July 2023. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is hit by a dengue epidemic, which spreads rapidly within the humidity of the urban space. While this appears to be far from the topic of research into the ways that IT is deployed as a tool for decoupling economic growth and climate impact from each other, it may be more closely related than one might think.

My colleague Hasib Ahsan and I were in Dhaka to interview officials in ministries and city governments about the national and urban climate mitigation initiatives, and especially how digital technologies could play a role in this. Yet already on the first appointment with senior city government officials we had to make changes to our schedule due to the spreading epidemic, which meant that our contact person and many people in his team were commandeered out of their offices to clean up gutters around the city. Dhaka is a bustling metropolis with intense and sometimes chaotic traffic of cars, scooters, busses and ‘CNGs’ (elsewhere known as tuktuks). The first of six metro rail lines has recently opened to alleviate the road congestion, and a subway is also under construction. As with other cities of southern Asia, the concrete and the tarmac of the built environment retains heat, and the temperature has risen in recent years likely due to a combination of climate change and the onset of El Niño. The individual response (from the more affluent) is to install air condition. Yet cooling the indoors comes with the cost of spewing out more heat into the streets, where the more disadvantaged citizens only have the shade to help them. To cool the cityscape, urban planners attempt to retain water in the city in basins and lakes, but together with waterlogging and a frequently blocked drainage and sewerage system after the seasonal monsoon downpours, these water reservoirs provide excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which then increases the risk of dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases. Indeed, the combination of high-density population, rapid and unplanned urbanization and atmospheric changes in the form of heavier rainfall and higher humidity are said to exacerbate the outbreaks (Bonna et al 2023), and the outbreak in 2023 has been reported by the WHO to be the worst on record.

Where the severity and risk of dengue and other epidemics can be related directly to climate change, the link to the technological imaginaries of how to solve it goes via the data-sensing equipment used in attempts to predict, control and direct flows of water, but also – and more importantly for the cases we were interested in – via initiatives to reduce energy consumption in combination with the provision of cleaner energy. By this we refer to cleaner not only in terms of lower emissions of greenhouse gasses, but also in terms of air pollution. Dhaka’s air is frequently labelled unhealthy to breathe, even when compared other cities of the region. Overall, Bangladesh ranks fourth last out of 180 countries on Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index. This points to environmental challenges on a variety of parameters with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions among them. Much of the air pollution originates from sources in neighbouring India, but the energy mix of Bangladesh itself is according to the website Electricity Maps also largely made up of fossil sources, although with nuclear and renewables in the making.

There are also local initiatives that effectively reduces emissions. Yet, one of the more notable ones – electric rickshaws propelled by batteries rather than by gasoline or the legs of a cyclist – has come about earlier and faster than the electrification of transport in the Global North (e.g. Khan 2020). This transition has emerged on the initiative of small-scale importers and manufacturers in the country’s informal economy. It has happened without any formal support from national policy and without any central organization or design. The electric rickshaws have in fact faced opposition from national elites and they have been banned in metropolitan areas and thus primarily relegated to operate in rural areas. The justification is that they are deemed ‘unsafe’ and are contributing to the chaotic status of urban traffic. As characteristic of the unregulated informal sector, their emergence and popularity have been said to show the incompatibility between the grand technology-centric narratives of sustainability propagated by the state and national business elites, and the practices of small-scale actors that may be both energy- and resource-efficient (van der Straeten 2022). The electric rickshaws are here seen by elites as a ‘matter out of place’ both in space (as not belonging in a ‘modern city’) and time (as a technology of the past). They are as much cultural symbols of class and status as they are an economic necessity for the less affluent, and the sociotechnical controversy over their role in Bangladesh’s transport infrastructure relates to a complicated national picture of political and economic power and inequality. No matter what, public interest has surged since their appearance and electrification of smaller vehicles more generally is still growing rapidly.

