1,720,965 research outputs found
A reply to ‘green shame: The next moral revolution?’
No full textAccepted Author ManuscriptEthics & Philosophy of Technolog
Institutions of justice and intuitions of fairness: contesting goods, rules and inequalities
No full textThis paper examines the intrinsic relation between institutions and social justice. Its starting point is that processes of institutionalization invoke societal groups to articulate justice demands which, in their turn, give rise to processes of institutional redesign. In liberal democracies, demands for justice are articulated as a pursuit for emancipation and empowerment of groups that feel excluded by dominant categorizations. The imminent presence of this twin pursuit for justice can be explained by the conceptual inconsistencies that characterize the distinction between the public and private sphere. These inconsistencies also explain why demands for emancipation and empowerment are intrinsically ambiguous and inconsistent. In order to reconsider the question how institutions are to be adapted to allow for social justice while acknowledging the plurality, ambiguity and volatility of justice demands, the paper will propose an empirical and normative research agenda.Ethics & Philosophy of Technolog
Paradigms and paradoxes: The futures of growth and degrowth
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce three storylines that address the relation between economic growth, technical innovation and environmental impact. The paper assesses if and how these storylines as guiding visions increase our range of future orientations. Design/methodology/approach: The paper first explains its general outline and then explores different strands of literature to arrive at its analytical conclusions. Findings: Pursuing the three storylines in a paradigmatic articulation creates paradoxes. The growth paradigm focuses on economic growth as its main goal. To overcome environmental degradation, products have to be substituted by environmentally friendly alternatives, but the continuous substitution of finite resources seems unlikely possible. The storyline of innovation sees technological development as a driver of economic progress, and holds that innovations allow the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impact, a claim that is compromised by the occurrence of rebound effects. The degrowth storyline holds that economic growth has to be stopped altogether, but is unclear how this can be done. Originality/value: By articulating paradigmatic perspectives as storylines, a new understanding on how these perspectives can be figured as a constructive repertoire of guiding visions and not as mere theory-based descriptions.Ethics & Philosophy of Technolog
Values as Hypotheses and Messy Institutions: What Ethicists Can Learn from the COVID-19 Crisis
No full textIn this chapter, the COVID-19 crisis is examined as an episode that reveals various complications in the relation between values and institutions. I argue that these complications cannot be addressed satisfactorily by ethics, as this field is characterised by a gap between the identification of values worth pursuing and the effectuation of these values in society through politics. This chapter aims to bridge this gap between ethics and politics by outlining the dialectical relation between values and institutions. It will do so by first presenting values as collectively held understandings that emerge in public deliberation. Second, these values are safeguarded by setting up appropriate institutions, which, at the same time, also allows the further substantiation of these values. However, it also needs to be acknowledged that institutions are not mere instrumental solutions to further societal values. On the contrary, they have their own morally laden dynamics. As such, they should also be susceptible to adjustment following societal demand.Ethics & Philosophy of Technolog
The boundaries of innovation: Understanding co-creation in Urban Living Labs
No full textrban Living Labs (ULLs) and co-creation processes have been gaining interest from different domains in recent years. The municipality, academia, and private enterprises see in these processes promising opportunities to involve different actors, especially citizens, and their visions in order to develop innovation and sustainable solutions for urban complexities. However, implementing ULLs and understanding co-creation processes is still an area to explore; the concepts lack consensus. This thesis report aims to understand not only how they are being implemented, but also whether they really acknowledge the promise of innovation. In order to do so, the starting point is to explore ULLs in two manners. The first is to analyze its elements, where co-creation is one of the most important. The second is to analyze ULLs as a niche that promises innovation. Within the ULL, the concept of co-creation at the theoretical level brings two promises. It includes different actors from different domains to create knowledge, services or products; but it also brings the promise of incorporating citizens. This thesis investigates how co-creation processes take place and what they bring to the ULL implementation. Its aim is to understand and present in a tangible manner this process in order to operationalize it and find whether it represents learning for innovation.Architecture and The Built EnvironmentManagement in the Built EnvironmentIndustrial Ecolog
Practising change(s): Analysing the German niche of permaculture with a Social Learning perspective to monitor social change in sustainability transitions
No full textThe Master’s programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. - Grassroots initiatives that are inspired by the framework of permaculture try to design effective social and ecological systems. These are aimed to provide ecosystem services, build communities, give opportunities to learn and practice and support the establishment of circular nutrient systems. This they do, guided by a dynamic and systemic “manual” that helps to integrate and create many functions and draw on synergistic effects. Many results of such a design are commonly perceived as positive externalities. Drawing on principles and practices that run counter the current way “things are done”, the permaculture community offers potential insights into transformative processes that question the current growth paradigm and mainstream practices. One of the reasons for the growth of the permaculture community lies within its set-up as a community with strong core values and practices. These shared values and practices align members whilst recognising each individual's competences. However, being embedded in an environment that plays according to very different rules, the community also has to deal with tensions at its boundaries. Applying a systems perspective to complex problems allows seeing interwoven dynamics more differentiated. This thesis investigates the potential of combining two analytical lenses to better accommodate the diverse dynamics intrinsic to social systems in sustainability transitions: While Social Learning Systems allow for a close review of dynamics that make up social learning processes, the framework from transition studies stretches the time frame and puts dynamics in the perspective of broader external factors. With the goal to investigate the internal dynamics in a grassroots initiative that shape social learning processes and the potential for such communities to reach out to their environment this thesis establishes a conceptual framework to analyse the German permaculture community. It furthermore discusses the findings based on the present debate on sustainability transitions. Interviews with permaculture teachers as key informants who apply and teach permaculture design principles make up the empirical basis of this report. Frameworks and concepts from innovation and transition studies and theories on social learning are its theoretical backbone. Findings suggest that the German permaculture community is in the process of better accommodating for its growing diversity. This gives rise to new potential for developments at its boundaries, however, internal challenges are lacking capacity and the absence of commitment to a common strategy that effectively links individuals to coordinated actions. For transition studies, the combination of the analytical perspective adds insights into developments, challenges, and possible diffusion of radical grassroots initiatives as it highlights dynamics and the strong influence of personal agency on social change and diffusion of practices and meanings. For Social Learning Systems, the transition perspective offers an orientation which external factors also need to be considered in the shaping of learning processes in socio-technical systems.Technology, Policy and ManagementIndustrial Ecology4413 TRP 30Y Thesis Research projec
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
How Should Central Banks Respond to Inflating Real Estate Bubbles: A Qualitative Assessment of Industry Professionals’ Perceptions
No full textCentral Banks do not respond to inflating real estate bubbles, but abide a policy that ‘mops up’ the damage after their collapse with the conventional tools of monetary policy. The financial crisis of 2008 disclosed the flaws of this method, which triggered a controversial debate among policymakers and economists. Currently there is an elevated risk for credit-fuelled bubbles in prime residential- and commercial real estate markets. A literature review identified four theoretical perspectives that propose a range of widely varying policy modifications, implying there is no consensus. This research targeted this knowledge gap by assessing the perceptions of knowledgeable real estate professionals to test and criticize the theories via semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study appointed a countercyclical restriction of Loan-To-Value ratios for residential – and commercial real estate financing as an appropriate step to pioneer a policy modification that aims to counteract inflating real estate bubblesTechnology, Policy and ManagementEconomics of InnovationManagement of Technolog
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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