Suchergebnisse

Since ages, the topic of climate – in the sense of "usual weather" – has in the western tradition attracted attention as a possible explanatory factor. Climate, and its purported impact on society, is an integrated element in western thinking and perception. In this lecture, the history of ideas about the climatic impact on humans and society, and the emergence of the ideology of climatic determinism are sketched. This ideology favored the perception of westerners being superior to the people in the rest of the world, giving legitimacy to colonialism. In modern time, when natural sciences instituted self-critical processes (repeatability, falsification) and norms (CUDOS @Merton), the traditional host for climate issues, namely geography, lost its grip, and physics took over. This led to a more systematic, critical, and rigorous approach of building and testing hypotheses and concepts. This gain in methodical rigor, however, went along with the loss of understanding that climate is hardly a key explanatory factor for societal differences and developments. Consequently, the large segments of the field tacitly and unknowingly began reviving the abandoned concept of climatic determinism. Climate science finds itself in a "post-normal" condition, which leads to a frequent dominance of political utility over methodical rigor.

Can epistemologies anchor processes of social inequality? In this paper, we consider how epistemological dominance in science, engineering, and health (SE&H) fields perpetuates disadvantages for students who enter higher education with alternative epistemologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Native American students enrolled at two US research universities who adhere to or revere indigenous epistemologies, we find that epistemological dominance in SE&H degree programs disadvantages students through three processes. First, it delegitimizes Native epistemologies and marginalizes and silences students who value them. Second, in the process of imparting these dominant scientific epistemologies, SE&H courses sometimes require students to participate in pedagogical practices that challenge indigenous ways of knowing. Third, students encounter epistemological imperialism: most students in the sample are working to earn SE&H degrees in order to return to tribal communities to "give back," yet, because the US laws regulating the practice of SE&H extend onto tribal lands, students must earn credentials in epistemologies that devalue, delegitimate, and threaten indigenous knowledge ways to practice on tribal lands. We examine how students navigate these experiences, discuss the implications of these findings for SE&H education, and describe how epistemological dominance may serve as a mechanism of inequality reproduction more broadly.