As mentioned above, the electricity of Bangladesh’s grid is still far from being dominated by renewable energy, so the electrification of transport is not necessarily of benefit to the environment or the climate. Plans to provision renewable energy is not a new government initiative, though. While in Dhaka, I noticed whenever I was within a high-rise building that many of the city’s buildings are equipped with solar panels on their rooftops. In 2010, the government passed a law making it mandatory for all new constructions in Dhaka to include solar, and there are today more than 80 000 rooftop solar panels installed in the city. However, news agencies have reported that the majority of these panels – perhaps as many as 80% – are not operational. The law from 2010 did not make any demands about how the installed solar was to be integrated into the urban grid (each building had to purchase its own batteries for storing electricity), nor did they set any requirements on quality or maintenance. As a result, many of the existing panels and batteries were the cheapest possible options, which didn’t last long. Nor were they easy to integrate into the infrastructures of the (often high-rise) buildings where they were placed. Users (whether these were owners, renters or janitors of these buildings) were not equipped to – nor interested in – doing maintenance work, and the dust from air pollution likewise reduced the capacity of the panels to operate effectively. At best the policy has thus resulted in a waste of money. At worst it has – according to critics – generated a major source of hazardous e-waste, which Bangladesh’s renovation systems are not equipped to handle. Altogether, the failure of the policy meant to introduce renewable energy into Dhaka demonstrates one of the challenges in planning and rolling out technological solutions: when doing so, there is a need to take into consideration at the very least how various infrastructures will be interacting, how different types of “users” become defined through the process and may or may not work well with the technology, and how the technology may go through different life-cycles, where its value changes along the way. The Bangladeshi public administration is, however, known in public to consist of an excessive bureaucracy, where the different departments often fail to coordinate efforts.

Among the different sectors of Bangladesh society that we visited was also the textile industry. Bangladesh is one of the major producers of readymade garments for the world market, but it has had a checkered reputation not the least because of the Rana Plaza disaster, which forced the industry to rethink how to administer the health and safety conditions for its workers. The industry has likewise been heavily polluting both in global terms as well as local ones with for example Hazaribagh, a neighbourhood in Dhaka, at one stage being labelled by Time Magazine to be among the 10 most polluted places in the world due to the many tanneries in the area (see also van Schendel 2020: 281-85).

Recently, pushes for sustainability among customers and retailers in the Global North has forced the garment and textile industry in the Global South to ‘do something’ on both fronts, and at least according to international building certifications something has happened regarding compliance to worker safety. For what it is worth, Bangladesh factories today dominate the rankings made by the US Green Building Council – a private organization which promotes sustainability in building design and construction, and has developed a standard for building rating systems called LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental and Design). Of the 100 most ‘eco-friendly’ apparel factories in the world 52 stem from Bangladesh. Yet, regardless of the improvements within the workplace itself, many of the garment workers still live in cramped accommodation near the factories and the polluted rivers, where exposure to mosquitos – and thus dengue – is likely high.

Our visit to a medium-size garment factory in Dhaka was meant to bring us insights about how the managers or owners of such a factory saw the potentials for digitalization of their production, and how the digitalization could potentially make it more sustainable. Would digitalization save resources and (or) be seen as more environmentally friendly? A communication platform for the garment industry claimed that “Bangladeshi apparel manufacturers have introduced cutting edge software technology to reduce waste of clothing, laser technology in denim washing and latest technology in washing to reduce environmental impacts.” Yet to our surprise the factory owner we met was adamant that human labour was cheaper than technology, so while he was intend on taking some sustainability targets seriously (e.g. saving and reusing water and providing basic benefits for his workers including training), he did not see more advanced technology as a solution he would invest in. He also felt that many of the demands from buyers in the Global North (e.g. to reduce the environmental impact of their production) would be costly to implement, because the buyers were not willing to pay more for the products. When we were later given a tour of the factory, we were then a bit surprised to see that they did have one factory line which was automated, and some specialized stitching was likewise carried out by machines, but it may as well be these examples which convinced the owner that the cost-benefit calculations of automation do not always work out as promised.

