By Martin Böhnert 

Introduction: From Facts to Care

Environmental and sustainability debates in science, politics, and society often carry with them a schematic notion of the relationship between nature and culture. In this model, climate change appears primarily as an environmental issue to be explored, explained, and solved within the remit of the natural sciences. These sciences define the object of inquiry, determine the nature of the problem, and propose—typically technical—solutions that are then seen as the legitimate basis for political action. In this framework, the environment becomes —instead of a perceived and relationally experienced Umwelt—a matter of fact: its components are regarded as empirically accessible, measurable, and operationalizable. This perspective rests on classical ideals of science that emphasize the neutrality, stability, and authority of objective knowledge. But even in cases where there is broad consensus on the facts, it often seems to be everyday habits of thought and life that prevent adequate action. What we ‘know’ and how we act do not necessarily align.

In contrast, Bruno Latour (Latour 2008, 2004) and María Puig de la Bellacasa (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, 2011) have proposed conceptual shifts that foreground the social, material, and affective dimensions of knowledge. The notion of matters of concern offers a perspective that does not take scientific facts as isolated truths but as the outcome of complex processes of negotiation and construction. Matters of care, in turn, emphasize the vulnerability of these knowledge assemblages and call for a practice of responsibility and maintenance in relation to the world in which and about which knowledge is produced. Both concepts align with relational, situated, and non-dualist understandings of knowledge that are central to the Environmental Humanities.

From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern: Gathered Things

With his concept of matters of concern, Bruno Latour calls for a shift in attention—from the notion of stable facts that exist outside of society to a view that foregrounds the entanglements of science, technology, politics, and culture. He argues that “things” are not simply given but emerge through processes of dispute and collective practice. Drawing on the etymological link between the English word “thing” (and also the German “Ding”) and the Old Norse/Germanic “thing” as an assembly or meeting, Latour describes facts as “gatherings” where actors, practices, materials, and meanings converge.

From this perspective, facts are no longer the endpoint of inquiry or the definitive representation of an external reality; they are part of a dynamic and often fragile constellation. “A thing is, in one sense, an object out there and, in another sense, an issue very much in there, at any rate, a gathering; […] the same word thing designates matters of fact and matters of concern” (Latour 2004, 233). As Latour further notes: “Things are gathered again […] merging matters of fact into highly complex, historically situated, richly diverse matters of concern” (Latour 2004, 236).

Crucially, this is not a dichotomy but a perspectival shift—like a figure-ground reversal—where the same object appears differently depending on how it is approached. Matters of fact suggest clarity, stability, and externality; matters of concern emphasize situatedness, negotiation, and relationality.

Latour shares the view that “‘Nature’, as an environment of neutral objects, is not a pre-existent given, but a product of the interpretative stance, which requires subjects to disengage themselves from the task at hand” (Ingold 1992, 53). In other words, matters of fact are not the neutral standard of observation they appear to be; they are the product of specific epistemic attitudes and scientific dispositions. Therefore, matters of concern can be understood as a productive critique of the distant view from outside and call for a situated and more engaged environmental inquiry that transcends methodological, epistemological, and ontological boundaries of the natural sciences, thereby expanding the scope of research.

Things and the knowledge of them, in this sense, manifest as a collective and situated arrangement, emerging from and sustained by networks of materials, actors, institutions, and practices. Instead of asking how we know X or what X is, Latour focuses on the question: How many are we? And it is precisely here that María Puig de la Bellacasa’s intervention begins: extending the idea of concern into a call for care.

From Matters of Concern to Matters of Care: Vulnerable Things

Puig de la Bellacasa deepens and reorients Latour’s concept by shifting the mode of engagement once more. Where concern calls for attentiveness, care demands responsibility. “The purpose of exposing how things are assembled, constructed is not to debunk and dismantle them, nor is it to undermine the reality of matters of fact, ” she writes, but “to exhibit the concerns that attach and hold together matters of fact” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, 39).

