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For a fleeting moment on May 22 the world may have come closer to a catastrophic nuclear accident due to a reckless Ukrainian drone attack on two Russian strategic nuclear early warning radars at Armavir.Fortunately, a subsequent Ukranian drone attack on a third radar station at Orsk in Russia on May 26 failed.The incidents underscore a few important things. First, the Ukrainians could have needlessly sparked a crisis in which the Russians, feeling like one of their defenses against a U.S. nuclear attack, were down, struck back hard in retaliation. And second, it highlights the need for Russians to acquire comprehensive space-based nuclear radar of their own. What happened and what it meansThe Ukrainian attack at Armavir was a big deal. It shut down both Russian radars immediately. And it's likely that within minutes of the attack, an emergency meeting took place with the commander of the Russian strategic rocket forces along with his highest-level officers.The attacks should not be taken lightly, and President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should be giving this special attention.Even after decades of expensive Russian attempts to build a space-based early warning system that could provide global surveillance of U.S. submarine missile launches, Russia has been unable to marshal the extremely specialized high-technologies needed to build such a system.To in part deal with this serious shortfall in Russia's nuclear early warning capabilities, Vladimir Putin himself initiated and publicly supported a highly visible national effort to build a dense and capable nuclear strategic early warning radar system that utilizes numerous giant radars (typically about 30 to 35 meters high).Since these radars basically form the singular foundation of Russia's strategic nuclear early warning capabilities, any tampering with their functions in any unpredictable global situation is accompanied by very grave risks of misinterpretations of intentions that could lead to a massive launch of Russian nuclear forces.Figure 1 below shows a satellite photograph of the two radars at Armavir. The radar beam from what is labeled "Radar Fan 1" is pointing in a counterclockwise direction from North of roughly 125°. Radar Fan 2 is pointing in a clockwise direction from North of roughly 125°.Figure 2 shows the coverage of the two radar fans at Armavir, and the radar at Orsk drawn on a spherical earth. A side view of a radar fan is shown in the upper right corner. The side-on view shows an extremely important consequence of the fact that Earth is curved and the radar beam propagates basically in a straight line. Because of that, the radar cannot actually see objects near the surface.For example, it is not possible for the radar to observe aircraft flying over Ukraine. Even ATACM missiles launched from the Ukrainian Black Sea coasts, which rise to altitudes of no more than 40km before they start gliding to their targets, cannot be reliably detected by these radars.Thus, the radars at Armavir pose no surveillance threat to Ukrainian aircraft, cruise missiles, drones or ATACM missiles. The real threat to Ukrainian aircraft and missiles is from Russian airborne radar systems that are tightly queued into Russian ground-based surface-to-air missile systems. Why these radars are so importantThe importance of having a space-based satellite early warning system can be readily understood by re-examining figure 2.For purposes of illustration, imagine that a Trident ballistic missile is launched at Moscow from the Indian Ocean at about the same latitude as Bombay on the West Coast of India (20° North latitude). The range to Moscow would be roughly 4,500 to 4,600 km.If the ballistic missile were launched on a "minimum energy trajectory" (at a loft angle of roughly 34°) it would require the smallest missile burnout speed needed to reach Moscow. In this case the time between "breakwater" missile ignition and impact would be roughly 21 to 22 minutes.However, the Trident missile is designed to launch its warheads to much higher burnout speeds. For example, it could launch its nuclear payload toward Moscow at a slightly higher speed and lower loft angle of 25° (this is often called a slightly "depressed" trajectory) and still easily reach Moscow in 18 to 19 minutes.If a launch towards Moscow is on a slightly depressed trajectory, the Russians would not know they were under attack for at least six minutes, until the warheads and the rocket upper stages passed into the Armavir radar search fan. If the Armavir radar was not operating it would take eight to nine minutes from breakwater before the Russian radars in Moscow would indicate they were under attack.The radar in Moscow would have to observe the incoming missile payloads for one or two minutes before it would have enough data to issue an alert — which means maximum decision-making time that might be available to Russian leaders would be about six or seven minutes!So you can see why the Russians would be incensed over the Ukraine attacks, which would literally cut their already limited time in which to respond to a nuclear attack.If the Russians had an early warning space-based system, they would know that they were under attack roughly 19 minutes before the attacking warheads would arrive and destroyMoscow. They would also immediately know whether or not ballistic missiles were being launched from other parts of the world.Although all of these warning times are shockingly short, it is clear that a warning time of 19 minutes versus one of eight to nine minutes could make the difference between forcing Russia to rely on an automated decision that could lead to the accidental destruction of the United States and Western Europe, or instead on a more reasoned assessment by political leaders and highly professional military commanders.Any appropriately knowledgeable expert who has listened carefully to Putin's numerous statements about nuclear weapons would know that he has a detailed knowledge of this warning system and its limitations. He has regularly shown up at the inaugurations of early warning radar sites, overtly indicating his concerns about the need for adequate and reliable early warning systems.The Russians do currently have an extremely limited space-based early warning system. The system only observes the U.S. ICBM fields near its northern borders and cannot be proliferated to provide global coverage against U.S. submarine missiles. It does not even have 24-hour coverage of the U.S. ICBM fields, since nine satellites are needed to provide that coverage and only four are active at this time.I have sought to warn the U.S. government leadership of this serious problem, which could have been solved 30 years ago by the U.S. "lending" certain technologies to the Russians. My proposals involved providing the Russians with specialized space-qualified infrared arrays and electronics that would allow them to build their own systems.This technology would not give the Russians any sensitive military secrets. There would be no way for the Russians to "reverse engineer" these implementing components. Just like the most advanced computer chips, only a vast technical enterprise could achieve such an end.Instead of recognizing that it is in the interest of the entire world for both Russia and the United States to have reliable and capable early warning systems, at that time, the Clinton administration largely ignored this serious problem, which I believe threatens the survival of civilization even today. Other administrations that followed did no better.The bottom line is that this grave danger to human civilization, and possibly human survival, could have been solved by competent political leadership almost 30 years ago, to the benefit of the entire world. But it wasn't, which makes the attack on the radars now a potential crisis.

Neil Brownsword is an artist, researcher, and educator who holds professorial positions in ceramics at Staffordshire University and the University of Bergen. This essay is based on a lecture given on 5 December 2020 as part of the Centre's Public Lecture Course, Ceramics in Britain, 1750 to Now, which you can watch at: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/obsolescence-and-renewal-reimagining-north-staffordshires-ceramic-heritage Obsolescence and Renewal The six towns that constitute Stoke-on-Trent have been famed for their industrial-scale pottery manufacture since the early eighteenth century. By the 1720s, growing consumer demand for finer ceramics led to skill specialisation, and the local population's integration into an economy led by the manufacture of pottery. Alongside pioneers of the industrial revolution such as Wedgwood and Spode, the Staffordshire potteries were driven by hundreds of smaller factories with more than 2,000 kilns firing millions of products a year. By 1938, half the workforce of Stoke-on-Trent worked in the 'Potteries', with employment peaking in 1948 at an estimated 79,000 people. During the last three decades, however, many North Staffordshire-based companies have struggled to compete in both domestic and export markets. In the 1990s, many factories were forced to outsource production to East Asia, where energy and direct labour costs were a fraction compared to those in North Staffordshire. This strategy, coupled with advances in production technology, has been significantly detrimental to traditional practices that once fashioned material objects in particular ways – many of which are now endangered as few apprenticeships exist to effectively transfer this knowledge. The displacement of much of Stoke-on-Trent's manufacturing capacity has accelerated regional decline, with cultural regeneration hailed by policymakers as a universal panacea to transform industrial ruin into aestheticised backdrops for artistic consumption. Yet within the regeneration agenda of place there is often an unseemly haste for local government and cultural organisations to circumvent the human fallout of industrial change, in favour of a more 'managed' account of the recent past. Thus, the psychological and emotional dimensions of industrial history – the first-hand recollections surrounding networks, social bonds, and pride forged by collective skill, can be all too easily side-lined. Since 2013, I have used my artistic profile to foreground the embodied knowledge of skilled personnel formerly employed in North Staffordshire's ceramic industry to challenge both this politicised amnesia, and charges of me being complicit in a 'retrospective idealisation' of the industrial past. Through collaborative performance, object installation, and filmed re-enactment, the work has sought to bring critical attention to people and traditional knowledge displaced by the effects of British economic policies that favour low regulation in global trade. I have staged site-specific performative interventions at numerous post-industrial spaces and high-profile cultural venues, to elucidate and rejuvenate skilled practices often considered outmoded or economically unviable for contemporary production. FACTORY, staged in 2017 at Icheon World Ceramic Center, South Korea, centred on six performances that addressed the cultural hierarchies and value systems of two distinct ceramic traditions. In Britain today, the regressive utopianism of John Ruskin and William Morris and Anglo-Oriental doctrines of the studio pottery movement continue to galvanise notions of spiritual and moral superiority associated with 'handcraft', and to relegate industrial know-how to a position of inferiority. Both Bernard Leach and Yanagi Soetsu, during a period of British and Japanese imperialist power in the early twentieth century, romantically venerated the 'humble beauty' of 'peasant' pottery from the Korean peninsula. As part of its processes of decolonisation at the end of World War II, South Korea adopted a nationalist discourse around its Joseon legacy, and subsequently introduced laws to protect its heritage and reinforce its cultural identity. At the forefront of UNESCO's 1993 campaign to preserve and promote "Living Human Treasures", South Korea now grants special status to individuals with exceptional cultural ability. In 2003, the UNESCO convention to safeguard 'intangible cultural heritage' further advocated support for the transmission of tacit knowledge, skills, and practices. A total of 178 countries have now ratified this convention, effectively making 'intangible heritage' part of their cultural policy – but unfortunately the UK is not one of them. In response to this, FACTORY collided the ceramic practices of two ex-industry personnel from Stoke-on-Trent – china flower-maker Rita Floyd and mould-maker James Adams – with the culturally revered dexterity of Korean master artisans. China flower-making remains one of the few methods of mass production that relies completely upon the dexterity of the hand. With changing fashion, this industry in Stoke-on-Trent has all but disappeared, with Rita Floyd being one of a handful of still-practising artisans who retain this knowledge. Floyd's performance provided an intimate space for audiences to witness her rhythmic intricacies of touch through predetermined patterns of repetition, efficiency, and uniformity. Yet to avoid staging a passive spectacle, typical of 'authorised heritage discourse', Floyd was instructed to continuously discard her manufacture onto a 6-metre production line built within the gallery. These symbolic gestures gave unprescribed form to each crafted component, with their distortion and random coalescence dictated by gravity and the material's plasticity. Floyd's intermittent performances and the linear deposits of waste that accumulated in the space were flanked by two film loops that meditated on industrial transition in Stoke-on-Trent. The films juxtaposed haptic knowledge, documented during the restructuring of the Wedgwood factory in 2004, against a 2016 survey of abandoned industrial sites reclaimed by the forces of nature. These intersecting modes of expression both signal the British government's disregard for intangible heritage and the human consequences of globalisation, and challenge notions that specialist knowledge becomes 'redundant' once the support networks of the factory cease to exist. Instead, they consider industrial heritage as a 'living process' and seek its rejuvenation and continuation for the future. Within the gallery space, production remnants salvaged from historic sites of ceramic manufacture were also stripped of their previously assigned use and presented inside vitrines. These artefacts had been marked by a particular point in time, as prior to the factories' closure they were deconstructed to deter their use in subsequent reproduction. To avoid their display becoming mere objectification, these items were performatively remoulded by Korean master Sinhyun Cho, and subsequently cast in porcelain and decorated by other master artisans – carver Yongjun Cho and painter Wonjeong Lee. Faced with these fragmentary reproductions of post-industrial discard, the artisans were given free rein to use traditional iconography, creating tension between culturally inherited notions of value and perfection. A further collaboration began with a series of partially formed moon jars, created by Living National Treasure Seo Kwang-su, who is renowned for continuing many archetypical forms of Korean ceramics. James Adams then took these casually assembled components into a less-revered craft – production mould-making – which was instrumental to ceramic manufacture in North Staffordshire, and paradoxically eradicated human touch through modes of standardisation. This use of human interaction lay counter to 'fixed in the past' demonstrations of skill and virtuosity, which heritage tourism deploys minus the complexities of social redundancy. FACTORY sought to counter such tropes, and practices of 'othering' more generally – whether experienced by marginalised groups in Britain or between British and South Korean artists – via collaborative modes of investigation that stimulated discourse, interactivity, and sensory understanding through the cultural exchange of tacit and explicit knowledge. Reactivating 'obsolescence' through non-commercial production created a space where people with marginalised immaterial heritage could speak for themselves and renegotiate their value, in a context where such embodiments of knowledge are culturally revered, renewed, and sustained for future generations.

