Sustainability Beyond Technology

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Green Growth ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Sustainability Theory

Current debates on sustainability are largely building on a problematic assumption that increasing technology use and advancement are a desired phenomenon, creating positive change in human organizations. This kind of techno-optimism prevails particularly in the discourses of ecological modernization and green growth, as well as in the attempts to design sustainable modes of production and consumption within growth-driven capitalism. This transdisciplinary book investigates the philosophical underpinnings of technology, presents a culturally sensitive critique of technology, and outlines feasible alternatives for sustainability beyond technology. By examining the conflicts and contradictions between technology and sustainability in human organizations, the book develops a novel way to conceptualize, confront and change technology in modern society. The book draws on a variety of scholarly disciplines, including humanities (philosophy and environmental history), social sciences (ecological economics, political economy, and ecology) and natural sciences (geology and thermodynamics) to contribute to sustainability theory and policy.

scholarly journals Capitalism as an Economic System Research: Power, Technological Change, and Innovation

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-158
Author(s):  
Adem Levent
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
System Research ◽  
Definition Of

Political economy, which developed as a study of wealth and ethics on the basis of the natural law philosophy and the British utilitarian philosophy which is a branch of natural law philosophy, has turned into economics with the marginalist revolution. The marginalist revolution has aimed at scientific “certainity” as in natural sciences, by excluding the concepts of class, institutions and history. This transformation gave the discipline a mature scientific theory appearance instead of a loose social theory form. This transformation is also consistent with the liberal character of the discipline. With that transformation, economics, on one hand, gained the most powerful scientific form among social sciences and on the other hand, it narrowed its borders. Institutional economics, one of the schools of heterodox economics, is seriously opposed to the transformation of the discipline. Both by choosing capitalism as an analysis object and by staying apart from or critical towards this capitalism institutional economics judges the liberal nature of formal economics. Institutional economics considers the economy as an institutionalized process. It accepts the market as given not natural. Economics also covers a wider area than the market. In this case, according to institutional economics, the definition of economics as science will expand and change. Economics will move away from the narrow patterns of scientific economics and reappear as political economy. In this study, it is claimed that conceiving institutional economics as political economy constitutes an opportunity to evaluate contemporary capitalism and to understand the basic tendencies of the this capitalism.

Technology and Sustainability

2021 ◽  
pp. 279-282
Author(s):  
Pasi Heikkurinen ◽  
Toni Ruuska
Keyword(s):  
Technology Use ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Green Growth ◽  
Points Of View

On the basis of the chapters of the book, it is concluded that increasing technology use and advancement are not necessarily a desired phenomenon. In addition to the positive consequences that we often hear about, the effects of technology are at times neutral, but often also negative. For this reason, we should always consider not only the potential of technology but also its pitfalls from various points of view, including non-anthropocentric perspectives. This leads us to abandon any one-dimensionality, such as the techno-optimism prevailing particularly in the discourses of ecological modernization and green growth, and to call for an investigative attitude in the study of technology in relation to sustainability.

Three questions to political economy (An attempt of system introspection)

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Kleiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Linear Component ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
System Paradigm

The development of the system paradigm in economic science leads to the formulation of a number of important questions to the political economy as one of the basic directions of economic theory. In this article, on the basis of system introspection, three questions are considered. The first is the relevance of the class approach to the structuring of the socio-economic space; the second is the feasibility of revising the notion of property in the modern world; the third is the validity of the notion of changing formations as the sequence of “slave-owning system — feudal system — capitalist system”. It is shown that in modern society the system approach to the structuring of socio-economic space is more relevant than the class one. Today the classical notion of “property” does not reflect the diversity of production and economic relations in society and should be replaced by the notion of “system property”, which provides a significant expansion of the concepts of “subject of property” and “object of property”. The change of social formations along with the linear component has a more influential cyclic constituent and obeys the system-wide cyclic regularity that reflects the four-cycle sequence of the dominance of one of the subsystems of the macrosystem: project, object, environment and process.

Religion in the Age of the Anthropocene

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianne F. Conty
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Risks And Benefits ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Forms Of Life

Though responses to the Anthropocene have largely come from the natural and social sciences, religious responses to the Anthropocene have also been gaining momentum and many scholars have been calling for a religious response to complement scientific responses to climate change. Yet because Genesis 1:28 does indeed tell human beings to ‘subdue the earth’ monotheistic religions have often been understood as complicit in the human exceptionalism that is thought to have created the conditions for the Anthropocene. In distinction to such Biblical traditions, indigenous animistic cultures have typically respected all forms of life as ‘persons’ and such traditions have thus become a source of inspiration for ecological movements. After discussing contemporary Christian efforts to integrate the natural sciences and the environment into their responses to the Anthropocene, this article will turn to animism and seek to evaluate the risks and benefits that could ensue from a postmodern form of animism that could provide a necessary postsecular response to the Anthropocene.

The Interdisciplinary Functional-Dynamic Approach to the Analysis of the Political System of Modern Society

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
D. V. Bobrov ◽  
A. A. Shulus ◽  
F. F. Farisov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political System ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dynamic Approach ◽  
Communication Subsystems ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Technological Communication

The authors analyze different approaches to the study of the political system of society (PSO) in various social sciences. The prospects of an interdisciplinary study of PSO based on the llocation of several subsystems with various functions are substantiated. The characteristic of various functional subsystems of the PSO is given, among them: institutional, regulatory, ideological, technological, communication subsystems

Environmental engineering education in conjunction with or as Part of social sciences curricula

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.H. Hahn
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Business Administration ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Environmental Engineering ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
The University ◽  
Engineering Programme ◽  
Environmental Infrastructure

Traditionally in Germany environmental engineering education took place within the context of a civil engineering programme. There were reasons for this: the beginning of much of what we understand today to be environmental works fell within the parameters of city engineering. There were and are advantages mostly in view of the necessary planning, construction and operation of environmental infrastructure. There are also disadvantages which become more and more pronounced as the field of environmental protection expands: the civil engineer frequently lacks basic training in disciplines such as biology and chemistry and carries a large and sometimes burdensome knowledge of other less relevant subjects. Thus, educators begin to look for alternatives. This paper deals with an alternative that was developed some ten years ago and therefore has proven viable and successful: at the University of Karlsruhe students may choose to major in environmental engineering within the context or on the basis of an economics and business administration curriculum. The basic question here is as to what extent the student masters the field of environmental engineering if he or she has predominantly a solid background in social sciences and very little in natural sciences. The paper will describe the curriculum in structure and intensity and evaluate the accumulated knowledge and suitability of these students in terms of actual environmental problems. This will be done in terms of examination performance parallel and/or relative to traditionally trained civil environmental engineers as well as in terms of topics successfully treated in Masters' theses. In conclusion, it is argued that such combination of curricula should not be confined to economic sciences and environmental engineering but also be planned for legal sciences and environmental engineering.

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Characteristic Features

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Guide to Africa Bibliography

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. xxix-xxx
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Environmental Sciences ◽  
African Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Cover Material

This bibliography records publications on Africa of interest to students of Africa, principally in the social and environmental sciences, development studies, humanities and arts. Some items from the medical, biological and natural sciences are included. The criterion used is potential relevance to a reader from a social sciences/arts background. The whole continent and associated islands are covered, with selective coverage of the diaspora. This volume aims to cover material published in 2019 together with items from earlier years not previously listed. The editor is always very glad to hear of any items omitted so that they may be included in future volumes. He would be particularly pleased to receive notification of new periodicals, print or online. African government publications and works of creative literature are not normally listed.

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