Die vorgelegte sozialwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studie beschreibt den Entwicklungsprozess zweier Methoden, nämlich der Delphi Methode und des political gaming. Beide Methoden wurden in den frühen 1950er Jahren an der RAND Corporation, einem der US Air Force nahe stehendem Think Tank in Kalifornien, entwickelt. Sie waren die ersten Versuche, Expertenwissen im Rahmen von sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden systematisch für Zwecke der Vorhersage oder Simulation künftiger Ereignisse zu nutzen. Die Entwicklung der beiden Methoden wird unter Bezugnahme auf zwei im Rahmen der Studie entwickelte Konzepte analysiert, nämlich der epistemischen Rolle und den epistemischen Hoffnungen. Eine epistemische Rolle beschreibt das Bündel von Erwartungen, das die Entwickler der Methoden gegenüber dem/r Experten/in hatten. Als epistemische Hoffnungen hingegen werden die Erwartungen der Wissenschafter/in hinsichtlich Leistungsfähigkeit und Nützlichkeit ihrer Methoden in der Politikberatung bezeichnet.Der Vergleich der beiden Entwicklungsprozesse zeigt, dass die Methoden ungeachtet vieler Ähnlichkeiten auf unterschiedlichen Konzepten der epistemischen Rolle des Experten basieren. Während Delphi den/die Experten/in als Träger/in universellen Wissens begreift, ist für das political gaming Wissen immer relativ zur Kultur des/der Experten/in. Dieser Umstand wird durch Rückgriff auf die unterschiedlichen philosophischen Traditionen erklärt, in welchen die beteiligten Wissenschafter/innen akademisch sozialisiert wurden. Die vorrangig mit diesen Methoden verknüpfte epistemische Hoffnung war, dass sie die Sozialwissenschaften näher zu Problemen der Politik bringen würden. Dies würde zu einer höheren Rationalität politischer Entscheidungen führen. Dieser Hoffnung entsprach, dass sowohl innerhalb der Regierung wie auch des Militärs eine kritische Masse hochrangiger Beamter überzeugt waren, Sozialwissenschaften könnten wertvolle Beiträge zu politischen Entscheidungsprozessen leisten. ; This study describes the invention and early development of two social scientific methods, the Delphi method and political gaming. These methods have been developed in the early 1950s at the RAND Corporation, a think tank based in Santa Monica, California, which entertained close relations to the US Air Force. Historically, Delphi and political gaming were the first social scientific methods to systematically use expert opinions for the delineating scenarios of possible futures. Their development is analyzed with the use of two concepts introduced in this study, namely the concept of the epistemic role of the expert and the concept of epistemic hopes. An epistemic role is understood as the bundle of expectations held by the inventors of the methods toward the expert. Epistemic hopes, on the other hand, are defined as the expectations of the social scientists towards capacity, efficience, and usefulness of their methods when applied to policy problems. The comparison of the processes by which Delphi and political gaming were developed shows that although the two methods share several features, the epistemic role of the expert is conceived differently. Whereas Delphi conceives of the expert as carrier of universal knowledge, political gaming conceives of knowledge as being inherently culture-bound. This is explained by pointing out that the two groups of scientists who invented the method were trained in two different philosophical traditions. Also, the analysis shows ambivalent conceptions of the expert among the early Delphi studies. The authors held several epistemic hopes toward the impact of their methods on society. The hope was that the further scientific methodology extended into the realm of policy advice, the more rational a process of policy making would become. Both within the military and the government, a critical mass of high ranking officials was convinced that the social sciences could provide valuable contributions to political decision processes. ; Christian Dayé ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Zsfassung in dt. und in engl. Sprache ; Graz, Univ., Diss., 2012 ; OeBB ; (VLID)224429

Context: The topic of this paper is how mass emigration of skilled workers affects national policies, and employers' willingness to invest in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Poland. In the wake of EU enlargement in 2004, Poland became one of the biggest sending countries for skilled labour to Western European countries. These massive outflows of skilled labour, not compensated by adequate inflows of equally skilled workers, have led to serious skills shortages, especially in the construction sector. The paper investigates whether emigration and immigration constitute a driving force for institutional change of the Polish VET system, by analysing policy development and the attitudes of VET stakeholders towards contributing to VET.Approach: The paper focuses on the emigration of skilled construction workers in Poland. Drawing on Hirschman's (1970) framework, when faced with massive skills deficits construction companies are confronted with different options: i) withdraw from the VET system and find other training and recruitment options (exit), ii) attempt to improve conditions by turning to policy makers (voice), and/or iii) remain loyal to the VET system. The analysis is based on an interview study of decision makers responsible for VET policies, employers, chamber of Craft and trade unions, principals of vocational schools, teachers and representatives of regional examination boards.Findings: After years of inattention, VET has been regaining a strong position in national policies. We find that construction companies are mostly more willing now, compared to 5 years ago, to take on learners for practical training and to contribute to improving school equipment. The study showed that one of the most significant obstacles to employers investing in the training of VET learners is the fear of losing a young skilled employee through emigration. Yet, dependent on skilled labour, employers of big construction companies saw no other option than to continue investing in training young learners. However, ...

D3.1 consists of a review of the current interaction between social science and air quality and carbon management. It consists of 5 main sections: 1: Results and conclusions from a formal literature review that sought evidence on the extent and nature of social science research relating to air pollution along with indications of its uptake within policy; 2: A review of EU funded research and projects on air quality management from the CORDIS database; 3: A review of a selection of air quality policy and plan documents at a national and regional level; 4: An overview, examining the role of the citizen with regard to air pollution from a practitioner point of view; 5: A second overview of the role of 'civil society' and nongovernmental institutions within the air quality and carbon management processes.