Tesi per compendi d'articles, amb diferents seccions retallades per drets de l'editor. ; Although silicon (Si) is used in most current commercial power semiconductor components, Si capabilities are insufficient for new energy conversion requirements. Some of its important limitations are related with power losses, operation temperature, radiation hardness and switching speed. Then, new semiconductor materials must be developed to face the future global energetic challenges, overcoming Si intrinsic limitations. Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a proper wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor with high critical electric field strength and a high saturation carrier's drift velocity, which makes it able to sustain higher voltages with lower conduction losses. Furthermore, in a similar way to Si, SiC native oxide (SiO2) can be formed. However, a drawback of SiC MOSFETs is their poor oxide reliability and low channel mobility values attributed to a poor SiO2/SiC interface quality, with high density of interface traps (Dit) and near interface oxide traps (NIOTs). Nitridation processes, consisting in a nitric or nitrous oxide (NO, N2O) annealing is considered as the standard post oxidation annealing approach in 4H-SiC MOSFETs, being commonly used in commercial SiC power MOSFETs for reducing the Dit and NIOTs. However the nitridation interface passivation is not enough and, furthermore the limit of the improvement provided by nitridation has been reached. This thesis is focused on 4H-SiC-based power devices, particularly, on one of the major issues in SiC technology: to find a suitable and reliable fabrication process that improves the gate oxide and SiO2/SiC interface quality and reliability. Regarding electrical performances, we will focus on two of the major challenges of this field: the improvement of the inversion channel mobility, and the gate oxide stability, in order to further reduce the on-resistance and enhance the gate oxide reliability. Both problems are related to the defects near the SiO2/SiC interface. To meet these challenges and improve the current gate oxide quality state-of-the-art, several strategies were followed. We have worked on a newly interface passivation by oxynitridation methods combined with a boron diffusion treatment through the gate oxide. This novel approach allowed us to reach significantly high channel mobility values, up to 200 cm2/Vs. We also extensively studied the impact of the boron treatment parameters on the stability performances of our test structures, revealing some stability issues, especially at high temperature operation. In parallel, we have also worked on the improvement of the dielectric reliability by using a thin layer of a high-k material. On the other hand, equally important, we studied the different fabrication issues found during the gate dielectric optimisation process. Taking into account the specific performances of our devices, we adapted the electrical and physical characterization processes required for a complete study of this kind of high mobility devices (for both, oxide and interface quality characterization, and final electrical MOSFET performance). Finally, some studies which provide information about boron treatment impact on the oxide and interface traps, and about the global electrical behaviour of our devices are included in this thesis; concretely: i) A study on MOSFET mobility anisotropy, having into account different scattering mechanisms involved in channel carrier's mobility. ii) The effect of MOSFET channel dimensions in the obtained channel mobility. iii) A comparison of B passivation effect on MOSFETs fabricated over 4H-SiC and 6H-SiC polytypes. As a result, despite our new boron doping process is still not mature to be used in commercial devices, it allowed us to progress in the understanding of some of the phenomena taking place at the SiO2/SiC interface, in the way to properly characterise and interpret them, and in the way to further improve the MOS structure on SiC. ; El silici (Si) és el semiconductor utilitzat en la majoria de components comercials de potència, no obstant, les seves propietats intrínseques són insuficients per als nous requeriments de conversió energètica, fent que sigui necessari el desenvolupament de nous materials semiconductors. Les seves limitacions estan relacionades amb les pèrdues tèrmiques, la temperatura de funcionament, la resistència a la radiació o la velocitat de commutació. Un material semiconductor adequat és el Carbur de Silici (SiC) el qual té un alt valor de camp elèctric crític i un alt valor de saturació de la velocitat de portadors, cosa que el fa capaç de mantenir altes tensions amb menors pèrdues per conducció. A més a més, com passa amb el Si, es pot formar diòxid de silici (SiO2) natiu sobre el SiC. Un inconvenient dels MOSFETs de SiC és la baixa fiabilitat del òxids i els baixos valors de mobilitat de canal, atribuïts a una mala qualitat de la interfície SiO2/SiC, que conté una alta densitat de trampes a la interfície (Dit) i al òxid proper a la interfície (NIOTs). Els MOSFETs comercials de 4H-SiC són sotmesos a un procés tèrmic standard post-oxidació. Aquest consisteix en un recuit en òxid nítric o òxid nitrós (NO, N2O), amb propòsit de reduir la Dit i els NIOTs. Tot i així, la passivació de la interfície assolida mitjançant la nitridació no és suficient i s'ha arribat al límit de millora que pot proporcionar aquest procediment. Aquesta tesi està dirigida a resoldre un dels principals problemes de la tecnologia en 4H-SiC: trobar un procés de fabricació adequat i fiable que millori la qualitat i la fiabilitat tant de l'òxid de porta com de la interfície SiO2/SiC, per a la seva aplicació en dispositius de potència. Pel que fa a les prestacions elèctriques, ens centrem en dos dels principals reptes d'aquest àmbit: la millora de la mobilitat del canal d'inversió i l'estabilitat de l'òxid de porta, per tal de reduir la resistència del canal drenador-font i millorar la fiabilitat de l'òxid de porta. Per assolir aquests reptes i millorar la tecnologia actual lligada a l'optimització de l'òxid de porta, seguim diverses estratègies: Per una banda, utilitzar una nova passivació d'interfície mitjançant mètodes d'oxinitridació combinats amb un tractament de difusió de bor (B) a través de l'òxid de la porta. Estudiant també quin és el seu impacte sobre l'estabilitat de les estructures tant a temperatura ambient com a altes temperatures. Aquest nou procés ha permès assolir valors de mobilitat del canal significativament elevats, fins a 200 cm2/Vs. Per altra banda hem treballat en la millora de la fiabilitat del dielèctric mitjançant una capa prima d'un material d'alta k. Paral·lelament, s'han estudiat diferents problemes de fabricació trobats durant el procés d'optimització del dielèctric. Tenint en compte les prestacions específiques dels nostres dispositius, vam adaptar els processos de caracterització elèctrica i física necessaris per a un estudi complet, tant de la qualitat de l'òxid i la interfície, com per al rendiment elèctric del MOSFET final. Finalment, en aquest treball s'inclouen alguns estudis que proporcionen informació sobre l'impacte que té la difusió de B sobre la Dit, els NIOTs i, en general el comportament elèctric dels nostres dispositius. Concretament: i) L'anisotropia de la mobilitat dels MOSFETs, tenint en compte els diferents mecanismes de dispersió implicats en la mobilitat dels portadors. ii) L'efecte de les dimensions del canal sobre la mobilitat obtinguda. iii) Comparació de l'efecte de passivació que té el B sobre MOSFETs fabricats en els politipus 4H-SiC i 6H-SiC. Malgrat el procés de dopatge de bor presentat encara no està suficientment madur per ser utilitzat en dispositius comercials, ens ha permès progressar en la comprensió d'alguns dels fenòmens que tenen lloc a la interfície SiO2 ; Postprint (published version)

Several socioeconomic factors are leading governments to encourage electric powered vehicles. Currently, the bottleneck for electric vehicles mass production lies in the high voltage battery technology. One of the main challenges to ensure batteries safety, comfort, performance and durability requirements is thermal management, since operating at temperatures outside the range specified by the manufacturer, they age prematurely, lead to dangerous and uncontrolled exothermic reactions and/or be incapable of delivering the electric energy demand to move the vehicle. The tendency in the solutions design for thermal management is to use cooling circuits with more and more sophisticated architectures governed by an increasing number of electrical actuators like pumps, fans and solenoid valves. The control of these systems is complex due to their nonlinear behavior, the high number of inputs and outputs and the need of accomplishing multiple goals, usually contradictory, at the same time. In front of this class of problems, conventional control methods are taken to their limit and new optimization based methods, like model predictive control, capable of exploiting the full potential in this kind of systems, are attracting the attention of the sector. The present thesis deals with the design of a predictive control for the battery and power electronics cooling circuit in a Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle. The main merit of the proposed solution is that the method validation takes places in a prototype on real-time, which, as it will be seen in the state of the art, is one of the usual lacks in most model predictive control publications in the automotive sector. For reaching this settlement, the development of a suitable model of the system and optimization problem definition together with the use of an efficient and robust numerical tool, have been essential and therefore will be addressed exhaustively in this document. Additionally, the validation by means of simulation as well as the design of repeatable driving conditions for comparing the proposed control with the original one in the vehicle will be shown before reaching the final validation and discussion. ; Diversos factores socioeconómicos están llevando a los gobiernos a fomentar los vehículos propulsados eléctricamente. Actualmente, el cuello de botella para la producción en masa del vehículo eléctrico reside en la tecnología de la batería de alta tensión. Uno de los retos principales para asegurar las prestaciones de seguridad, confort, funcionamiento y durabilidad de la batería es la gestión térmica, ya que a temperaturas alejadas de las especificadas por el fabricante, ésta envejece de forma prematura, dar lugar a una peligrosa y descontrolada reacción exotérmica y/o ser incapaz de entregar la energía eléctrica necesaria para mover el vehículo. La tendencia en el diseño de soluciones para la gestión térmica, es la de usar circuitos de refrigeración con arquitecturas cada vez más sofisticadas que implican la necesidad de un mayor número de actuadores eléctricos como bombas, ventiladores y electroválvulas. El control de estos sistemas es complejo debido a su comportamiento no lineal, al elevado número de entradas y salidas y a la necesidad de lograr varios objetivos a la vez a menudo contradictorios. Ante esta clase de problemas, los métodos convencionales de control son llevados a su límite y nuevos métodos basados en optimización, como el control predictivo, capaces de explotar el potencial de este tipo de sistemas, empiezan a atraer la atención del sector. Esta tesis trata del diseño de un control predictivo para la gestión térmica del circuito de refrigeración de la batería y la electrónica de potencia en un vehículo híbrido enchufable. El principal mérito de la solución propuesta es la validación del método en un prototipo en tiempo real, que según se verá en la revisión del estado del arte, es una de las principales carencias en la mayoría de estudios de esta técnica en automoción. Para llegar a esta solución, el desarrollo de un modelo del sistema adecuado y la definición del problema de optimización en combinación con el uso de una herramienta numérica fiable y robusta, han sido imprescindibles y por eso ocuparán una parte importante de este documento. Asimismo la validación por medio de simulación previa a la experimental, así como el diseño de unas condiciones de conducción repetibles, para comparar el control propuesto con el original del vehículo, serán tratadas antes de llegar a la validación y discusión finales ; Diversos factors socioeconòmics estan portant als governs a fomentar els vehicles propulsats elèctricament. Actualment, el coll d'ampolla per a la producció en massa del vehicle elèctric resideix a la tecnologia de la bateria d'alta tensió. Un dels reptes principals per assegurar les prestacions de seguretat, confort, funcionament i durabilitat de la bateria és la gestió tèrmica, ja que a temperatures allunyades de les especificades pel fabricant, aquesta envelleix de forma prematura, donar lloc a una perillosa i descontrolada reacció exotèrmica i/o ser incapaç de lliurar l'energia elèctrica necessària per moure el vehicle. La tendència en el disseny de solucions per a la gestió tèrmica, és la d'usar circuits de refrigeració amb arquitectures cada vegada més sofisticades que impliquen la necessitat d'un major nombre d'actuadors elèctrics com a bombes, ventiladors i electrovàlvules. El control d'aquests sistemes és complex a causa del seu comportament no lineal, a l'elevat nombre d'entrades i sortides i a la necessitat de assolir diversos objectius alhora sovint contradictoris. Davant aquesta classe de problemes, els mètodes convencionals de control són portats al seu límit i nous mètodes basats en optimització, com el control predictiu, capaços d'explotar el potencial d'aquest tipus de sistemes, comencen a atreure l'atenció del sector. Aquesta tesi tracta del disseny d'un control predictiu per a la gestió tèrmica del circuit de refrigeració de la bateria i l'electrònica de potència en un vehicle híbrid endollable. El principal mèrit de la solució proposada és la validació del mètode en un prototip en temps real, que segons es veurà en la revisió de l'estat de l'art, és una de les principals manques en la majoria d'estudis d'aquesta tècnica en automoció. Per arribar a aquesta solució, el desenvolupament d'un model del sistema adequat i la definició del problema d'optimització en combinació amb l'ús d'una eina numèrica fiable i robusta, han estat imprescindibles i per això ocuparan una part important d'aquest document. Així mateix la validació per mitjà de simulació prèvia a l'experimental, així com el disseny d'unes condicions de conducció repetibles, per comparar el control proposat amb l'original del vehicle, seran tractades abans d'arribar a la validació i discussió finals. ; Elektrisch angetriebene Fahrzeuge werden derzeit aus unterschiedlichen sozioökonomischen Gründen von den Regierungen gefördert. Der Flaschenhals für die Massenproduktion von dieser Technologie ist die Hochvoltbatterie, die mehrere Herausforderungen um die Sicherheit, Komfort, Performance und Lebensdauer Anforderungen zu erfüllen begegnet. Das Thermomanagement ist eine davon, da der Batterie Temperaturbetrieb außerhalb des vom Hersteller angegebenen Bereiches führ zur vorzeitigen Alterung, gefährlichen und unkontrollierten exothermischen Reaktionen und Stromversorgungsbeschränkungen, die den Antrieb des Fahrzeugs verhindern. Der Trend in das Design von Thermomanagementlösungen geht dahin, immer ausgeklügelter Kühlkreislaufarchitekturen zu verwenden, wobei eine steigende Anzahl von elektrischen Aktoren wie Pumpen, Lüftern und Ventilen, benötigt werden. Die Regelung solcher Systeme ist komplex aufgrund ihres nichtlinearen Verhaltens, der zahlreichen Eingängen und Ausgängen und des Bedürfnisses mehrere Ziele gleichzeitig zu erfüllen. Angesichts dieser Aufgabenstellung, werden die konventionelle Regelungsmethoden an ihre Grenzen gebracht und neue optimierungsbasierten Methoden wie die modellbasierte prädiktive Regelung, die das volle Potential solcher Systeme ausnutzen können, beginnen die Aufmerksamkeit der Autoindustrie auf sich zu lenken. Die vorliegende Arbeit handelt von dem Design einer modellbasierten prädiktiven Regelung für das Thermomanagement des Batterie- und Leistungselektronikkühlkreislaufs in einem Plug-In Hybrid Fahrzeug. Der Hauptverdienst der vorgeschlagenen Lösung ist die Methodenvalidierung in einem Prototyp in Echtzeit, was häufig, wie in der Stand der Technik angeführt werden wird, einer der Mangeln der meisten Veröffentlichungen in dieser Branche ist. Um zu dieser Lösung zu gelangen, eine geeignete Modellierung und ptimierungsproblembeschreibung sowie ein effizientes und robustes numerischesWerkzeug waren wesentlich und spielen deshalb eine wichtige Rolle in diesem Dokument. Weitere angegangene Punkte bevor der Versuchsauswertung und Schlussfolgerungen, sind die Simulationsvalidierung und das Entwurf von wiederholbaren Fahrbedingungen für einen gültigen Vergleich der vorgeschlagenen Regelung gegenüber der ursprünglichen im Fahrzeug. ; Postprint (published version)

