scholarly journals Conceptualizing connections

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Shove ◽  
Matt Watson ◽  
Nicola Spurling
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
New Challenges

Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this article we focus on the task of understanding and analyzing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school, and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together, we suggest that forms of car dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow.

Additional Challenges for CEMIS Due to Impacts Caused by Climate Change

2010 ◽  
pp. 70-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Antoni-Komar ◽  
Marina Beermann ◽  
Hedda Schattke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Indirect Impacts

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how CEMIS could be enhanced to cope with impacts caused by climate change. In our time, firms have to deal with the resulting challenges such as increasing complexity and dynamics of the environment. By developing cultural competences, firms will be empowered to handle these new challenges appropriately. CEMIS itself as a managerial tool has an excellent potential to increase organizational resilience against vulnerabilities due to impacts caused by climate change. CEMIS could provide climate change scenarios for different impacts in global and regional dimensions. Scenarios as alternative images of how the future might unfold are an appropriate tool to analyze how driving forces may influence future emission outcomes and to assess the associated uncertainties and risks. They assist in climate change analysis, including climate modeling and the assessment of impacts, adaptation and mitigation. Theoretical enlargements of the CEMIS concept will be discussed by resilience thinking, which is promising for CEMIS because of its turning away from the equilibrium assumption, its widespread comprehension of the environment and its influences, its assumption of flexibility and adaptiveness through the adaptive capacity. The discussion will be exemplified by firms from the food industry, which are highly vulnerable towards direct and also indirect impacts caused by climate change along certain supply chains. Changing qualities and quantities of resources, temporary shortage of resources or conflicts between energy and food can all have drastic effects on firms in the food industry. Supported by CEMIS as a critical information system, emerging conflicts due to changing societal and cultural processes can be recognized sensitively, reflected critically, and reconfigured creatively to the aim of sustainable strategic management. Based on the theory of social practice and the competence theory of the firm, the development of cultural competences, as an integral part of the practical intelligibility of firms and as a learning concept for adaptive capacity, enables firms to handle these new challenges in times of expanding uncertainty and risk appropriately.

scholarly journals Solar Home Systems in South Asia: Examining Adoption, Energy Consumption, and Social Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7754
Author(s):  
Nathanael Ojong
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Practice Theory ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Solar Home System ◽  
Home Systems

Renewable electricity generation from solar energy has rapidly increased in South Asia. This paper presents a systematic review of 79 scholarly papers on the topic of solar home system adoption, energy consumption, and social practices in South Asia. Using an intersectionality lens, the paper demonstrates that various categories of difference, such as gender, age, class, and ethnicity, intersect and shape the adoption of this technology in South Asia. Utilizing a social practice theory lens, the paper shows that solar home systems shape the spatial and temporal arrangements and practices of members of households that have adopted the technology, as well as their counterparts who have not. This technology has a practical but also symbolic function; the symbolic function and social meaning are derived from the economic and socio-cultural contexts. As this renewable energy technology is embedded in economic and socio-cultural contexts, people reconfigure it in creative ways to meet their everyday energy needs. The paper identifies research gaps and suggests future research agendas.

Towards a Theory of Social Practices

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Zhok
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Tacit Dimension ◽  
Rational Side

AbstractThe notion of social practice and a family of notions akin to it play an essential role in contemporary philosophical reflection, with particular reference to the conceptualisation of historical processes. Stephen Turner's book A Social Theory of Practices (1994) has provided a major challenge to this family of notions, and our purpose is to outline a grounding account of the notion of social practice in the form of an answer to Turner's criticisms. We try to answer three questions: first, if it is necessary to grant a tacit dimension to transmittable habits; second, if and how a tacit dimension of "meaning" could be intersubjectively transmitted; third, what is the possible role of rationality in changing social practices. Our discussion moves from Wittgenstein's argument on rule-following; in its wake we try to examine the nature of habits as a basis for rules and discuss their temporal sedimentation, inertia and modes of intersubjective transmission. In conclusion we support the idea that social practices must rely on a tacit dimension, that their tacit dimension does not represent a hindrance to intersubjective transmission, and that the possible dogmatism of social practices is not due to their "hidden" side, but to their explicit quasi-rational side.

Scaling the Necropolitical Anthropocene

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Tyler S. Rife
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Ecological Concept ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Desert Landscape ◽  
Ecological Potential

In this essay, I demonstrate how the ecological concept of “scaling” carries potential to animate critical logics in the Anthropocene. I argue that scaling can expose unexpected linkages across space and time that help to denaturalize particular ecological formations as entangled, rather than separate. I demonstrate the critical ecological potential of scaling by performing it rhizomatically, weaving across scales of space and time while juxtaposing theoretical concepts with my experiences of life as a resident in the urban desert landscape of Phoenix, AZ. This ecology ultimately reveals how climate change acts as a complex necropolitic of the Anthropocene.

