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Why the wind, and energy it produces, should not be private property The energy transition has begun. To succeed—to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power—that process must be fair. Otherwise, mounting pop- ular protest against wind farms will prolong carbon pollution and deepen the climate crisis. David McDermott Hughes examines that anti-industrial, anti- corporate resistance, drawing on his time spent conducting field research in a Spanish village surrounded by wind turbines. In the lives of a community freighted with centuries of exploitation—people whom the author comes to know intimately—clean power and social justice fit together only awkwardly. A green economy will require greater efforts to get ordinary people such as these on board. Aesthetics, livelihood, property, and, most essentially, the private nature of wind resources—all these topics must be examined with fresh eyes.
The Business of Greening, first published in 2000, debates the relationship between business and greening, and the future form this relationship could take. The book gives voice to industrial actors - employees, employers, managers, technical specialists, regulators - in the context of their organizations, within industrial sectors or as part of wider institution regimes. The business of greening is taken as socially constructed, shaped through tensions and competing interests. It produces outcomes that are sometimes unexpected, sometimes hopeful. These outcomes are explored by examining a range of workers, including estate agents, bankers, bakers, printers, regulators, in small and large corporations. Contributors write from a wide range of different social sciences including sociology, geography, organizational science and psychology. This title will be of particular interest to students and researchers of environmental and business studies, and to those who shape environmental policy in government and industry.
This book elucidates what it means to transition to alternative sources of energy and discusses the potential for this energy transition to be a more democratic process. The book dynamically describes a recent sociotechnical study of a number of energy transitions occurring in several countries - France, Germany and Tunisia, and involving different energy technologies - including solar, on/off-shore wind, smart grids, biomass, low-energy buildings, and carbon capture and storage. Drawing on a pragmatist tradition of social inquiry, the authors examine the consequences of energy transition processes for the actors and entities that are affected by them, as well as the spaces for political participation they offer. This critical inquiry is organised according to foundational categories that have defined the energy transition - ‘renewable’ energy resources, markets, economic instruments, technological demonstration, spatiality (‘scale’) and temporality (‘horizon(s)’). Using a set of select case studies, this book systematically investigates the role these categories play in the current developments in energy transitions.
As the use of human body parts has become increasingly commercialized, a need has arisen for new approaches to regulation that moves beyond the paradigm of altruism. During the course of this discussion, the notion of property has become a key concept. Focusing on practical and conceptual perspectives, the multidisciplinary group of authors, which includes specialists in philosophy, law, sociology, biology and medicine, have come together with practicing lawyers to consider both legal provisions and patterns of regulation in countries across Europe. Identifying divergences between different legal traditions, the authors explore various conceptual models which could be used to improve and to guide policy making. With this twin focus on practical and conceptual perspectives, this volume sets the standard for a detailed and innovative discussion of issues surrounding the regulation of research on human tissue.
Nearly all of the major perspectives, focal points and debates in environmental sociology are reflected in this collection of essays. The volume exceeds the bounds of conventional theory by surveying societies and their natural biophysical environments.
Scientific and Technical Communication is a major textbook that represents a new focus area in communication studies. It integrates multidisciplinary perspectives on the relations among rhetoric, science, technology, and public policymaking to the process and product of technical communication. The text is inspired by science and technology studies (STS), a field emerging from the history, sociology, and philosophy of science and technology--which also has roots in economics, political theory, and rhetoric. Reformulating the issues raised by STS within the context of technical communication, Scientific and Technical Communication is composed of three highly integrated parts. Part I provides ...
Why the social character of scientific knowledge makes it trustworthy Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don't? Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength—and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, this timely and provocative book features a new preface by Oreskes and critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.
Prompted and ever diversified by the specifically human interrogative logos, scientific inquiries seek a common system of links in order to mutually confirm and rectify their results. Coming closer and closer to phenomenology, the sciences of life find the common ground of the reality in the ontopoiesis of life. Could it not be that the interrogative logos of science, participating in human creative inventiveness will bring together also the divergent scientific methods in a common network? A network which comprises natural processes, societal sharing-in-life, and existential communication.
'Knowledge Management Foundations' is just what it claims, the first attempt to provide a secure intellectual footing for the myriad of practices called "knowledge management." A breath of fresh air from the usual KM gurus, Fuller openly admits that the advent of KM is a mixed blessing that often amounts to the conduct of traditional management by subtler means. However, Fuller's deep understanding of both the history of management theory and knowledge production more generally enables him to separate the wheat from the chaff of the KM literature. This ground-breaking book will prove of interest to both academics and practitioners of knowledge management. It highlights the ways in which KM h...
This work discusses whether Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was revolutionary. Steve Fuller argues that Kuhn held a profoundly conservative view of science and how one ought to study its history.