En la actualidad, en torno al 90% de la población de la Unión Europea se encuentra expuesta a altas concentraciones de algunos de los contaminantes atmosféricos más nocivos para la salud, reduciendo la esperanza de vida de la población y ocasionando un fuerte impacto económico en el producto interior bruto de los países. Dentro de los sectores económicos, el transporte se presenta como una de las principales fuentes de contaminación ya que genera niveles nocivos de emisiones contaminantes y es el responsable de hasta el 24% de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) en la Unión Europea. Estas emisiones dependen en gran medida de los combustibles utilizados, de la carga y tecnología del motor de los vehículos y principalmente de las distancias recorridas. El problema de la distribución de productos desde los almacenes a los usuarios finales juega un papel central en la gestión de algunos sistemas logísticos, donde la determinación de rutas de reparto eficientes es fundamental en la reducción de costes. Este problema en la vida real, se caracteriza por disponer las empresas de distribución de una flota heterogénea, en la que vehículos con diferentes características son incorporados a lo largo del tiempo para una mejor adaptación a las demandas de los clientes. Entre las características más destacadas se encuentran vehículos con diferentes capacidades y antigüedad, usos de combustibles alternativos y tecnología del motor. Por todo ello, en el contexto actual la componente medioambiental tiene que ser añadida en el proceso de toma de decisiones a las estrategias logísticas tradicionales, basadas en costes y tiempos. Esta Tesis Doctoral se ha centrado en su mayor parte al desarrollo de nuevos modelos y algoritmos para la resolución del Problema de Enrutamiento de Vehículos con Flota Fija Heterogénea y Ventanas de Tiempo (HVRPTW), con la consideración adicional de reducir las emisiones de GEI y de partículas contaminantes. La formulación del problema se realiza desde dos perspectivas muy diferenciadas. La primera de ellas incorpora una metodología basada en la estimación de los costes asociados a las externalidades presentes en las actividades del transporte. La segunda perspectiva comprende técnicas de optimización multiobjetivo con asignación de preferencias a priori, en el que el decisor puede establecer sus preferencias por adelantado. La elaboración de las rutas eco-eficientes se plantea mediante modelos lineales de programación matemática y se resuelve usando técnicas cuantitativas. Estas técnicas comprenden algoritmos heurísticos y metaheurísticos que combinan diversos procedimientos avanzados para tratar la complejidad del problema. En particular, esta Tesis describe una heurística de inserción secuencial semi-paralela y una metaheurística híbrida de búsqueda de entorno variable descendente con búsqueda tabú y lista de espera, que introduce una mayor flexibilidad para la resolución de cualquier variante del problema HVRPTW. Los algoritmos han sido aplicados a problemas típicos de recogida y reparto de mercancías de la literatura científica y a un caso real, que comprende la planificación de rutas y personal en una empresa de servicios con características y restricciones muy peculiares. Los resultados demuestran que el algoritmo resuelve de manera eficiente la variante del problema abordado y es extensible para la resolución de otras variantes. El resultado de la Tesis es el desarrollo de una herramienta para la ayuda a la toma de decisiones en el diseño y control de rutas eco-eficientes. Dicha herramienta podrá integrarse con el sistema de información geográfica (GIS) particular de cada empresa y permitirá la visualización de las rutas eco-eficientes, evaluando el impacto producido en los ámbitos económico, energético, operativo y medioambiental. Por ello, la herramienta tendrá un impacto económico directo sobre los usuarios finales y permitirá la comparación de rutas y resultados obtenidos a partir de diferentes alternativas, logrando una mayor competitividad y el cumplimiento de los compromisos de sostenibilidad en la empresa. Por otro lado, a nivel global, la herramienta contribuye a una mejora social derivada de una reducción del consumo energético y de una disminución de las emisiones contaminantes de las flotas de transporte de mercancías por carretera, que tienen un impacto a nivel local, nacional e internacional. En este sentido, la Tesis Doctoral contribuye claramente al desarrollo estratégico del sector transporte de mercancías, aumentando la eficiencia de las flotas de transporte por carretera y logrando una mayor sostenibilidad y competitividad. ; Nowadays, around 90% of city dwellers in the European Union are exposed to high concentrations of healthharmful pollutants, reducing the life expectancy of the population and having a large impact on the gross domestic product of European countries. Among the economic sectors, transport is presented as one of the main sources of pollution because it generates harmful levels of emissions and is responsible for up to 24% of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in the European Union. These emissions depend heavily on the fuel type used, the carried load, the engine technology and the total distance covered. The problem of the distribution of goods from warehouses to end users plays a central role in the logistics systems management, where the design of efficient routes is critical in reducing costs. This real-life problem is characterized by presenting a heterogeneous fleet where vehicles with different features are incorporated over the time for a better adaptation to the changing customer demands. These features include vehicles with different capacities and age, alternative fuels and motor technologies. Therefore, in the present context, environmental targets are to be added to traditional logistics strategies based on cost and time in the decision making process. The research of this Thesis has focused on the development of new mathematical models and algorithms for solving the Fixed Fleet Heterogeneous Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (HVRPTW) with the additional consideration of reducing GHG and pollutants emissions. The formulation of the problem is made from two different perspectives. The first incorporates a methodology based on the estimation of the external costs of transport activities. The second perspective comprises a multiobjective optimization method with a priori articulation of preferences, in which the decision maker can establish the preferences in advance. The design of eco-efficient routes is proposed by linear mathematical programming models and is solved using quantitative techniques. These techniques include heuristics and metaheuristics that combine various advanced procedures to deal with the complexity of the problem. In particular, this Thesis describes a semi-parallel insertion heuristic and a hybrid variable neighborhood descent metaheuristic based on a tabu search algorithm for the local search and a holding list that achieves flexibility for solving any HVRPTW variant. The algorithms have been applied to benchmark problems from the scientific literature and to a real-world case that deals with a routing and scheduling problem in a service company with particular characteristics and constraints. The results show that the algorithm efficiently solves the problem addressed and it can be extended to other problem variants. The result of the Thesis is the development of a decision making process tool aimed to help in the design and control of eco-efficient routes. This tool can be integrated with the particular geographic information system (GIS) of each company, allowing the display of eco-efficient routes and assessing the economic, energy, operational and environmental impacts. Therefore, the tool will have an economic impact on the end users, with a comparison of the final routes and the results obtained from different alternatives, achieving greater competitiveness and fulfilling the sustainability commitments in the company. On the other hand, the tool globally contributes to a social improvement resulting from the fuel consumption and pollutant emissions reductions from road transport, which have an impact at local, national and international level. In this sense, the Thesis clearly contributes to the strategic development of the transport sector, increasing the efficiency of road transport fleets and achieving greater sustainability and competitiveness.

Several socioeconomic factors are leading governments to encourage electric powered vehicles. Currently, the bottleneck for electric vehicles mass production lies in the high voltage battery technology. One of the main challenges to ensure batteries safety, comfort, performance and durability requirements is thermal management, since operating at temperatures outside the range specified by the manufacturer, they age prematurely, lead to dangerous and uncontrolled exothermic reactions and/or be incapable of delivering the electric energy demand to move the vehicle. The tendency in the solutions design for thermal management is to use cooling circuits with more and more sophisticated architectures governed by an increasing number of electrical actuators like pumps, fans and solenoid valves. The control of these systems is complex due to their nonlinear behavior, the high number of inputs and outputs and the need of accomplishing multiple goals, usually contradictory, at the same time. In front of this class of problems, conventional control methods are taken to their limit and new optimization based methods, like model predictive control, capable of exploiting the full potential in this kind of systems, are attracting the attention of the sector. The present thesis deals with the design of a predictive control for the battery and power electronics cooling circuit in a Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle. The main merit of the proposed solution is that the method validation takes places in a prototype on real-time, which, as it will be seen in the state of the art, is one of the usual lacks in most model predictive control publications in the automotive sector. For reaching this settlement, the development of a suitable model of the system and optimization problem definition together with the use of an efficient and robust numerical tool, have been essential and therefore will be addressed exhaustively in this document. Additionally, the validation by means of simulation as well as the design of repeatable driving conditions for comparing the proposed control with the original one in the vehicle will be shown before reaching the final validation and discussion. ; Diversos factores socioeconómicos están llevando a los gobiernos a fomentar los vehículos propulsados eléctricamente. Actualmente, el cuello de botella para la producción en masa del vehículo eléctrico reside en la tecnología de la batería de alta tensión. Uno de los retos principales para asegurar las prestaciones de seguridad, confort, funcionamiento y durabilidad de la batería es la gestión térmica, ya que a temperaturas alejadas de las especificadas por el fabricante, ésta envejece de forma prematura, dar lugar a una peligrosa y descontrolada reacción exotérmica y/o ser incapaz de entregar la energía eléctrica necesaria para mover el vehículo. La tendencia en el diseño de soluciones para la gestión térmica, es la de usar circuitos de refrigeración con arquitecturas cada vez más sofisticadas que implican la necesidad de un mayor número de actuadores eléctricos como bombas, ventiladores y electroválvulas. El control de estos sistemas es complejo debido a su comportamiento no lineal, al elevado número de entradas y salidas y a la necesidad de lograr varios objetivos a la vez a menudo contradictorios. Ante esta clase de problemas, los métodos convencionales de control son llevados a su límite y nuevos métodos basados en optimización, como el control predictivo, capaces de explotar el potencial de este tipo de sistemas, empiezan a atraer la atención del sector. Esta tesis trata del diseño de un control predictivo para la gestión térmica del circuito de refrigeración de la batería y la electrónica de potencia en un vehículo híbrido enchufable. El principal mérito de la solución propuesta es la validación del método en un prototipo en tiempo real, que según se verá en la revisión del estado del arte, es una de las principales carencias en la mayoría de estudios de esta técnica en automoción. Para llegar a esta solución, el desarrollo de un modelo del sistema adecuado y la definición del problema de optimización en combinación con el uso de una herramienta numérica fiable y robusta, han sido imprescindibles y por eso ocuparán una parte importante de este documento. Asimismo la validación por medio de simulación previa a la experimental, así como el diseño de unas condiciones de conducción repetibles, para comparar el control propuesto con el original del vehículo, serán tratadas antes de llegar a la validación y discusión finales ; Diversos factors socioeconòmics estan portant als governs a fomentar els vehicles propulsats elèctricament. Actualment, el coll d'ampolla per a la producció en massa del vehicle elèctric resideix a la tecnologia de la bateria d'alta tensió. Un dels reptes principals per assegurar les prestacions de seguretat, confort, funcionament i durabilitat de la bateria és la gestió tèrmica, ja que a temperatures allunyades de les especificades pel fabricant, aquesta envelleix de forma prematura, donar lloc a una perillosa i descontrolada reacció exotèrmica i/o ser incapaç de lliurar l'energia elèctrica necessària per moure el vehicle. La tendència en el disseny de solucions per a la gestió tèrmica, és la d'usar circuits de refrigeració amb arquitectures cada vegada més sofisticades que impliquen la necessitat d'un major nombre d'actuadors elèctrics com a bombes, ventiladors i electrovàlvules. El control d'aquests sistemes és complex a causa del seu comportament no lineal, a l'elevat nombre d'entrades i sortides i a la necessitat de assolir diversos objectius alhora sovint contradictoris. Davant aquesta classe de problemes, els mètodes convencionals de control són portats al seu límit i nous mètodes basats en optimització, com el control predictiu, capaços d'explotar el potencial d'aquest tipus de sistemes, comencen a atreure l'atenció del sector. Aquesta tesi tracta del disseny d'un control predictiu per a la gestió tèrmica del circuit de refrigeració de la bateria i l'electrònica de potència en un vehicle híbrid endollable. El principal mèrit de la solució proposada és la validació del mètode en un prototip en temps real, que segons es veurà en la revisió de l'estat de l'art, és una de les principals manques en la majoria d'estudis d'aquesta tècnica en automoció. Per arribar a aquesta solució, el desenvolupament d'un model del sistema adequat i la definició del problema d'optimització en combinació amb l'ús d'una eina numèrica fiable i robusta, han estat imprescindibles i per això ocuparan una part important d'aquest document. Així mateix la validació per mitjà de simulació prèvia a l'experimental, així com el disseny d'unes condicions de conducció repetibles, per comparar el control proposat amb l'original del vehicle, seran tractades abans d'arribar a la validació i discussió finals. ; Elektrisch angetriebene Fahrzeuge werden derzeit aus unterschiedlichen sozioökonomischen Gründen von den Regierungen gefördert. Der Flaschenhals für die Massenproduktion von dieser Technologie ist die Hochvoltbatterie, die mehrere Herausforderungen um die Sicherheit, Komfort, Performance und Lebensdauer Anforderungen zu erfüllen begegnet. Das Thermomanagement ist eine davon, da der Batterie Temperaturbetrieb außerhalb des vom Hersteller angegebenen Bereiches führ zur vorzeitigen Alterung, gefährlichen und unkontrollierten exothermischen Reaktionen und Stromversorgungsbeschränkungen, die den Antrieb des Fahrzeugs verhindern. Der Trend in das Design von Thermomanagementlösungen geht dahin, immer ausgeklügelter Kühlkreislaufarchitekturen zu verwenden, wobei eine steigende Anzahl von elektrischen Aktoren wie Pumpen, Lüftern und Ventilen, benötigt werden. Die Regelung solcher Systeme ist komplex aufgrund ihres nichtlinearen Verhaltens, der zahlreichen Eingängen und Ausgängen und des Bedürfnisses mehrere Ziele gleichzeitig zu erfüllen. Angesichts dieser Aufgabenstellung, werden die konventionelle Regelungsmethoden an ihre Grenzen gebracht und neue optimierungsbasierten Methoden wie die modellbasierte prädiktive Regelung, die das volle Potential solcher Systeme ausnutzen können, beginnen die Aufmerksamkeit der Autoindustrie auf sich zu lenken. Die vorliegende Arbeit handelt von dem Design einer modellbasierten prädiktiven Regelung für das Thermomanagement des Batterie- und Leistungselektronikkühlkreislaufs in einem Plug-In Hybrid Fahrzeug. Der Hauptverdienst der vorgeschlagenen Lösung ist die Methodenvalidierung in einem Prototyp in Echtzeit, was häufig, wie in der Stand der Technik angeführt werden wird, einer der Mangeln der meisten Veröffentlichungen in dieser Branche ist. Um zu dieser Lösung zu gelangen, eine geeignete Modellierung und ptimierungsproblembeschreibung sowie ein effizientes und robustes numerischesWerkzeug waren wesentlich und spielen deshalb eine wichtige Rolle in diesem Dokument. Weitere angegangene Punkte bevor der Versuchsauswertung und Schlussfolgerungen, sind die Simulationsvalidierung und das Entwurf von wiederholbaren Fahrbedingungen für einen gültigen Vergleich der vorgeschlagenen Regelung gegenüber der ursprünglichen im Fahrzeug. ; Postprint (published version)

