematics laid out by first ecological modernization theory and secondly by David Hesss proposals on science and technology studies and social movements, the question of concern in this project was: What are the processes and means by which ecological ideas and technologies are becoming incorporated into mainstream practice? Answering this question for the development and adoption of designing with ecosystems aids in building the answer to how under ecological modernization, science and technology will develop new socio-technological approaches that incorporate environmental considerations from the design stage. And similarly, the analysis of designing with ecosystems as a technical and disciplinary practice that respectively have roots in the 70s environmental movement and strong social change values allows for a reevaluation of the distinction drawn between social movements and scientific practice. Thus engaging with the ideas of science movements this dissertation posits that it is out of the maintained interests, engagements, and actions of individuals that new alternative ecological technical and practices are developed and deployed into mainstream practice even in the face of structural and material constraints.