While considerations of sustainability are obviously more complicated than these answers indicate, one could interpret them as a signal of a positive change compared to the early 2010s, when then-WHO Director-General Margaret Channoted how international trade agreements resulted in global commercial interests either watering down public health policies in industry through lobbyism (where the public sector in the Global South is perhaps more easily swayed than for example the US Environmental Protection Agency), or those same interests in the name of “free trade” even took governments to court over environmental regulation aimed at protecting citizens, aka factory labour (see also Fortun 2014; Karim 2014). International capital (the global brands that own or fund production in a country like Bangladesh) has since then pushed for the introduction of safety compliance measures in collaboration with other textile industry stakeholders. Yet these are by some seen as a fig leaf that fails to address the structural problems of the sector, where the state still pursues neoliberal policies that favour the interests of international capital over the local rights and needs of labour (Alamgir and Banerjee 2019).

What can we analytically make of these observations from readings of industry literature and our visit to a factory? Obviously they bring to mind well-rehearsed Marxist debates about the costs of capital versus the costs of labour, and what purpose the introduction of technology plays in this calculation (see, e.g., Harvey 2017). Only a few years ago the majority of discussions of labour conditions in the Global South would emphasise the exploitation of a disposable workforce, which is denied rights, protection and decent wages (see, e.g., Harvey 2005: 167-171; Karim 2014). This is still not entirely a thing of the past, although some reports claim that things have improved. Brands, retailers and trade unions signed a legal accord on fire and building safety in 2013, and also women’s labour unions have managed some – albeit arguably small – victories (e.g. Karim 2014). Critics on the other hand point out that this accord may herald a new CSR paradigm that provides buyers with new ways of controlling liabilities in their supply chains (Salminen 2018), and that it has generated a divided between on the one hand ‘mainstream unions’ aiming at a conciliatory stance and technocratic improvements, and on the other hand workers more radically opposed to the structural conditions of precarity that many of them face (Ashraf and Prentice 2019).

Our observations, but also the circumstances of weak labour regulation and the attempts to enact a form of safety standards, brings us back to the role of technologies in the workplace, because where specific parts of a production process may be automated for the sake of reducing costs, automation may also make it easier to manage and control labour. This is only all too clear where automated processes are intertwined with the widespread construction and collection of data, which characterizes the contemporary era of surveillance capitalism. Weighing the costs of labour and how to control it is not a new managerial concern, though. Marx famously argued that technology weakened the bargaining power of labour when it replicated skills held (‘monopolized’) by human workers (see Harvey 2017: 122). In a classic STS-article on the politics of artefacts Langdon Winner in a similar vein relies upon the views of Marx and Engels to discuss how the introduction in California of the automatic tomato harvester led to the development of hardier tomatoes (that could be harvested mechanically without being squished) but also to a concentration of production in fewer companies (those that could afford to invest in the harvester). Yet this was, in Winner’s interpretation, not simply a conscious plot between large agribusiness and academics in mechanical engineering to force small growers – and their labourers – out of business. He concluded that “What we see here instead is an ongoing social process in which scientific knowledge, technological invention, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of political and economic power.” (Winner 1980: 126). The allure of technology may thus stem in a multiplicity of concerns and circumstances, and not the least in the commercialization of technology itself as David Harvey argues in his discussion of Marx’s view on technology. “When technology becomes an independent business, it no longer responds primarily to needs, but it creates innovations that have to find and define new markets.” (Harvey 2017: 125). How many industrialists have historically introduced technologies for the sake of disruption alone, or simply because they would not risk their competitors do it first, even if they knew it would come with losses? And how many of these introductions are the result of the tech sector convincing businesses of other sectors that new technologies are indispensable? “This business thrives upon and actively promotes the fetish belief in technological fixes for all problems.” (ibid.). Did anyone say AI?