La discusión sobre la declinación americana ha generado una profusa literatura. Por ejemplo, un libro clásico fue publicado por Paul Kennedy, historiador británico y profesor de la Universidad de Yale. En "TheRise and Fall of the Great Powers" (RamdonHouse, 1987) el autor hace hincapié en la dinámica de "over-expansión" en la que sistemáticamente han caído los imperios y grandes potencias. Por su parte, el notable economista americano MancurOlson escribió un trabajo titulado "TheRise and Decline of Nations: EconomicGrowth, Stagflation and Social Regidities" (Yale UniversityPress, 1982). Olson prosigue en parte su saga de "La lógica de la acción colectiva" (Harvard UniversityPress, 1965) para argumentar que la prosperidad genera sobre-demandas por parte de grupos de interés ineficientes cuyas ineficiencias son subestimadas (racionalmente) por el resto porque se encuentran en una economía que ha sido, y se percibe que seguirá siendo, lo suficientemente productiva como para tolerar esas ineficiencias. Sin embargo, hay un momento en que la suma de ineficiencias y privilegios no puede seguir siendo tolerada por el resto y, paulatinamente, ello comienza a hacer mella en la tasa de innovación y crecimiento. Por otro lado, es también suficientemente amplia la literatura que duda o descree abiertamente de la declinación americana. Por ejemplo, podemos citar a los Profesores Michael Cox y Josef Joffe. Cox ha escrito breves pero profundos artículos (que se encuentran online) como "Powershift and thedeath of thewest? notyet!o "Is United States in Decline-Again? An Essay?".En cuanto a Joffe, acaba de salirsulibro "The Myth of American Decline: Politics, Economics and a Half Century of False Prophecies" (Liveright, 2013). Aquí, es importante destacar que mientras Cox critica a los profetas de la declinación desde una concepción de izquierda o neo marxista, Joffe lo hace desde una concepción conservadora. En una corta y precisa reseña del libro de Joffe, el diario "TheWal Street Journal" sintetiza la visión del autor: "Theauthor's case isbolsteredbythelonghistory of past false alarms. After the 1957 launch of Sputnik, Americans had a full-blown panic attack that they would be buried by the Soviet Union, as Nikita Khrushchev had famously promised. The U.S. was suffering a "crisis in education" along with a "missile gap." Paul Samuelson, the future economics Nobelist, predicted that the Soviet economy would overtake America's sometime around 1984. "Only self-delusion can keep us from admitting our decline to ourselves," a Harvard professor named Henry Kissinger mused in a 1961 book. Similar warnings and premonitions of decline would sound with every passing decade, usually in tandem with the emergence of another contender to the American throne. In 1979, Ezra Vogel, also a Harvard Professor, published "Japan as Number One." It helped inaugurate a decade of awe and hysteria about the country that—according to common belief—would own the 21st century". Por su parte, podemos marcar una tercera línea donde se encuentran autores que remarcan los problemas que enfrenta EE.UU. en el corto-mediano plazo pero que perciben que ello puede ser modificado o, al menos, atenuado. Por ejemplo, desde una perspectiva más académica podemos mencionaral Profesor de Harvard NiallFerguson y su notable saga que va desde "Colossus, theRise and Fall of the American Empire" (Penguin,2004), pasando por "TheAscent of Money: A FinancialHistory of theWorld" (Pinguin, 2008) y "Civilization: Thewest and therest" (Pinguin, 2011) hasta llegar a "The Great Degeneration: HowInstitutionsDecay and Economies Die" (Pinguin, 2012). Los 3 primeros libros citados son notables trabajos. Desde una perspectiva menos académica podemos mencionar al influyente periodista del TheNew York Times, Thomas Friedman. En el libro"That Used to be Us: What Went Wrong with America and How it Can Come Back" (Hachette, 2011), Friedman y Michael Mandelbaummencionanque los 4 desafíoscontemporaneous de los EE.UU. son: "1) How to adapt to globalization, 2) how to adjust to the information technology, 3) how to cope with deficits and debts, 4) how to manage a world of both rising energy consumption and rising climates threats".Sin embargo, es claro que para los autores los EE.UU. están en condiciones de enfrentar esos desafíos. La comparación con el ascenso de Oriente, particularmente China, se encuentra presente, en mayor o menor medida, en todos los trabajos mencionados. La declinación asume el ascenso de uno y la caída relativa de otro. Como mencionamos, eso no es un problema en sí mismo. Sin embargo, lo destacable de este proceso que se ha acelerado en la última década es lo sorprendente del crecimiento chino y lo sorprendente de algunos aspectos de la decadencia americana. Es muy posible que ambas situaciones no permanezcan en el mediano plazo en semejante dimensión. Es decir, es posible que el ascenso chino sea menos vertiginoso en el mediano plazo y es posible que la decadencia americana sea menos vertiginosa de lo que es. Sin embargo, la pregunta es otra: ¿En qué medida lo acontecido ya no supone un cambio estructural en la relación de poder como para relativizar determinadas consecuencias? Así, la declinación como análisis comparado gana relevancia aún cuando la historia contemporánea de los EE.UU. tiene demasiados antecedentes de inminentes procesos de declinación que, como menciona Joffe, no se concretaron: el "momento Sputnik", la crisis del petróleo, el "milagro japonés" y ahora el milagro chino. En verdad, cuando analizamos la declinación americana y estudiamos los indicadores socio-económicos relevantes del desempeño de China y Oriente en los últimos 30 años, estamos principalmente sopesando los desafíos que enfrentan el liberalismo y la sociedad abierta. Es poco importante la salud financiera y empresarial de los EE.UU. y, en cambio, es demasiado importante los desafíos y amenazas que supondrán para los derechos individuales la aparición de un sistema capitalista autoritario que ha generado un inédito bienestar a amplios sectores populares en Oriente, particularmente en China.La declinación posee dos ámbitos geo-políticos (interno y externo). Dentro del ámbito o escenario interno, encontramos dos variables principales: la calidad de la política y la productividad de la economía. Ambas se encuentran, lógicamente, en el actor que supuestamente declina (EE.UU.) y en el o los actores que supuestamente ascienden (China). El éxito contemporáneo de los EE.UU. ha descansado en la interacción virtuosa de ambas variables. La calidad de la política (es decir, la vigencia de pesos y contrapesos) ha contribuido a la productividad de la economía. La posible declinación relativa descansa en la dificultad de mantener una economía altamente productiva frente a una política deficitaria. Por otro lado, la ascendencia china ha reflejado en esta nación una virtuosa interacción entre política y economía. A diferencia de la experiencia americana, el éxito chino ha descansado en una interacción que reflejaba una economía productiva porque había ausencia de pesos y contrapesos. El Politburó del Partido Comunista Chino (PCI) expresa lo opuesto al Shutdown acontecido Washington en las dos primeras semanas de octubre de 2013. Es decir, la eficiencia americana ha descansado en una relación virtuosa entre política y economía. Esta forma de relacionamiento se encuentra en crisis. En cambio, la relación virtuosa entre política y economía china ha alcanzado su apogeo. Sin embargo, una hipótesis es que tanto la dinámica del fracaso americano como la del éxito chino son de corto plazo. Es decir, el nuevo orden emergente (un orden bipolar) sería un orden esencialmente inestable. Por un lado, el propio proceso democrático americano debiese encontrar (aunque no sabemos cuándo) un mecanismo para generar una interacción algo más virtuosa entre política y economía. Por otro lado, el proceso chino se enfrentará (aunque no sabemos cuándo) a las tensiones propias de una economía altamente productiva frente a una política altamente represiva. Si bien hoy sabemos que eso no es inexorable (y que la teoría de la modernización ha quedado acotada) también sabemos que es un arreglo institucional en algún lado, en algún punto, inestable.Sobre el autorUniversidad ORT-Uruguay

A side-looking sonar was constructed for military purposes during World War II as a development of forward-search sonars used for detection of foe submarines hiding motionless on a seabed. An unexpected career of sidescan sonars began with their implementation in marine geology. A sonar ability to recognise sediment roughness and consequently grain size allowed significant opportunities for sediment mapping, which were spatially more precise than the ones performed by sediment sampling. In addition, an acoustic shadow caused by close-seabed scanning over troughs and ridges allowed easier interpretation of the bottom morphology. These revolutionary features opened new ways of underwater exploration. Some multi-disciplinary applications of sonographs on continental shelves are presented in the introduction of this work after a technical description of a sidescan sonar system, and sonograph processing issues. The main objective of this work is to discuss three case studies on sidescan sonar applications in seabed dynamics research. Each of the study was constructed as a separate research paper qualified for prestigious journals and thus, the introductory part of this work is a descriptive supplement of information enclosed in the presented manuscripts. A case study from the southern Vietnamese shelf is focused on sand dunes mapping on the basis of not mosaicked sonographs. It was the first investigation on bedforms from this area; however it contains data only from the end of the winter monsoon. The shelf area was divided into five zones grouping dunes of similar size, shape and orientation. All located sand dunes higher than 1.5 m were described, summarized in a scatter plot of height/length ratio and thus compared to dunes observed on other shelves. The dunes orientation corresponded to the overall South China Sea circulation pattern during the winter monsoon. Therefore, the possibility of dunes mobilisation was investigated with the help of empirical equations predicting sediment transport. Depth-integrated velocities necessary to put sediment forming dunes in motion were calculated for distinguished zones. The results were discussed with hydrodynamic in-situ measurements of other authors and it was concluded that most of the investigated dunes were likely to migrate actively following the monsoon circulation. A case study from the Baltic Sea is a rare example of an investigation focused on changes in the morphology of pits created by anchor hopper dredging of marine sand and gravel aggregates. By means of sidescan sonar and multi-beam echosounder data, a six-year evolution of four pits was presented. In the case of three pits dredged in a sandy seabed faster smoothing of edges and infilling rates larger than in the case of a pit dredged in gravel were clearly observed. The edges of the gravel pit were expanding due to collapsing of the side-walls. The infilling of the pit was investigated based on approximations of pit depth by single- and multi-beam echosoundings, as well as acoustic shade length in the sonographs. Earlier studies of other authors on this pit allowed plotting a curve of infilling rate over six years of pit evolution. The filling clearly slowed down over time and the reasons for that are discussed in this paper. The sand screened in the dredging process surrounded the investigated pit and its backscatter values in sonographs clearly separate it from the gravel seabed. The area covered by the screened sand fraction was monitored and appeared to be decreasing in time. Hydrological data showed the possibility of frequent mobilisation of this fraction and therefore indicated it as the main source for pit infilling. A case study from the North Sea presents a unique approach of conversion analogue sidescan sonar data into digital, geo-referenced form in order to present morphological stability and birth of sorted bedforms. The analogue mosaic was geo-coded in a DECCA navigation system in 1977. DECCA system technology was described thoroughly and a study of the spatial errors was presented for accurate geo-referencing of the mosaic. Image warping by rubber-sheeting method was performed to compare old sonographs of a sorted bedform with sonographs from 2002. A continuation study of Dr. Markus Diesing et al. additionally contains a multi-beam backscatter mosaic from 2003 as a comparison data-set. The morphological stability of the bedforms over time was discussed in the paper and compared to worldwide examples. Hydrodynamic conditions influencing the bedforms were presented and a significant role of the tidal currents in shaping the sorted bedforms was demonstrated. An asymmetry of a newly appeared sorted bedform, however, was probably related rather to high energy storm events. Even though the sidescan sonar data were collected from three different seas for three different case studies in three different scales, sonographs proved to be a valuable tool in each of the cases. Minor limitations of sidescan sonar systems and options for applying other devices for the same types of investigations are discussed in the end of this work. ; Während des Zweiten Weltkrieges wurde für militärische Zwecke zum Aufspüren feindlicher Unterseeboote, die die sich bewegungslos auf dem Meeresgrund versteckten, ein seitwärts schauendes Sonar als Fortentwicklung des vorwärts schauenden Sonars gebaut. Eine unerwartete Karriere dieses Seitensicht-Sonars begann mit seiner Einführung in der Marinen Geologie. Die Fähigkeit des Sonars, die Sedimentrauhigkeit und infolgedessen die Korngröße zu erkennen, eröffnete bedeutende Möglichkeiten in der Sedimentkartierung mit einer räumlich besseren Auflösung als sie durch Probennahmen zu erreichen ist. Zusätzlich erlaubt ein akustischer Schatten, der durch bodennahes Überfahren von Vertiefungen und Erhebungen verursacht wird, eine einfachere Interpretation der Morphologie des Meeresgrundes. Diese revolutionären Eigenschaften öffneten neue Wege der Unterwassererforschung. Einige multidisziplinäre Anwendungen von Sonographen auf Kontinentalsockeln werden in der Einleitung zu dieser Arbeit neben technischen Besonderheiten des Seitensicht-Sonar-Systems und Implikationen bei der Verarbeitung von Sonographie-Daten beschrieben. Die Hauptzielsetzung dieser Arbeit ist es, drei Fallstudien der Anwendung eines Seitensicht-Sonars in Meeresgrunddynamikstudien darzustellen. Jede der Studien wurde für anerkannte Journale verfasst oder angenommen, der einleitende Teil dieser Arbeit ist eine beschreibende Ergänzung der Informationen in den vorgestellten Veröffentlichungen. Eine Fallstudie am Südvietnamesischen Kontinentalsockel ist auf die Kartierung der Sanddünen auf der Basis nicht zusammengesetzter Sonographie-Daten ausgerichtet. Es ist die erste Untersuchung von Bodenformen in diesem Gebiet, enthält jedoch nur Daten vom Ende des Wintermonsuns. Der Schelfbereich wurde in fünf Zonen eingeteilt, um Dünen ähnlicher Größe, Form und Orientierung zu gruppieren. Alle lokalisierten Sanddünen mit einer Höhe größer als 1.5 m wurden beschrieben und in ihrem höhen/längen Verhältnis in einem Scatterplot dargestellt, und auf diese Weise mit Dünen auf anderen Schelfen verglichen. Die Düneorientierung entspricht dem allgemeinen Zirkulationsschema der Südchinesischen See während des Wintermonsuns. Die Möglichkeit der Dünenmobilisierung wurde mit Hilfe empirischer Sedimenttransportgleichungen untersucht. Tiefengemittelte Strömungs­geschwindigkeiten, notwendig um Sedimente zur Bildung von Dünen in Bewegung zu setzen wurden berechnet. Die errechneten Ergebnisse wurden mit hydrodynamischen In-Situ Messungen anderer Autoren verglichen und es wurde gefolgert, dass die meisten untersuchten Dünen aktiv entsprechend der Monsunzirkulation wandern. Eine Fallstudie in der Ostsee ist ein seltenes Beispiel einer Untersuchung von Änderungen in der Morphologie von Gruben, die durch Nassbaggern von Marinen Sanden und Kiesen entstandenen sind. Mittels Seitensicht-Sonar und Fächerecholot-Daten wurde die Entwicklung von vier Gruben über sechs Jahre dargestellt. Im Falle dreier Gruben in sandigem Untergrund konnte eine deutlich höhere Abrundungsrate der Kanten und Sedimentation in den Gruben beobachtet werden als dies bei der Grube im Kiesbett der Fall war. Die Ränder der Grube im Kies änderten sich durch Abrutschen der Seitenwände. Sedimentation in den Gruben wurde basierend auf Näherungswerten der Grubetiefe durch Single-Beam-Echolot und Fächerecholot-Messungen, sowie akustische Schattenlänge in den Sonographie-Daten untersucht. Frühere Studien anderer Autoren an diesen Gruben ermöglichten es, die Sedimentationsrate über sechs Jahre darzustellen. Die Sedimentationsrate verlangsamte sich mit der Zeit deutlich, die Gründe hierfür werden in diesem Paper dargestellt. Der Sand, der während des Nassbaggerns ausgesiebt wurde, konnte im Umkreis der untersuchten Grube nachgewiesen werden, das Echo in den Sonographie-Daten war deutlich von dem des kiesigen Meeresgrundes zu unterscheiden. Der Bereich, der durch die ausgesiebte Sandfraktion bedeckt wurde, wurde beobachtet und verringerte sich mit der Zeit. Hydrologische Daten zeigen die Möglichkeit einer häufigen Mobilisierung dieser Sandfraktion, wodurch diese als hauptsächliche verantwortliche Quelle für die Sedimentation in den Gruben ausgemacht werden kann. Eine Fallstudie in der Nordsee stellt einen einmaligen Ansatz der Umwandlung von analogen Seitensicht-Sonar-Daten in digitale, georeferenzierte Form dar, um die morphologische Stabilität und die Entstehung von sortierten Bodenformen darzustellen. Das analoge Mosaik wurde 1977 im DECCA Navigationssystem geo-kodiert. Die DECCA System Technologie wurde gänzlich beschrieben und für die genaue Georeferenzierung des Mosaiks wurde eine Studie der räumlichen Fehler präsentiert. Eine Anpassung des Bildes wurde per "rubber – sheeting" Methode durchgeführt um historische Sonographie-Daten sortierter Bodenformen mit neuen Sonographie-Daten von 2002 zu vergleichen. Eine nachfolgende Studie von Dr. Markus Diesing et al. enthält zusätzlich ein "multi-beam backscattering" Mosaik von 2003 als vergleichendes Material. Die morphologische Stabilität der Bodenformen über die Zeit wird in dem Paper besprochen und mit weltweiten Beispielen verglichen. Die hydrodynamischen Umgebungsbedingungen der Bodenformen wurden dargestellt und eine bedeutende Rolle der Gezeiten-Strömungen auf diese festgestellt. Eine Asymmetrie neu entstandener sortierter Bodenformen hing vermutlich mit Sturmereignissen hoher Energie zusammen. Obwohl die Seitensicht-Sonar-Daten in drei unterschiedlichen Meeren für drei unterschiedliche Untersuchungen und in drei unterschiedlichen Maßstäben gesammelt wurden, waren die Sonographie-Daten in jedem der Fälle ein wertvolles Hilfsmittel. Die kleineren Beschränkungen von Seitensicht-Sonar-Systemen und die Möglichkeit der Anwendung anderer Systemen für die gleichen Studien werden im Ende dieser Arbeit diskutiert.