Her notion of matters of care expands Latour’s argument in several key ways. Most significantly, it introduces an ethical and affective dimension: “The notion of ‘matters of care’ aims to add something to matters of fact/concern with the intention of not only respecting them, but of engaging with their becoming” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011, 100). Care, understood as a practice to maintain, continue and repair the world so that humans and the more-than-human can live in it as well as possible (Tronto 1993, 103; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, 62), is not a sentiment but a material doing: it involves engagement, attentiveness, and responsiveness. In this view, knowledge requires practical responsibility for the fragile gathering that constitutes it, not only by revealing what was invisible, but also by generating care: “One can make oneself concerned, but ‘to care’ contains a notion of doing that concern lacks. This is because understanding caring as something we do materializes it as an ethically and politically charged practice” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, 42).

Puig de la Bellacasa thus invites us to rethink how things are becoming and even what our knowledge of those things is. First, it is vulnerable—because what is assembled can also fall apart. Second, it requires ongoing maintenance and repair—because its stability is never a given, but must be continually upheld through shared labor and attentive response. And third, while we are always epistemologically and ethically entangled with the matters of our concern, there is a persistent neglect of caring relationalities within such gatherings. Here, Bellacasa decisively extends Latour’s notion of concern by focusing on those who are excluded or marginalized, or those who might be unable to voice their concern and need for care. She points out “how a seemingly openly inclusive question such as ‘How many are we?’ leaves intact the problem of how to count with agencies that do not fit or cannot even be heard” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, 51). It is in this sense that epistemic care means acknowledging this entanglement and taking responsibility for the conditions under which knowledge is produced, maintained, but also neglected and excluded (Böhnert 2022).

Conclusion: Knowledge as Fact, Concern, and Care

The shift from matters of fact to matters of concern and finally to matters of care traces an increasing awareness of the relational, situated, and fragile nature of knowledge. Each concept offers a different mode of relating to knowledge:

• Matters of fact refer to seemingly singular, stable, and self-evident claims grounded in quantifiable data. This remains the dominant mode in many scientific and technical discourses, where facts are treated as context-independent and objective.
• Matters of concern, as developed by Latour, reveal the relational and contested status of these facts. They emphasize that facts are not simply found but assembled—shaped by institutions, controversies, and historical conditions.
• Matters of care, in Puig de la Bellacasa’s formulation, extend this perspective further. They highlight the vulnerability of these assemblages and call for a sustained practice of care, responsibility, and engagement—with the danger of neglecting care-relationalities. Knowledge here is not only situated but also ethically and materially charged—something with which we are fundamentally entangled.

These conceptual shifts are of particular relevance to the Environmental Humanities, as they reframe the status of scientific and environmental knowledge itself. By moving away from the idea that facts are objective and context-free, they open up space for a richer understanding of how ecological realities emerge—through practices, representations, exclusions, and material entanglements. Especially in light of the climate crisis, these perspectives offer a way of relating to knowledge that is not only critical but also caring: knowledge becomes not just something to be acquired or acted upon, but something to be attended to, maintained, and, if necessary, repaired.

Finally, the concept of care has also gained traction in science and technology studies and in the ethics of innovation, where it offers a criterion for responsible research and practice (see Hackfort et al. 2025). Taken together, these modes of engagement reflect the growing need to reimagine knowledge not as distant, detached, and discrete—but as collective, fragile, and ethically charged.

References

• Böhnert, Martin. 2022. “The Science Is Clear: Climate Action Now! Versuch einer Neubeurteilung des Verhältnisses von Natur und Kultur in der Klimakrise.” Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie 67 (1): 27–50.
• Hackfort, Sarah, Julia-Lena Reinermann, and Daniela Gottschlich. 2025. “Practices and Concepts of Care in Sustainability Transformations: Critical Perspectives in Technology Assessment.” TATuP 34 (1): 9–47. https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.7173.
• Ingold, Tim. 1992. “Culture and the Perception of the Environment.” In Bush Base, Forest Farm. Culture, Environment, and Development, edited by Elisabeth Croll and David Parkin, 39–56. Lodnon: Routledge.
• Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2): 225–248.
• Latour, Bruno. 2008. What Is the Style of Matters of Concern? Two Lectures in Empirical Philosophy. Spinoza lectures. Assen: Van Gorcum.
• Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2011. “Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things.” Social studies of science 41 (1): 85–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312710380301.
• Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2017. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.
• Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York, London: Routledge.