While the global reach of capital surely affects whatever choice industrialists and/or labourers feel that they have, it does not mean that new technology always need to be, or even end up as, the answer. Beliefs in technology as purely ‘enabling’ (see Strathern 1996), or as a teleological given, are in themselves cultural phenomena. Harvey’s view is that the emancipation needed by labour is more likely to be one that sets it free from the dominance of capital (2017: 126), but his discussion of Marx makes it clear that technology – as an investment of capital – is an agent in service of neoliberalisation, not an emancipatory one. At least not for those still engaged in industrial labour (Harvey 2005: 157-59).

For the purpose of our research, the easy conclusion is that the question of how each of us value and address the climate crisis and its coupling to technology, production or consumption is a matter of cultural differentiation. To draw out what this means for the Bangladeshi garment industry, let me shift the gaze to sustainability debates in the Global North. Here there are strong calls for pursuing a circular economy with either reuse or recycling of materials in order to making reductions in the unsustainable production of garments. Yet this pursuit of a ‘solution’ to the global overproduction of garments – however justified it may be – seems as much to be about generalized cultural perceptions of what different populations around the world ‘need’ rather than an accurate understanding of the global processes, relations and inequalities at stake. Lamia Karim, an ethnographer who has done research in the ready-made garment industry since the 1990s, was asked in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster by one of her students “What should I do? Should I stop buying clothes manufactured in Bangladesh?’. Karim refers to this ‘what is to be done?’ as ‘the great modernist question’ (2014: 52). In my reading of this comment, it points to a modernist cultural belief that the speaker (the western consumer) sees him or herself as the maker of their own fate – and as a privileged western individual also as the maker of the fate of others. This nonetheless disregards the agency of the factory workers themselves, which Karim’s ethnography tries to evoke.

A similar modernist reaction could be expected in a Danish context. Danish consumers for example may own more clothes than they ever use, and second-hand apparel markets in Sub-Saharan Africa are being flooded with garment leftovers from the Global North. Much of this is ‘fast fashion’ of poor quality and little durability, which makes it difficult to reuse or upcycle. Yet reducing imports and the purchase of garments from a country such as Bangladesh will have very tangible but negative effects in the form of layoffs for textile workers. Western consumers and fashion retailers are increasingly concerned about the climate impact of the textile production, but the rural poor in Bangladesh still often rely on having kin employed in urban areas so they can remit money to help pay for school fees, for investments in tools or materials, for medical bills or just contribute to the daily subsistence and survival. Even banning child labour – which would be done out of the best of intentions – may be problematic if it undermines local economies and does not set in place opportunities for those same children to for example go to school (see Harvey 2005: 177). Reductions in demand in the Global North will invariably lead to fewer income-earning opportunities for rural or working class people in the Global South, unless something else is developed in its stead. How this can be done is the difficult issue. Karim’s suggestion is to ensure that consumers and retailers support producers that allow for unions, and especially those that support female workers because their income also provides them with a leverage for increased women’s rights in their broader social networks. As Karim’s interlocutor’s stated in response to her student’s question: “’Made in Bangladesh’ is a label they have to support to help improve our lives. Tell them not to give up on our labor.” (2014: 62). Continuing such support may not be a move that changes much in the bigger picture of neoliberal capitalism outlined by David Harvey (2005), where modes of production are dominated by the power of global capital, but all small moves may matter.