John Dewey on the Horror of Making
his Poetry Public



This April's Fools interview is a preview for 'The Return of the Theorists: Dialogues with Great Thinkers in International Relations' (ed. Ned Lebow, Peer Schouten & Hidemi Suganami), now available at Palgrave.









After
various rounds of experimentation, two youthful IR scholars (the editor-in chief of this venture and Christian Bueger) bend space-time and
access an alternate reality with the ambition to conduct an interview for Theory
Talks with John Dewey. Dewey (1859-1952) was an American thinker often associated
with a school of thought that has become known as American pragmatism. He is today
largely known for his contributions to education studies, philosophy of science,
and the theory of democracy. In this Talk, the young scholars sound out Dewey
on what thinking tools his original worldview would provide for IR—after
resolving a small embarrassment.







TT Dear Mr. Dewey. Thank you so much for your
willingness to participate in this Talk. Theory
Talks is an open-access journal that contributes to International Relations
debates by publishing interviews with cutting-edge theorists. It is not often
that Theory Talks is able to overcome
space-time limitations and conduct a Talk with a departed theorist.



I am sorry—I think I have to interrupt you there…



TT Well, all right?



Yes, yes, the fact of the matter is that I am not a
theorist and refuse to be associated with that label! To purify theory out of
experience as some distinct realm, sirs, is to contribute to a fallacy that I
have dedicated my life to combat! I am afraid that this venture of yours, of
involving me in this Theory Talks, is
stillborn.



TT Dear Professor Dewey—with all due respect, we are
running ahead of matters here a little. The reason why we invited you is exactly
for you to expound your ideas—and reservations—regarding theory, practice, and
international relations. Would you be willing to bracket your concern for a
minute? We promise to get back to it.



Well my dear sirs—it is that you insist on a
dialogue—that restless, participative and dramatic form of inquiry that leads
to so much more insight than books—and that you have travelled from far by
means that utterly fascinate me, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.



TT Thank you. And let us from the outset emphasize
that by interviewing you for Theory Talks, we don't necessarily want to reduce
your contribution to thought to the practice of theorizing. Isn't it also
correct you have written poetry?



Now I am baffled a second time! I have never publicly
attempted my hand at the noble art of the poetic!



TT It has to be said, Mr. Dewey, that the problem of
what is and isn't public has perhaps shifted a bit since your passing away. That's
something we'd like to discuss, too, but the fact of the matter is that what
you have consistently consigned to the trashcan of your office at Columbia
University has been just as meticulously recovered by 'a janitor with a long
view'.



Oh heavens! You tell me I have been uncovered as a
versifier? What of my terrible scribbling has been uncovered you say?



TT Well, perhaps you recognize the one that starts
like:



I hardly
think I heard you call

Since
betwixt us was the wall

Of sounds
within, buzzings i' the ear

Roarings
i' the vein so closely near…



… 'That I was captured in illusion/Of outward things
said clear…' I well remember—a piece particularly deserving of oblivion. I
wrote that in the privacy of lonely office hours, thinking the world would have
the mercy not to allow a soul to lay its eyes on it!



TT We are sorry to say that besides this one, a total
of 101 poems has been recovered, and published in print—and you know, given
some advances in technology, circulation of text is highly accelerated, meaning
that one could very well say your poetry is part of the public domain.



So there I am, well half a decade after my death,
subject to the indirect effects of advances in technology interacting with the
associations I myself carelessly established between roses, summer days, and
all too promiscuous waste bins! Sirs, in the little time we have conversed, I
see the afterlife hasn't brought me any good. Hades takes on a bleaker shade…



TT Well, in reality, the future has been good to you:
you are firmly canonised as one an authentic American intellectual, and stand firmly
on a pedestal in the galleries occupied by the notables of modern international
social thought. So why don't we explore a little bit why that is, within the
specific domain of political theory? Theory
Talks actually poses the same first three questions to every interviewee,
followed by a number of questions specific to your thought. The first question
we always pose is: What, according to you, is the biggest challenge or central
debate in International Relations and what is your position vis-à-vis that
challenge/debate?



I think that while it must have been noted by other
interviewees that in fact this question is two separate questions—one about
real-world challenges and another about theoretical debates—I would be the last
to do so, and I am happy you mix concerns of theory and practice. I have always
fought against establishing such a fictional separation between seemingly distinct
domains of thought and practice. It is a dangerous fiction on top of it. The
same goes for International Relations—while I have not dedicated myself to the
study of the international as a discrete field of action, I do think that this domain
does not escape some of the general observations I have made regarding society
and its politics.



I hold that "modern society is many societies more or
less loosely connected" by all kinds of associations. As I explain in The Public and its Problems, a
fundamental challenge of modern times is that the largely technically mediated associations
that constitute societies have outstretched the social mechanisms that we had
historically developed on the human scale of the village to mitigate their
indirect effects on others. During my life, I witnessed the proliferation of
railway, telegraph, radio, steam-driven shipping, and car and weapon
industries—thoroughly extending the web of association and affectedness within
and across borders. This means action constantly reaches further. People close
by and in far-off places are suddenly confronted with situations that they have
to relate to but which are out of their control. This automatically makes them
part of interested publics, with a stake in the way these mechanisations work. Now
this perhaps seems abstract but consider: the spread of a new technology—I see
you both looking on some small device with a black mirrored screen nervously
every 5 minutes—automatically involves users as a 'stakeholder'. Your actions
are mediated by them. You become affected by their design and
configuration—over which you have little control. In that regard, you are part
of a concerned public, but you have no way to influence the politics
constitutive of these technologies.



I would say the largest challenge is to amplify
participation and to institutionalize these fleeting publics. The proliferation
of technologies and institutions as conduits for international associations has
rendered publics around the globe more inchoate, while seemingly making it
easier than ever before to influence—for good or ill—large groups through the
manipulation of these global infrastructures of the public. We sowed
infrastructures, we reap fragilities and more diffusely affected publics: each
new technological expansion of the possibility to form associations leads to
concomitant insecurities.



TT How did you arrive where you currently are in your
thinking?



I have had the sheer luck or fortune to be engaged in
the occupation of thinking; and while I am quite regular at my meals, I think
that I may say that I would rather work, and perhaps even more, play, with
ideas and with thinking than eat. I was born in the wake of the Civil War, and
in times of a profound acceleration of technology as a vehicle of social,
economic, and political development. Perhaps, as in your own times, upheaval
and change was the status quo, stability a rare exception. My studies at Johns
Hopkins with people such as Peirce had tickled an intellectual curiosity as of
yet unsatisfied. I subsequently went to the University of Chicago for a decade
in which my commitment to pragmatist philosophy consolidated. Afterwards at
Columbia, and at the New School which I founded with people such as Charles A. Beard
and Thorsten Veblen, this approach translated into a number of books. In these I
applied my pragmatist convictions to such disparate issues as education, art,
faith, logic and indeed politics, the topic of your question. For me, these are
all interdependent aspects of society. This interdependence and inseparability
of the social fabric means that skewed economic or political interests will
reverberate throughout. But I am an optimist in that I also believe in the
fundamental possibility and promise of science and democracy to curb radical
change and reroute it into desirable directions for those affected. Good things
are also woven through the social and we should amplify those to lessen the
effects of negative associations.



TT What would a student require to become a specialist
in International Relations or to see the world in a global way?



A question dear to my heart. You might know that
throughout my entire life I have striven for transforming our understanding and
practice of education. Human progress is dependent on education, and as I have
learned during my travels to Russia, reform is not to be had by revolution but
by gradual education. Education is training in reflective thinking. The quality
of democracy depends on education.



Towards the end of my life I witnessed the creation of
the United Nations. This was a clear signal to me that "the relations between
nations are taking on the properties that constitute a public, and hence call
for some measure of political organization". Having this forum implied that we
saw the end of the complete denial of political responsibility of how the
policies in one national unit affect another as we find in the doctrine of
sovereignty. That the end of this doctrine is within reach means that we
require global education which will ensure the rise of informed global publics
which can develop the tools required to respond to global challenges.



In a more substantive fashion, I would insist that
students hold on to the essential impossibility to separate out experience as
it unfolds over time. The divisions and preferences that have come to dominate
academic knowledge in its 20th century 'maturing' are for me a loss
of rooting of knowledge in experience.



TT We're sorry, but isn't the task of social sciences
to offer universal or at least objective analytical categories to make sense of
the muddle of real-world experience? What you seem to be proposing is the
opposite!



I align with Weber in lamenting the acceleration of
the differentiation of understanding in society. This has made it difficult for
your generations to address social, political and economic challenges head on
while avoiding getting lost in one of its details or facets. Isn't the economic
and the political, constantly encroaching on everyday life? In the end, this
perhaps explains my insistence on democracy and schooling as the pivots of good
society: democracy to reconstruct and defend publics, and schooling to defend
individuals against (mis)understanding the world in ways that cannot be reduced
to their own lived experience. If students could only hold on to this holistic
perspective and eschew isolating subject matters from their social contexts.



TT Throughout your 70 years of active scholarship you
have written over a thousand articles and books. One commentator of your work
suggested that your body of writing is an "elaborate spider's web, the
junctions and lineaments of which its engineer knows well and in and on which
he is able to move about with great facility. But for the outsider who seeks to
traverse or map that territory there is the constant danger of getting stuck."
Many find your work difficult to navigate—what advice would you give the
reader?



Sirs why would anyone want to engage in a quest of
mapping all of my writings? You have to understand that thought always proceeds
in relations. A web, perhaps, yes. A spider's web certainly not. A spider that
spins a web out of himself, produces a web that is orderly and elaborate, but
it is only a trap. That is the goal of pure reasoning, not mine. The scientific
method of inquiry is rather comparable to the operations of the bee who
collects material within and from the world, but attacks and modifies the
collected stuff in order to make it yield its hidden treasure. "Drop the
conception that knowledge is knowledge only when it is a disclosure and
definition of the properties of fixed and antecedent reality; interpret the aim
and test of knowing by what happens in the actual procedures of scientific
inquiry". The occasion of thinking and writing is the experience of problems
and the need to clarify and resolve them. Everything depends on the problem,
the situations and the tools available. Inquiry does not rely on a priori
elements or fixed rules. I always attempted to start my work by understanding in
which problematic situations I aimed at intervening. Philosophy and academic,
but also public life, in my time was heading in wrong directions that called
upon me to initiate inquiry to resolve issues—in media res, as it were. When I
wrote Logic, I tried to rebut
dogmatic understandings. Now it appears that I am on the verge of becoming a
dogma myself. In a sense, the most tragic scenario would be if people develop a
"Deweyan" perspective or theory. Now I am curious, what problem brought you
actually to converse with me? 



TT Well, we are here today because we have been asked
to contribute to an effort to collect the views of a number of different
theorists, who, like you, live in different space-time. Now that we are here,
could we ask you to tell us how you use the term 'inquiry'? It is one of your core
concepts and in our conversation you already frequently referred to it. It is
often difficult to understand what you mean by this term and how it provides
direction and purpose for science…



It's a simple one, provided you have not been
indoctrinated by logical positivists. You, me, all of us, frequently engage in
inquiry. There is little distinction between solving problems of everyday life
and the reasoning of the scientist or philosopher. Most often habit and routine
will give you satisfaction. Yet when these fail or give you unpleasant
experience, then reasoning begins. Without inquiry, sirs, most likely you
wouldn't have been able to speak to me today! You will have to explain later
how you bended time and space and which technology allowed you to travel through
a black hole. But Albert was right, time travel is possible! Could we converse
today without Einstein's fabulous inquiry that led him to the realization of
space-time? Until the promulgation of Einstein's restricted theory of
relativity, mass, time and motion were regarded as intrinsic properties of
ultimate fixed and independent substances. Einstein questioned this on the
basis of experimentation and an investigation of the problem of simultaneity,
that is, that from different reference frames there can never be agreement on
the simultaneity of events.



Reflection implies that something is believed in (or
disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else
which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as ground
of belief. At one time, rain is actually felt or directly experienced without
any intermediary fact; at another time, we infer that it has rained from the
looks of the grass and trees, or that it is going to rain because of the
condition of the air or the state of the barometer. The fact that inquiry intervenes
in ever-shifting contexts demands us to restrain from eternal truths or absolutistic
logic. Someone believing in a truth such as "individualism", has his program
determined for him in advance. It is then not a matter of finding out the
particular thing which needs to be done and the best way, and the
circumstances, of doing it. He knows in advance the sort of thing which must be
done, just as in ancient physical philosophy the thinker knew in advance what
must happen, so that all he had to do was to supply a logical framework of
definitions and classifications.



When I say that thinking and beliefs should be
experimental, not absolutistic, I have in mind a certain logic of method. Such
a logic firstly implies that the concepts, general principles, theories and
dialectical developments which are indispensable to any systematic knowledge are
shaped and tested as tools of inquiry. Secondly, policies and proposals for
social action have to be treated as working hypotheses. They have to be subject
to constant and well-equipped observations of the consequences they entail when
acted upon and subject to flexible revision. The social sciences are primarily
an apparatus for conducting such investigations.