Graubündens Wald im Fokus | Focus on the Grisons forest

2009 ◽  
Vol 160 (7) ◽  
pp. 195-200
Author(s):  
Reto Hefti
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Intensive Use ◽  
Form Part ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The Government

In the mountainous canton Grisons, much visited by tourists, the forest has always had an important role to play. New challenges are now presenting themselves. The article goes more closely into two themes on the Grisons forestry agenda dominating in the next few years: the increased use of timber and climate change. With the increased demand for logs and the new sawmill in Domat/Ems new opportunities are offered to the canton for more intensive use of the raw material, wood. This depends on a reduction in production costs and a positive attitude of the population towards the greater use of wood. A series of measures from the Grisons Forestry Department should be of help here. The risk of damage to infrastructure is particularly high in a mountainous canton. The cantonal government of the Grisons has commissioned the Forestry Department to define the situation concerning the possible consequences of global warming on natural hazards and to propose measures which may be taken. The setting up of extensive measurement and information systems, the elaboration of intervention maps, the estimation of the danger potential in exposed areas outside the building zone and the maintenance of existing protective constructions through the creation of a protective constructions register, all form part of the government programme for 2009 to 2012. In the Grisons, forest owners and visitors will have to become accustomed to the fact that their forests must again produce more wood and that, on account of global warming, protective forests will become even more important than they already are today.

scholarly journals The Impact Assessment of Climate Change on Building Energy Consumption in Poland

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4084
Author(s):  
Hassan Bazazzadeh ◽  
Peiman Pilechiha ◽  
Adam Nadolny ◽  
Mohammadjavad Mahdavinejad ◽  
Seyedeh sara Hashemi safaei
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Thermal Load ◽  
Building Energy ◽  
Building Energy Consumption ◽  
Building Sector ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Heating Load ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

A substantial share of the building sector in global energy demand has attracted scholars to focus on the energy efficiency of the building sector. The building’s energy consumption has been projected to increase due to mass urbanization, high living comfort standards, and, more importantly, climate change. While climate change has potential impacts on the rate of energy consumption in buildings, several studies have shown that these impacts differ from one region to another. In response, this paper aimed to investigate the impact of climate change on the heating and cooling energy demands of buildings as influential variables in building energy consumption in the city of Poznan, Poland. In this sense, through the statistical downscaling method and considering the most recent Typical Meteorological Year (2004–2018) as the baseline, the future weather data for 2050 and 2080 of the city of Poznan were produced according to the HadCM3 and A2 GHG scenario. These generated files were then used to simulate the energy demands in 16 building prototypes of the ASHRAE 90.1 standard. The results indicate an average increase in cooling load and a decrease in heating load at 135% and 40% , respectively, by 2080. Due to the higher share of heating load, the total thermal load of the buildings decreased within the study period. Therefore, while the total thermal load is currently under the decrease, to avoid its rise in the future, serious measures should be taken to control the increased cooling demand and, consequently, thermal load and GHG emissions.

scholarly journals Temperature Effects on Electricity and Gas Consumption: Empirical Evidence from Mexico and Projections under Future Climate Conditions

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
W.J. Wouter Botzen ◽  
Tim Nees ◽  
Francisco Estrada
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Net Energy ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Linear Relationships ◽  
Gas Consumption

Fixed effects panel models are used to estimate how the electricity and gas consumption of various sectors and residents relate to temperature in Mexico, while controlling for the effects of income, manufacturing output per capita, electricity and gas prices and household size. We find non-linear relationships between energy consumption and temperature, which are heterogeneous per state. Electricity consumption increases with temperature, and this effect is stronger in warm states. Liquified petroleum gas consumption declines with temperature, and this effect is slightly stronger in cold states. Extrapolations of electricity and gas consumption under a high warming scenario reveal that electricity consumption by the end of the century for Mexico increases by 12%, while gas consumption declines with 10%, resulting in substantial net economic costs of 43 billion pesos per year. The increase in net energy consumption implies greater efforts to comply with the mitigation commitments of Mexico and requires a much faster energy transition and substantial improvements in energy efficiency. The results suggest that challenges posed by climate change also provide important opportunities for advancing social sustainability goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This study is part of Mexico’s Sixth National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Force fields of the modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prem Poddar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Force Fields ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Levels

The essentially contested notion of the modern, and its cognate form “modernity,” have a long intellectual history. The emergence and dissemination of the idea of Western modernity was sometimes forcibly imposed, sometimes partially accepted, and sometimes resisted at different levels around the globe. Recent thinking has produced qualifiers and prefixes such as “unfinished,” “post-,” “late,” “inevitable,” “contra-,” “alternative,” or “differential” in relation to modernity, to signal the striations in approaches, interpretations, and positionings towards what is seen as an umbrella term to describe the various possibilities that can be brought to bear while considering contentions in contemporary theory and praxis. The social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of this field of forces are integral to any thinking about the symbolic contestation of power in multifarious re-imaginings. This article charts this field mainly by looking at the colonial and postcolonial interventions that have impacted and continue to the present day to effect and inflect cultures and societies, including pressing questions of climate change and cyberspace. Sections are sorted under the following sub-headings: “The vortex of the modern;” “Subaltern bodies, subversive minds;” “Communication and colonization: Re-inventing space and time;” “Borderlands, migrations, identities;” and “Contesting and controlling cyberspace.”

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