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Participation of concerned actors and the public is a central element in the legal regulation of science and technology. In constitutional democracy, these participatory forms are governed by the rule of law. The volume critically examines participatory governance in this realm and makes suggestions with respect to further institutional and political-cultural developments. It assembles contributions of a broad interdisciplinary range within a comparative research programme, opening the black box of participatory governance in legal procedure. The contributions are the result of almost a decade of fruitful discussion between he authors. They also demonstrate the potential of a cross-disciplinary approach that stretches from sociology, via political science and jurisprudence to hermeneutics, linguistics and conversation analysis.
From local bike-sharing initiatives to overhauls of transport infrastructure, mobility is one of the most important areas in which modern cities are trying to realize a more sustainable future. Yet even as politicians and planners look ahead, there remain critical insights to be gleaned from the history of urban mobility and the unsustainable practices that still impact our everyday lives. United by their pursuit of a “usable past,” the studies in this interdisciplinary collection consider the ecological, social, and economic aspects of urban mobility, showing how historical inquiry can make both conceptual and practical contributions to the projects of sustainability and urban renewal.
How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable...
The idea behind The Unity of Nature is a strong theoretical theme in a number of scientific and environmental fields from ecosystems ecology, through quantum physics to environmental philosophy and ecopolitics giving rise to an inspiring, optimistic, socially-responsive and environment-friendly worldview. The fields of science and environmentalism have inherited this theme of natural unity through an intellectual lineage that encompasses many non-scientific and non-environmental fields such as sociology, theology and political philosophy. Many of these fields have used natural unity in a way which is in stark opposition to the metaphysical and political desires of those who promulgate the unity of nature for progressive social change.This book discusses how this has transpired and examines the social and intellectual processes that have been at work. These include the social construction of the Organicism versus Mechanicism debate in ecology, the intellectual links between neo-classical economic principles and the ‘New Sciences’, the techno-scientific background of Gaia theory, and the social conservatism of ecological functionalism.
Written by 30 authors from all over the world, this book provides a unique overview of exciting discoveries and surprising developments in human genetics over the last 50 years. The individual contributions, based on seven international workshops on the history of human genetics, cover a diverse range of topics, including the early years of the discipline, gene mapping and diagnostics. Further, they discuss the status quo of human genetics in different countries and highlight the value of genetic counseling as an important subfield of medical genetics.
"The history of National Socialism in Austria has not been widely examined. It was not until 1981 that an English language history was available on the "forgotten Nazis" in Austria, yet the country was well known to have been a breeding ground of Nazism. Editor F. Parkinson assembled a group of historians and political scientists to undertake a scholarly inquiry into all ramifications of Nazism in Austria before and after the Anschluss. They investigated the activities and attitudes of those in power as well as those in all other segments of the population, whether in Vienna or in the provinces, whether organized in political parties or professing certain creeds. Contributors outline Austria...
“…post-modern thought allowed the emergence of the question of Metaphysics again. This also makes possible a rethinking of the science-theology relation in a new light. The aim of this volume is precisely to shed a glimpse of this new light upon this ongoing conversation, by now involving Orthodox Theology in it. The possible contribution of Orthodox Theology to this discussion, in the context of the Christian Greek-Western world, can be path-breaking…” (From the Note of the Senior Editor) Contents: 1. Patristic Views On The Nature And Status Of Scientific Knowledge, JEAN-CLAUDE LARCHET, 2. The Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Science as Explication of the Human Condition, ALEX...
There exists today a fast growing availability of personal genetic information. Its prognostic impact and value for an individual or family member's health is sometimes unclear, whilst at other times it is clear-cut. The issue of whether to disclose genetic information does however have wide ranging implications. Avoiding the rhetoric of 'genetic exceptionalism', and drawing on an expanded field of bioethical, sociological and anthropological research, this book sets a new agenda for discussing the ethics surrounding the disclosure of prognostic genetic information. A hermeneutical approach reconsiders the ethics of disclosure in a variety of contexts in which genetic information is generate...
Passing glories and romantic retrievals: avant-garde nostalgia and hedonist renewal / Kate Soper -- Green things in the garbage: ecocritical gleaning in Walter Benjamin's arcades / Catriona Sandilands -- Raymond Williams: materialism and ecocriticism / Martin Ryle -- Sense of place and lieu de mémoire: a cultural memory approach to environmental texts / Axel Goodbody -- From literary anthropology to cultural ecology: German ecocritical theory since Wolfgang Iser / Timo Müller -- The social theory of Norbert Elias and the question of the nonhuman world / Linda Williams -- From the modern to the ecological: Latour on Walden pond / Laura Dassow Walls -- Martin Heidegger, D.H. Lawrence, and po...
The main subject of this publication is the co-creation of society and biotechnology. The authors do not treat society and biotechnology as separate domains, instead they consider technologies as socially constructed. The main focus of this publication is on agro-biotechnologies and the contributors present perspectives for reconstruction both from and in 'the North' and 'the South'. Reconstructing biotechnologies offers a range of critical social analyses confronting the actuality of biotechnology with the potentialities of its social reconstruction. In doing that, the book develops and merges literature from four different disciplines, namely (i) critical theory and its analyses of technol...