TT Doesn't such a form of reasoning mean we'll just
muddle through without ever reaching certainty?



Absolutely correct! Arriving at one point is the
starting point of another. Life flowers and should be understood as such; experimental
reasoning is never complete. I can imagine the surprise you must feel at sudden
unforeseen events in international political relationships when you hold on to
fixed frames of how these relationships do and ought to look. That we will never
reach certainty does not imply to give up the quest of certainty, however. We
have to continuously improve on our tools of scientific inquiry…



TT Sorry to interrupt you here. Now it sounds as if
you have a sort of methods fetish. Do you imply that everything can be solved
by the right method and all that we have to do is to refine our methods? That's
something that our colleagues running statistics and thinking that the problems
of international can be solved by algorithms argue as well.



It might be that mathematical reasoning has well
advanced since my departure, and that the importance granted to the economy and
economic thinking as the sole conditioning factor of political organisation has
only increased, but you haven't fully grasped what I mean by 'tools'. Tell your
stubbornly calculating colleagues that inquiry is embedded in a situation,
hence there cannot be a single method which would fix all kinds of problems.
Second, while I admire the skill of mathematicians, what I mean by tools goes
well beyond that. A tool can be a concept, a term, a theory, a proposal, a
course of action, anything that might matter to settle a particular situation.
A tool is however not a solution per se. It is a proposal. It must be tested
against the problematic material. It matters only in so far as it is part of a
practical activity aimed at resolving a problematic situation.  



TT You emphasize that language is instrumental and reject
the idea of a private language. You also spent quite some energy to demolish
the "picture theory" of language. These arguments form the basis of
what we call today "constructivism", yet they are mainly subscribed to the Philosophical
Investigations of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein.



Earhh, I am aware of this fellow. He is an analytical
philosopher, so develops his argument from a different background. I started to
work on the social and cultural aspects of language use from around 1916. I
don't know whether Wittgenstein actually read my work when he set out to write
Philosophical Investigations, but you are quite right, there are obvious
parallels. I think my own term of "conjoint activity" expresses pretty much the
same, perhaps less eloquently, what Wittgenstein termed language games. I am
pleased to hear, however, that the instrumental view on language, that objects
get their meanings within a language in and by conjoint community of functional
use, has become firmly established in academia. I'd have reservations about the
term, 'constructivism'. It might be useful since it reminds us of all the
construction work that the organization of politics and society entails. Indeed
I have frequently stressed that instrumentalist theory implies construction. If
constructivism doesn't mean post-mortem studies of how something has been
constructed, but is directed towards production of better futures, I might be
fine with the term. But perhaps I would prefer 'productivism'.



TT That is a plausible term, but we are afraid, the
history of science has settled on constructivism. And you are right, the tendencies
you warn us of are significantly present in our discipline.



Sirs, if you permit. I have to attend to other
obligations. I
wish you safe travels back. Make sure you pick up something from the gift shop
before you leave.

This guide accompanies the following article: Christine V. Wood, 'The Sociologies of Knowledge, Science, and Intellectuals: Distinctive Traditions and Overlapping Perspectives', Sociology Compass 4/10 (2010): 909–923, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2010.00328.x.It offers a list of texts that one could use in developing a course in the sociology of scientific knowledge, in the sociology of knowledge in general, or in a more specialized course on the field of scholarly production, experts and intellectuals, and the social organization of the academic profession and research sciences.Author's introductionFew review and teaching materials exist that collect the diverse research exploring the social and institutional context in which scholarly and scientific ideas are generated, legitimated, and diffused. By zeroing in on the social 'field' or 'arena' of scholarly production, which may include the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, sociologists are better able to delineate the distinct analytic traditions that have emerged in studying various orderings of certified knowledge – whether philosophical, humanistic, social scientific, or scientific – and their producers. Despite obvious overlaps, the sociologies of knowledge, science, and intellectuals owe their origins as sociological sub‐fields to distinctive theoretical and even methodological traditions. Considering intellectuals and experts as social groups working in specific social contexts, institutions, and making different kinds of claims to knowledge is different from studying the gestation of ideas and their content, whether these ideas are values, beliefs, assumptions, or scientific and academic theories. Within the sociology of knowledge, studies of the production of academic knowledge is a separate body of literature from studies of social cognition, collective memory, or the internalization of norms and values, and so some distinctions are necessary. In some sense, the sociology of knowledge as a grand project that could subsume the study of scientific knowledge and the study of intellectuals as a social class or group and of the academic professions. But many scholars draw boundaries between the sociologies of knowledge and science, owing to the empirical distinctions between an area of inquiry that subsumes the study of broad orderings of knowledge and a field that focuses on the distinct status and situation of natural and hard science in modern life – its content, institutional contexts, organization, normative structures, political conflicts, and applications. Depending on their research interests, scholars have drawn boundaries within the sub‐fields of science studies, for instance by delineating between the 'political' sociology of science and the 'historical' sociology of science, or by focusing on the interactions between political and social movements and science and academia. Depending on the interests of the professor and the degree of specialization of a course, this guide offers a list of texts that one could use in developing a course in the sociology of scientific knowledge, in the sociology of knowledge in general, or in a more specialized course on the field of scholarly production, experts and intellectuals, and the social organization of the academic profession and research sciences.Author recommendsFollowing a chronology of sociological work on knowledge, science, and intellectuals, from the classical, 19th‐Century theory of Karl Marx and Max Weber through the early and mid‐20th‐Century is to trace a neat trajectory of sociological theory in its various incarnations – foundational, functionalist, structural, institutional, political, historical, and cultural. Many classical essays in the sociology of knowledge and science are dispersed among larger texts devoted to the essays of key sociological thinkers. Within the sociology of knowledge or science, numerous volumes exist that detail foundational and specialized approaches in the field.For a primer in the modern sociologist's treatment of science as a social institution, an excellent collection is Robert Merton's The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, a compendium of essays from the thinker on science in modern societies, with attention paid to scientific institutions as they developed from the 17th‐Century through the 20th‐Centuries. What is most remarkable about Merton's collection of essays is that it sets the framework for many core themes that would later be elaborated by sociologists on questions of science, including the relationship of science to other institutions and conflicts among scientists over the prioritization of some programs of research and discovery over others. In a thesis that explored the 'interdependence' of science and other institutional spheres in seventeenth century England, where modern science was just beginning, Merton explored the 'interdependence' of science and other institutional spheres, occupational, religious, economic, and militaristic. Aside from this essentially 'macro' view of science, Merton also wrote on the 'Normative Structures of Science', where he discussed a conflict between the governing ethos of science and the attitudes of others across institutional and social spheres. He wrote that a tenet in science is that all scientists should in their research ignore all considerations other than the advance of knowledge, the justification being that consideration of the practical or social uses of the knowledge increases the possibility for bias and error. Merton claimed that this attitude had furnished a basis of revolt against science – once the applications of the science are discovered, those authorities or groups who disapprove of that application will turn their antipathy toward the science itself. Finally, in an essay on 'Priorities in Scientific Discovery', Merton laid the groundwork for the 'functionalist' perspective of science. He argued that science operates with governing norms of priority and originality, which places pressure on scientists to assert their claims as original. When science as an institution is working efficiently, those who have best fulfilled their roles as scientists will have made genuinely original contributions to the common stock of knowledge, and are afforded rightful esteem and recognition. The focus on the judgment of originality and credibility in science has sparked a wave of new scholarship, which I outline in the course syllabus and essay.Given the status of 'science and technology studies' as an ever expanding interdisciplinary field, several recent volumes collect contemporary essays in the social studies of science. A notable volume that contains diverse theoretical and methodological writings in the social studies of science is the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). Emphases on the political dimensions of scientific knowledge production are currently receiving a great deal of attention, with diverse research exploring the politics of nuclear proliferation, environmental justice movements, and the politics of gender and sexual difference in scientific and medical research. The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power, edited by Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, provides a good introduction (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). Other edited volumes are useful as introductory texts to core essays and readings in the sociology of knowledge. A nice volume that contains overlapping research in the sociologies of knowledge and science is Society & Knowledge: Contemporary Perspectives in the Sociology of Knowledge & Science, edited by Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (Transaction Publishers, 2005).Sample syllabusSince the sociologies of knowledge and science are such broad areas of research, the sample syllabus takes into account analysis of knowledge production in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities as well as the study of intellectuals as a group. For those that find the focus broad, recommended readings allow those with more interest in science and technology studies or in the study of expert communities to zero‐in on specific bodies of literature. This course could be framed broadly as a course on the social contexts of knowledge production – science, knowledge, and modern research and academic vocations. A basic goal of the class is to encourage students to think more reflexively about science and about their own work as social scientists, while also to promote ongoing research on the ever changing social contexts of the academic professions and knowledge production in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.This 10 week outline introduces theoretical texts and some exemplary case studies.Week 1: Introduction:This session is an introduction to the sociological study of knowledge production, science, and intellectuals as a group. The class should discuss short pieces as foundational texts, which may include Gramsci's essay writing on intellectuals in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971); excerpts from Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), particularly those portions that deal with the social function of the intellectual and the 'classless intellectual'; Max Weber's essay 'Science as a Vocation' (Pp. 129–156 in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, New York: Oxford University Press, 1958); and some more contemporary piece, perhaps Merton's essay 'Paradigm for the Sociology of Knowledge', a clarifying, comprehensive essay on the myriad topics that could be subsumed under the sociology of knowledge (in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). Given the breadth of Merton's essay, which does not deal exclusively with scholarly and scientific knowledge, class discussion should devote attention to the distinctions among approaches that deal with intellectuals as a group, the social contexts of science, and the content of ideas.Week 2: Classical foundations:The second week should involve a more detailed emphasis on theoretical foundations in the sociology of knowledge and science. Though Weber's essay on 'Science as a Vocation' has been introduced in the first week, the discussion should center more intensely on how the classical scholars handled questions about knowledge and intellectuals. Using Merton's essay to frame the classical theorists' take on science and knowledge, a comparison of the perspectives of Marx and Weber on knowledge and intellectuals should make for a lively discussion. Excerpts from Marx's The German Ideology provide a good introduction to Marx's views on the way the content of ideas are linked to material life. In Marx's critique of the writings in political economy of his day, he argues that the content, form, and method of the writing on utilitarianism from the prominent bourgeois thinkers of the day were linked to concrete social and economic developments in Europe. To contrast Marx's take that the content of political and economic writing reflected social and economic developments, Weber provides a more nuanced analysis of how the class interests of intellectuals influences the content of their ideas in his writing on how certain types of intellectuals influenced the ideological and ethical doctrines of major world religions, by advocating ideas that conformed to but were not directly influenced by their occupational class interests. Important to this discussion is to compare and contrast Marx and Weber and the extent to which each sees social class as shaping ideas.Weeks 3–4: Social structure, function, and institutions:The next several sessions deal with the various approaches to science and technology, knowledge, and intellectuals to emerge in the middle of the 20th‐Century. The first set of discussions should be on social structure and function – essentially, in discussion how sociologists' have understood the influence of social structure on knowledge production and how scholars have theorized on the function or 'role' of scientists and intellectuals in the promotion of the social order. Again, Robert Merton provides a touchstone example of a 'functionalist' perspective on science, and a good example is his essay on 'Priorities of Scientific Discovery' (The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). An exemplary text and enjoyable read is Florian Znaniecki's Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, [1940] 1986). C. Wright Mills's Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America is an exemplary and oft‐overlooked text on the growth of pragmatism and modern American sociology, a model of research design and a prescient analysis of how occupational and economic conditions, the changing demographic of the American university, and the content and function of elective curricula influenced the development of new areas of research in philosophy and the growth of modern sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). This text could also be used to discuss the importance of institutional conditions in shaping academic disciplines and knowledge production. Key texts on the importance of institutions as portals and venues of intellectual activity and the social importance of scientists and intellectuals as institutional and bureaucratic actors include Lewis Coser's Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's View (New York: Free Press, 1965) and Edward Shils's (1972) collection of essays, The Intellectuals and the Powers, and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Weeks 5–6: Politics and reflexivity:Alvin W. Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology is a good introduction to a reflexive approach to knowledge production in the social sciences (New York: Avon, 1970). Gouldner analyzed the 'presuppositions' of two generations of social theorists, comparing the early 20th‐Century sociological preoccupations with social order with the more conflict‐laden approaches of the New Left generation. The book makes a rather convincing case about how scholars' relations to resources and politics form the subtext of social theory. Other examples of the 'politics' of knowledge production and the social situation of the observer or abound, particularly in feminist theory, beginning with Dorothy Smith's now‐dated essay 'Women's Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology' (Pp. 21–34 in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, edited by S. Harding, New York: Routledge, 2004). A good way to trace the intellectual trajectory of feminist critiques of science and knowledge is by assigning selections from The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader. These texts will provide something of an antidote or contrast to the social structural or 'functional' perspectives. Also fitting for these discussion are a couple of texts that revived the analyses of the influence of intellectuals' social class position on the content of ideas. Erik Olin Wright (1978) focused on intellectuals in late capitalism and György Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi (1979) analyzed the social position of intellectuals under Eastern European state socialism, in both cases melding political sociology with the sociology of knowledge. Discussions of the texts featured in these 2 weeks should provoke students to discuss whether the main imperative of the sociology of knowledge – the analysis of the social and material, or at least contextual, backdrop to knowledge claims – is in itself reflexive.Weeks 7–8: Fields, new institutional analysis, social movements, and networks:Among the most popular recent approaches in the sociology of knowledge are field analysis, network analysis, and new institutional approaches. Each of these could be said to be in some sense 'macro' as the focus is on how broader contexts and relationships influence the content and flow of ideas. Bourdieu's Homo Academicus is a study of the relationships of status among French university professors and includes rigorous analyses of scholars' career and family backgrounds as well as the relationships of academic disciplines to authorities in the university and the state (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). Examples of how institutional conditions shape the development, structure, and composition of academic disciplines and departments have emerged in recent years, the most notable examples being Charles Camic's essay (published in 1995 in Social Research) on how local institutional conditions and interdisciplinary interaction influenced the development of distinct analytic traditions in three early sociology departments and Mario Small's essay (published in 1999 in Theory and Society) on how local institutional factors influenced differences in the content and structure of new African‐American studies programs. Excellent examples of the influence that social movements and collective action have on the formation of new academic disciplines include Fabio Rojas's From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and Scott Frickel's Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). Finally, Randall Collins's mammoth The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change outlines a vast network analysis of philosophical production across historical periods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). The book is big, and an idea is to have students read the theoretical sections that explain the logic of a network analysis of philosophical production, and then to have students select individual chapters to read and present to the class.Week 9: Culture and micro‐sociological analysis:With the rise in importance of the sociology of culture in recent years, interested scholars have applied some of the research techniques developed in culture studies to analyze knowledge production. An exemplary study in this area is Karin Knorr‐Cetina's Epistemic Culture: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, which is a micro‐sociological account of how scientists in high‐energy particle physics and molecular biology labs conduct their research (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). If students are interested in the contexts of scientific knowledge production and laboratory life, students might compare Knorr‐Cetina's analysis with earlier studies of the interactions of actors and artifacts in science labs, beginning with the work of Bruno Latour, perhaps starting with Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).Week 10: Using approaches in the sociology of science to analyze other kinds of knowledge production:At the 'cutting edge' of research in the sociology of knowledge are attempts by scholars to adapt, or utilize, the theories and methods developed in science studies to analyze knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities. A good essay that draws on the work of Knorr‐Cetina is Gregoire Mallard's 'Interpreters of the Literary Canon and their Technical Instruments: The Case of Balzac Criticism', published in the American Sociological Review in 2005. A more recent example examines how social science and humanities professors evaluate knowledge, borrowing from research in the social studies of science on consensus, evaluation, and credibility: Michele Lamont's How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Students should assess how convincingly a research area that originated in social studies of science, like studies of how knowledge is prioritized and judged as 'original' or the use of technical instruments in the humanities, applies to knowledge contexts outside of the hard sciences.Focus questions

 In what ways can the methods and theories of the sociology of science be adapted to analyze knowledge production in other areas, including the humanities and the social sciences? What sorts of processes and knowledge claims are specific to science?
 What makes an analysis reflexive? Is analyzing the material or institutional conditions that shape ideas or scientific production inherently critical or reflexive?
 Among the more recently popularized theoretical and methodological approaches to intellectual life, like Bourdieu's 'field' analysis of the French university and Collins's network analysis of philosophy, which is likely to be most transposable across diverse scientific and academic settings?