One further reflection from this discussion could be that reusing or recycling clothing in our part of the world does not help generate incomes, where they are needed the most. Demand for better quality garments or ‘slow fashion’ could be an alternative option, but to enforce it will not be easy as long as fast fashion is the more profitable for both factory owners and retailers. According to Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre the popularity of fast fashion stems in what they call ‘the trend form’ of valorisation. By this they refer to the production of culturally and symbolically authentic and ‘enriched’ commodities that are valuable because of a combination of three factors: the frequent turnover of items in circulation, an unequal distribution of these same items (yet with an opportunity also for less privileged consumers to desire and attain these items, and an association between these items and the hierarchical positions of privileged actors (2020: 222). These commodities (typically clothing) furthermore rely upon prior commodities – the items that are no longer trendy – being turned into ‘trash’. Thus a part of the trend form’s logic “impels it to make things outdated” (2020: 234). How to change such deeper cultural logics of valorisation is an open question, and not a change that will happen overnight. However, paying more for more durable items – and thus hopefully allowing for more decent wages and social benefits for garment industry workers – or supporting the development of other less polluting sectors in the Global South would allow for a more equitable impact than one we could reach by merely focusing on reusing and recycling fashion which is not even produced in a way that allows for it to be reused or recycled (see Hansen 2022).

While there are no easy solutions to the sustainability challenges in a country such as Bangladesh, the conflux of what scholars of various orientations have referred to as neoliberalisation (e.g. Harvey 2005), the enrichment economy (Boltanski and Esquerre 2020), and the remnants of late industrialist processes of production (Fortun 2014) does at least indicate that particular sustainability initiatives cannot stand on their own. They must be integrated with sector-wide policies and even with initiatives that go beyond the limits of specific sectors. As mentioned, this could be initiatives that generate jobs in other sectors than the garment industry, yet are also fitted to the types of – often gendered – labour that is affected by consumer trends in the Global North. Fast fashion with all its afflictions is a neoliberal cultural dream, where one may never feel ‘good enough’ or ‘trendy enough’ and always can have more. Somehow doing away with this dream will surely help the individual consumer, but if we want to address the interlocking social and environmental aspects of the current climate crisis then merely stopping the shopping is not sufficient in itself. As argued by Kim Fortun (2014) in a commentary on Bruno Latour’s AIME project, “it is not just the chemical haze [of late industrialism] we need to worry about, though we must keep it in mind and learn to deal with it in practice. There is also conceptual haze, a cumulative effect of habits of relation, mind, and politics that makes it difficult to see the conditions of our times.”

Taken together, the observations we made during our visit to Dhaka made me think about the global couplings – mostly asymmetrical – hidden in this conceptual haze. I am here thinking of couplings of the contrasting expectations to value generation held by multiple actors dispersed across the globe, the asymmetrical way in which these actors at any given time impact upon the social lives of each other, and by which sociotechnical means they do so. The concept of neoliberalisation has for a long time presented the social sciences with a very general umbrella term that can somewhat address many of the factors behind these asymmetries, including how digital technologies may – or may not in some of our cases – play a role in this. Yet neoliberalisation cannot stand alone if we want to approach an understanding of the more down-to-earth aspirations of specific actors trying to relate to these circumstances of asymmetrical interconnection. Firstly, increases in epidemics worsened by climate change may for example usher in renewed investments in biotech (as a privileged citizen from the Global North I was inoculated with a brand new dengue vaccine before departing for Bangladesh), but for the most vulnerable it not only causes new risks, it may even mean delays of social services when white collar municipal public servants are commandeered out to clean gutters to stop the spread. Secondly, the climate crisis may result in idealized expectations to renewable energy such as rooftop solar, or it may cause national elites to make plans for grand-scale energy revolutions, but when these are not sociotechnically integrated into existing infrastructures – urban, social or technical – their benefit is negligible and may even generate harmful e-waste. Thirdly, discourses of sustainability and circular economy may logically appeal to consumers and retailers in the Global North, because they reflect frustrations with a fast fashion-dominated culture of valorising ever-shifting ‘trends’. Yet, only few appreciate the complications at the other end of the supply chain, where some may prefer environmental destruction over potential poverty.

For these reasons, concepts such as Fortun’s late industrialism, or similar attempts at stressing the uneven geographies and sociocultural perceptions of the global economic system, will play a large role in social scientific explorations of how digital technologies, economic growth and climate crisis response come to be coupled or decoupled.