Daniel Deudney on Mixed Ontology, Planetary Geopolitics, and Republican Greenpeace



This is the second in a series of Talks dedicated to the technopolitics of International Relations, linked to the forthcoming double volume 'The Global Politics of Science and Technology' edited by Maximilian Mayer, Mariana Carpes, and Ruth Knoblich 






World politics increasingly abrasions with the limits of state-centric thinking, faced as the world is with a set of issues that affect not only us collectively as mankind, but also the planet itself. While much of IR theorizing seems to shirk such realizations, the work of Daniel Deudney has consistently engaged with the complex problems engendered by the entanglements of nuclear weapons, the planetary environment, space exploration, and the kind of political associations that might help us to grapple with our fragile condition as humanity-in-the world. In this elaborate Talk, Deudney—amongst others—lays out his understanding of the fundamental forces that drive both planetary political progress and problems; discusses the kind of ontological position needed to appreciate these problems; and argues for the merits of a republican greenpeace model to political organization.





Print version of this Talk (pdf)







What is, according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?



The study of politics is the study of human politics and the human situation has been—and is being—radically altered by changes in the human relationships with the natural and material worlds. In my view, this means IR and related intellectual disciplines should focus on better understanding the emergence of the 'global' and the 'planetary,' their implications for the overall human world and its innumerable sub-worlds, and their relations with the realization of basic human needs. The global and the planetary certainly don't comprise all of the human situation, but the fact that the human situation has become global and planetary touches every other facet of the human situation, sometimes in fundamental ways. The simple story is that the human world is now 'global and planetary' due to the explosive transformation over the last several centuries of science-based technology occurring within the geophysical and biophysical features of planet Earth. The natural Earth and its relationship with humans have been massively altered by the vast amplifications in dispersed human agency produced by the emergence and spread of machine-based civilization. The overall result of these changes has been the emergence of a global- and planetary-scale material and social reality that is in some ways similar, but in other important ways radically different, from earlier times. Practices and structures inherited from the pre-global human worlds have not adequately been adjusted to take the new human planetary situation into account and their persistence casts a long and partially dark shadow over the human prospect.



A global and planetary focus is also justified—urgently—by the fact that the overall human prospect on this planet, and the fate of much additional life on this planet, is increasingly dependent on the development and employment of new social arrangements for interacting with these novel configurations of material and natural possibilities and limits. Human agency is now situated, and is making vastly fateful choices—for better or worse—in a sprawling, vastly complex aggregation of human-machine-nature assemblies which is our world. The 'fate of the earth' now partly hinges on human choices, and helping to make sure these choices are appropriate ones should be the paramount objective of political scientific and theoretical efforts. However, no one discipline or approach is sufficient to grapple successfully with this topic. All disciplines are necessary. But there are good reasons to believe that 'IR' and related disciplines have a particularly important possible practical role to play. (I am also among those who prefer 'global studies' as a label for the enterprise of answering questions that cut across and significantly subsume both the 'international' and the 'domestic.')



My approach to grappling with this topic is situated—like the work of now vast numbers of other IR theorists and researchers of many disciplines—in the study of 'globalization.' The now widely held starting point for this intellectual effort is the realization that globalization has been the dominant pattern or phenomenon, the story of stories, over at least the last five centuries. Globalization has been occurring in military, ecological, cultural, and economic affairs. And I emphasize—like many, but not all, analysts of globalization—that the processes of globalization are essentially dependent on new machines, apparatuses, and technologies which humans have fabricated and deployed. Our world is global because of the astounding capabilities of machine civilization. This startling transformation of human choice by technological advance is centrally about politics because it is centrally about changes in power. Part of this power story has been about changes in the scope and forms of domination. Globalization has been, to state the point mildly, 'uneven,' marked by amplifications of violence and domination and predation on larger and wider scales. Another part of the story of the power transformation has been the creation of a world marked by high degrees of interdependence, interaction, speed, and complexity. These processes of globalization and the transformation of machine capabilities are not stopping or slowing down but are accelerating. Thus, I argue that 'bounding power'—the growth, at times by breathtaking leaps, of human capabilities to do things—is now a fundamental feature of the human world, and understanding its implications should, in my view, be a central activity for IR scholars.



In addressing the topic of machine civilization and its globalization on Earth, my thinking has been centered first around the developing of 'geopolitical' lines argument to construct a theory of 'planetary geopolitics'. 'Geopolitics' is the study of geography, ecology, technology, and the earth, and space and place, and their interaction with politics. The starting point for geopolitical analysis is accurate mapping. Not too many IR scholars think of themselves as doing 'geography' in any form. In part this results from of the unfortunate segregation of 'geography' into a separate academic discipline, very little of which is concerned with politics. Many also mistake the overall project of 'geopolitics' with the ideas, and egregious mistakes and political limitations, of many self-described 'geopoliticans' who are typically arch-realists, strong nationalists, and imperialists. Everyone pays general lip service to the importance of technology, but little interaction occurs between IR and 'technology studies' and most IR scholars are happy to treat such matters as 'technical' or non-political in character. Despite this general theoretical neglect, many geographic and technological factors routinely pop into arguments in political science and political theory, and play important roles in them.



Thinking about the global and planetary through the lens of a fuller geopolitics is appealing to me because it is the human relationship with the material world and the Earth that has been changed with the human world's globalization. Furthermore, much of the actual agendas of movements for peace, arms control, and sustainability are essentially about alternative ways of ordering the material world and our relations with it. Given this, I find an approach that thinks systematically about the relations between patterns of materiality and different political forms is particularly well-suited to provide insights of practical value for these efforts.



The other key focus of my research has been around extending a variety of broadly 'republican' political insights for a cluster of contemporary practical projects for peace, arms control, and environmental stewardship ('greenpeace'). Even more than 'geopolitics,' 'republicanism' is a term with too many associations and meanings. By republics I mean political associations based on popular sovereignty and marked by mutual limitations, that is, by 'bounding power'—the restraint of power, particularly violent power—in the interests of the people generally. Assuming that security from the application of violence to bodies is a primary (but not sole) task of political association, how do republican political arrangements achieve this end? I argue that the character and scope of power restraint arrangements that actually serve the fundamental security interests of its popular sovereign varies in significant ways in different material contexts.



Republicanism is first and foremost a domestic form, centered upon the successive spatial expansion of domestic-like realms, and the pursuit of a constant political project of maximally feasible ordered freedom in changed spatial and material circumstances. I find thinking about our global and planetary human situation from the perspective of republicanism appealing because the human global and planetary situation has traits—most notably high levels of interdependence, interaction, practical speed, and complexity—that make it resemble our historical experience of 'domestic' and 'municipal' realms. Thinking with a geopolitically grounded republicanism offers insights about global governance very different from the insights generated within the political conceptual universe of hierarchical, imperial, and state-centered political forms. Thus planetary geopolitics and republicanism offers a perspective on what it means to 'Think Globally and Act Locally.' If we think of, or rather recognize, the planet as our locality, and then act as if the Earth is our locality, then we are likely to end up doing various approximations of the best-practice republican forms that we have successfully developed in our historically smaller domestic localities.





How did you arrive at where you currently are in IR?



Like anybody else, the formative events in my intellectual development have been shaped by the thick particularities of time and place. 'The boy is the father of the man,' as it is said. The first and most direction-setting stage in the formation of my 'green peace' research interests was when I was in 'grade school,' roughly the years from age 6-13. During these years my family lived in an extraordinary place, St Simons Island, a largely undeveloped barrier island off the coast of southern Georgia. This was an extremely cool place to be a kid. It had extensive beaches, and marshes, as well as amazing trees of gargantuan proportions. My friends and I spent much time exploring, fishing, camping out, climbing trees, and building tree houses. Many of these nature-immersion activities were spontaneous, others were in Boy Scouts. This extraordinary natural environment and the attachments I formed to it, shaped my strong tendency to see the fates of humans and nature as inescapably intertwined. But the Boy Scouts also instilled me with a sense of 'virtue ethics'. A line from the Boy Scout Handbook captures this well: 'Take a walk around your neighborhood. Make a list of what is right and wrong about it. Make a plan to fix what is not right.' This is a demotic version of Weber's political 'ethic of responsibility.' This is very different from the ethics of self-realization and self-expression that have recently gained such ground in America and elsewhere. It is now very 'politically incorrect' to think favorably of the Boy Scouts, but I believe that if the Scouting experience was universally accessible, the world would be a much improved place.



My kid-in-nature life may sound very Tom Sawyer, but it was also very Tom Swift. My friends and I spent much of our waking time reading about the technological future, and imaginatively play-acting in future worlds. This imaginative world was richly fertilized by science fiction comic books, television shows, movies, and books. Me and my friends—juvenile technological futurists and techno-nerds in a decidedly anti-intellectual culture—were avid readers of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein, and each new issue of Analog was eagerly awaited. While we knew we were Americans, my friends and I had strong inclinations to think of ourselves most essentially as 'earthlings.' We fervently discussed extraterrestrial life and UFOs, and we eagerly awaited the day, soon to occur, we were sure, in which we made 'first contact.' We wanted to become, if not astronauts, then designers and builders of spaceships. We built tree houses, but we filled them with discarded electronics and they became starships. We rode bicycles, but we lugged about attaché cases filled with toy ray guns, transistor radios, firecrackers, and homemade incendiary devices. We built and fired off rockets, painstaking assembled plastic kit models of famous airplanes and ships, and then we would blow them apart with our explosives. The future belonged to technology, and we fancied ourselves its avant garde.



Yet the prospect of nuclear Armageddon seemed very real. We did 'duck and cover' drills at school, and sat for two terrifying weeks through the Cuban Missile Crisis. My friends and I had copies of the Atomic Energy Commission manuals on 'nuclear effects,' complete with a slide-rule like gadget that enabled us to calculate just what would happen if near-by military bases were obliterated by nuclear explosions. Few doubted that we were, in the words of a pop song, 'on the eve of destruction.' These years were also the dawning of 'the space age' in which humans were finally leaving the Earth and starting what promised to be an epic trek, utterly transformative in its effects, to the stars. My father worked for a number of these years for a large aerospace military-industrial firm, then working for NASA to build the very large rockets needed to launch men and machines to the moon and back. My friends and I debated fantastical topics, such as the pros and cons of emigrating to Mars, and how rapidly a crisis-driven exodus from the earth could be organized.



Two events that later occurred in the area where I spent my childhood served as culminating catalytic events for my greenpeace thinking. First, some years after my family moved away, the industrial facility to mix rocket fuel that had been built by the company my father worked for, and that he had helped put into operation, was struck by an extremely violent 'industrial accident,' which reduced, in one titanic flash, multi-story concrete and steel buildings filled with specialized heavy industrial machinery (and everyone in them) into a grey powdery gravel ash, no piece of which was larger than a fist. Second, during the late 1970s, the US Navy acquired a large tract of largely undeveloped marsh and land behind another barrier island (Cumberland), an area 10-15 miles from where I had lived, a place where I had camped, fished, and hunted deer. The Navy dredged and filled what was one of the most biologically fertile temperate zone estuaries on the planet. There they built the east coast base for the new fleet of Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarines, the single most potent violence machine ever built, thus turning what was for me the wildest part of my wild-encircled childhood home into one of the largest nuclear weapons complexes on earth. These events catalyzed for me the realization that there was a great struggle going on, for the Earth and for the future, and I knew firmly which side I was on.



My approach to thinking about problems was also strongly shaped by high school debate, where I learned the importance of 'looking at questions from both sides,' and from this stems my tendency to look at questions as debates between competing answers, and to focus on decisively engaging, defeating, and replacing the strongest and most influential opposing positions. As an undergraduate at Yale College, I started doing Political Theory. I am sure that I was a very vexing student in some ways, because (the debater again) I asked Marxist questions to my liberal and conservative professors, and liberal and conservative ones to my Marxist professors. Late in my sophomore year, I had my epiphany, my direction-defining moment, that my vocation would be an attempt to do the political theory of the global and the technological. Since then, the only decisions have been ones of priority and execution within this project.



Wanting to learn something about cutting-edge global and technological and issues, I next went to Washington D.C. for seven years. I worked on Capitol Hill for three and a half years as a policy aide, working on energy and conservation and renewable energy and nuclear power. I spent the other three and a half years as a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a small environmental and global issues think tank that was founded and headed by Lester Brown, a well-known and far-sighted globalist. I co-authored a book about renewable energy and transitions to global sustainability and wrote a study on space and space weapons. At the time I published Whole Earth Security: a Geopolitics of Peace (1983), in which my basic notions of planetary geopolitics and republicanism were first laid out. During these seven years in Washington, I also was a part-time student, earning a Master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy at George Washington University.



In all, these Washington experiences have been extremely valuable for my thinking. Many political scientists view public service as a low or corrupting activity, but this is, I think, very wrong-headed. The reason that the democratic world works as well as it does is because of the distributive social intelligence. But social intelligence is neither as distributed nor as intelligent as it needs to be to deal with many pressing problems. My experience as a Congressional aide taught me that most of the problems that confront my democracy are rooted in various limits and corruptions of the people. I have come to have little patience with those who say, for example, rising inequality is inherent in capital C capitalism, when the more proximate explanation is that the Reagan Republican Party was so successful in gutting the progressive tax system previously in place in the United States. Similarly, I see little value in claims, to take a very contemporary example, that 'the NSA is out of control' when this agency is doing more or less what the elected officials, responding to public pressures to provide 'national security' loudly demanded. In democracies, the people are ultimately responsible.



As I was immersed in the world of arms control and environmental activism I was impressed by the truth of Keynes's oft quoted line, about the great practical influence of the ideas of some long-dead 'academic scribbler.' This is true in varying degrees in every issue area, but in some much more than others. This reinforced my sense that great potential practical consequence of successfully innovating in the various conceptual frameworks that underpinned so many important activities. For nuclear weapons, it became clear to me that the problem was rooted in the statist and realist frames that people so automatically brought to a security question of this magnitude.



Despite the many appeals of a career in DC politics and policy, this was all for me an extended research field-trip, and so I left Washington to do a PhD—a move that mystified many of my NGO and activist friends, and seemed like utter folly to my political friends. At Princeton University, I concentrated on IR, Political Theory, and Military History and Politics, taking courses with Robert Gilpin, Richard Falk, Barry Posen, Sheldon Wolin and others. In my dissertation—entitled Global Orders: Geopolitical and Materialist Theories of the Global-Industrial Era, 1890-1945—I explored IR and related thinking about the impacts of the industrial revolution as a debate between different world order alternatives, and made arguments about the superiority of liberalist, internationalist, and globalist arguments—most notably from H.G. Wells and John Dewey—to the strong realist and imperialist ideas most commonly associated with the geopolitical writers of this period.



I also continued engaging in activist policy affiliated to the Program on Nuclear Policy Alternatives at the Center for Energy andEnvironmental Studies (CEES), which was then headed by Frank von Hippel, a physicist turned 'public interest scientist', and a towering figure in the global nuclear arms control movement. I was a Post Doc at CEES during the Gorbachev era and I went on several amazing and eye-opening trips to the Soviet Union. Continuing my space activism, I was able to organize workshops in Moscow and Washington on large-scale space cooperation, gathering together many of the key space players on both sides. While Princeton was fabulously stimulating intellectually, it was also a stressful pressure-cooker, and I maintained my sanity by making short trips, two of three weekends, over six years, to Manhattan, where I spent the days working in the main reading room of the New York Public Library and the nights partying and relaxing in a world completely detached from academic life.



When it comes to my intellectual development in terms of reading theory, the positive project I wanted to pursue was partially defined by approaches I came to reject. Perhaps most centrally, I came to reject an approach that was very intellectually powerful, even intoxicating, and which retains great sway over many, that of metaphysical politics. The politics of the metaphysicians played a central role in my coming to reject the politics of metaphysics. The fact that some metaphysical ideas and the some of the deep thinkers who advanced them, such as Heidegger, and many Marxists, were so intimately connected with really disastrous politics seemed a really damning fact for me, particularly given that these thinkers insisted so strongly on the link between their metaphysics and their politics. I was initially drawn to Nietzsche's writing (what twenty-year old isn't) but his model of the philosopher founder or law-giver—that is, of a spiritually gifted but alienated guy (and it always is a guy) with a particularly strong but frustrated 'will to power' going into the wilderness, having a deep spiritual revelation, and then returning to the mundane corrupt world with new 'tablets of value,' along with a plan to take over and run things right—seemed more comic than politically relevant, unless the prophet is armed, in which case it becomes a frightful menace. The concluding scene in Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi (sometimes translated as The Glass Bead Game) summarized by overall view of the 'high theory' project. After years of intense training by the greatest teachers the most spiritually and intellectually gifted youths finally graduate. To celebrate, they go to lake, dive in, and, having not learned how to swim, drown.



I was more attracted to Aristotle, Hume, Montesquieu, Dewey and other political theorists with less lofty and comprehensive views of what theory might accomplish; weary of actions; based on dogmatic or totalistic thinking; an eye to the messy and compromised world; with a political commitment to liberty and the interests of the many; a preference for peace over war; an aversion to despotism and empire; and an affinity for tolerance and plurality. I also liked some of those thinkers because of their emphasis on material contexts. Montesquieu seeks to analyze the interaction of material contexts and republican political forms; Madison and his contemporaries attempt to extend the spatial scope of republican political association by recombining in novel ways various earlier power restraint arrangements. I was tremendously influenced by Dewey, studying intensively his slender volume The Public and its Problems (1927)—which I think is the most important book in twentieth century political thought. By the 'public' Dewey means essentially a stakeholder group, and his main point is that the material transformations produced by the industrial revolution has created new publics, and that the political task is to conceptualize and realize forms of community and government appropriate to solving the problems that confront these new publics.



One can say my overall project became to apply and extend their concepts to the contemporary planetary situation. Concomitantly reading IR literature on nuclear weapons, I was struck by fact that the central role that material realities played in these arguments was very ad hoc, and that many of the leading arguments on nuclear politics were very unconvincing. It was clear that while Waltz (Theory Talk #40) had brilliantly developed some key ideas about anarchy made by Hobbes and Rousseau, he had also left something really important out. These sorts of deficiencies led me to develop the arguments contained in Bounding Power. I think it is highly unlikely that I would have had these doubts, or come to make the arguments I made without having worked in political theory and in policy.



I read many works that greatly influenced my thinking in this area, among them works by Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner's Autonomous Technology, James Lovelock's Gaia, Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents (read a related article here, pdf), Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth and The Abolition, William Ophul's Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity... I was particularly stuck by a line in Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (pdf), that we live in a 'spaceship' like closed highly interconnected system, but lack an 'operating manual' to guide intelligently our actions. It was also during this period that I read key works by H.G. Wells, most notably his book, Anticipations, and his essay The Idea of a League of Nations, both of which greatly influenced my thinking.



This aside, the greatest contribution to my thinking has come from conversations sustained over many years with some really extraordinary individuals. To mention those that I have been arguing with, and learning from, for at least ten years, there is John O'Looney, Wesley Warren, Bob Gooding-Williams, Alyn McAuly, Henry Nau, Richard Falk, Michael Doyle (Theory Talk #1), Richard Mathew, Paul Wapner, Bron Taylor, Ron Deibert, John Ikenberry, Bill Wohlforth, Frank von Hippel, Ethan Nadelmann, Fritz Kratochwil, Barry Buzan (Theory Talk #35), Ole Waever, John Agnew (Theory Talk #4), Barry Posen, Alex Wendt (Theory Talk #3), James der Derian, David Hendrickson, Nadivah Greenberg, Tim Luke, Campbell Craig, Bill Connolly, Steven David, Jane Bennett, Daniel Levine (TheoryTalk #58), and Jairus Grove. My only regret is that I have not spoken even more with them, and with the much larger number of people I have learned from on a less sustained basis along the way.

                                    



What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?



I have thought a great deal about what sort of answers to this question can be generally valuable. For me, the most important insight is that success in intellectual life and academia is determined by more or less the same combination of factors that determines success more generally. This list is obvious: character, talent, perseverance and hard work, good judgment, good 'people skills,' and luck. Not everyone has a talent to do this kind of work, but the number of people who do have the talent to do this kind of work is much larger than the number of people who are successful in doing it. I think in academia as elsewhere, the people most likely to really succeed are those whose attitude toward the activity is vocational. A vocation is something one is called to do by an inner voice that one cannot resist. People with vocations never really work in one sense, because they are doing something that they would be doing even if they were not paid or required. Of course, in another sense people with vocations never stop working, being so consumed with their path that everything else matters very little. People with jobs and professions largely stop working when they when the lottery, but people with vocations are empowered to work more and better. When your vocation overlaps with your job, you should wake up and say 'wow, I cannot believe I am being paid to do this!' Rather obviously, the great danger in the life paths of people with vocations is imbalance and burn-out. To avoid these perils it is beneficial to sustain strong personal relationships, know when and how to 'take off' effectively, and sustain the ability to see things as an unfolding comedy and to laugh.



Academic life also involves living and working in a profession. Compared to the oppressions that so many thinkers and researchers have historically suffered from, contemporary professional academic life is a utopia. But academic life has several aspects unfortunate aspects, and coping successfully with them is vital. Academic life is full of 'odd balls' and the loose structure of universities and organization, combined with the tenure system, licenses an often florid display of dubious behavior. A fair number of academics have really primitive and incompetent social skills. Others are thin skinned-ego maniacs. Some are pompous hypocrites. Some are ruthlessly self-aggrandizing and underhanded. Some are relentless shirkers and free-riders. Also, academic life is, particularly relative to the costs of obtaining the years of education necessary to obtain it, not very well paid. Corruptions of clique, ideological factionalism, and nepotism occur. If not kept in proper perspective, and approached in appropriate ways, academic department life can become stupidly consuming of time, energy, and most dangerously, intellectual attention. The basic step for healthy departmental life is to approach it as a professional role.



The other big dimension of academic life is teaching. Teaching is one of the two 'deliverables' that academic organizations provide in return for the vast resources they consume. Shirking on teaching is a dereliction of responsibility, but also is the foregoing of a great opportunity. Teaching is actually one of the most assuredly consequential things academics do. The key to great teaching is, I think, very simple: inspire and convey enthusiasm. Once inspired, students learn. Once students take questions as their own, they become avid seekers of answers. Teachers of things political also have a responsibility to remain even-handed in what they teach, to make sure that they do not teach just or mainly their views, to make sure that the best and strongest versions of opposing sides are heard. Teaching seeks to produce informed and critically thinking students, not converts. Beyond the key roles of inspiration and even-handedness, the rest is the standard package of tasks relevant in any professional role: good preparation, good organization, hard work, and clarity of presentation.





Your main book, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (2007), is a mix of intellectual history, political theory and IR theory, and is targeted largely at realism. How does a reading and interpretation of a large number of old books tell us something new about realism, and the contemporary global?



Bounding Power attempts to dispel some very large claims made by realists about their self-proclaimed 'tradition,' a lineage of thought in which they place many of the leading Western thinkers about political order, such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and the 'global geopoliticans' from the years around the beginning of the twentieth century. In the book I argue that the actual main axis of western thinking about political order (and its absence) is largely the work of 'republican' thinkers from the small number of 'republics', and that many of the key ideas that realists call realist and liberals call liberal are actually fragments of a larger, more encompassing set of arguments that were primarily in the idioms of republicanism. This entails dispelling the widely held view that the liberal and proto-liberal republican thought and practice are marked by 'idealism'—and therefore both inferior in their grasp of the problem of security-from violence and valuable only when confined to the 'domestic.' I demonstrate that this line of republican security thinkers had a robust set of claims both about material contextual factors, about the 'geopolitics of freedom', and a fuller understanding of security-from-violence. The book shows how perhaps the most important insights of this earlier cluster of arguments has oddly been dropped by both realists (particularly neorealists) and liberal international theorists. And, finally, it is an attempt to provide an understanding that posits the project of exiting anarchy on a global scale as something essentially unprecedented, and as something that the best of our inherited theory leaves us unable to say much about.



The main argument is contained in my formulation of what I think are the actual the two main sets of issues of Western structural-materialist security theory, two problematiques formulated in republican and naturalist-materialist conceptual vocabularies. The first problematique concerns the relationship between material context, the scope of tolerable anarchy, and necessary-for-security government. The second problematic concerns the relative security-viability of two main different forms of government—hierarchical and republican.



This formulation of the first problematic concerning anarchy differs from the main line of contemporary Realist argument in that it poses the question as one about the spatial scope of tolerable anarchy. The primary variable in my reconstruction of the material-contextual component of these arguments is what I term violence interdependence (absent, weak, strong, and intense). The main substantive claim of Western structural-materialist security theory is that situations of anarchy combined with intense violence interdependence are incompatible with security and require substantive government. Situations of strong and weak violence interdependence constitute a tolerable (if at times 'nasty and brutish') second ('state-of-war') anarchy not requiring substantive government. Early formulations of 'state of nature' arguments, explicitly or implicitly hinge upon this material contextual variable, and the overall narrative structure of the development of republican security theory and practice has concerned natural geographic variations and technologically caused changes in the material context, and thus the scope of security tolerable/intolerable anarchy and needed substantive government. This argument was present in early realist versions of anarchy arguments, but has been dropped by neorealists. Conversely, contemporary liberal international theorists analyze interdependence, but have little to say about violence. The result is that the realists talk about violence and security, and the liberals talk about interdependence not relating to violence, producing the great lacuna of contemporary theory: analysis of violence interdependence.



The second main problematique, concerning the relative security viability of hierarchical and republican forms, has also largely been lost sight of, in large measure by the realist insistence that governments are by definition hierarchical, and the liberal avoidance of system structural theory in favor of process, ideational, and economic variables. (For neoliberals, cooperation is seen as (possibly) occurring in anarchy, without altering or replacing anarchy.) The main claim here is that republican and proto-liberal theorists have a more complete grasp of the security political problem than realists because of their realization that both the extremes of hierarchy and anarchy are incompatible with security. In order to register this lost component of structural theory I refer to republican forms at both the unit and the system-level as being characterized by an ordering principle which I refer to as negarchy. Such political arrangements are characterized by the simultaneous negation of both hierarchy and anarchy. The vocabulary of political structures should thus be conceived as a triad-triangle of anarchy, hierarchy, and negarchy, rather than a spectrum stretching from pure anarchy to pure hierarchy. Using this framework, Bounding Power traces various formulations of the key arguments of security republicans from the Greeks through the nuclear era as arguments about the simultaneous avoidance of hierarchy and anarchy on expanding spatial scales driven by variations and changes in the material context. If we recognize the main axis of our thinking in this way, we can stand on a view of our past that is remarkable in its potential relevance to thinking and dealing with the contemporary 'global village' like a human situation.





Nuclear weapons play a key role in the argument of Bounding Power about the present, as well as elsewhere in your work. But are nuclear weapons are still important as hey were during the Cold War to understand global politics?



Since their arrival on the world scene in the middle years of the twentieth century, there has been pretty much universal agreement that nuclear weapons are in some fundamental way 'revolutionary' in their implications for security-from-violence and world politics. The fact that the Cold War is over does not alter, and even stems from, this fact. Despite this wide agreement on the importance of nuclear weapons, theorists, policy makers, and popular arms control/disarmament movements have fundamental disagreements about which political forms are compatible with the avoidance of nuclear war. I have attempted to provide a somewhat new answer to this 'nuclear-political question', and to explain why strong forms of interstate arms control are necessary for security in the nuclear age. I argue that achieving the necessary levels of arms control entails somehow exiting interstate anarchy—not toward a world government as a world state, but toward a world order that is a type of compound republican union (marked by, to put it in terms of above discussion, a nearly completely negarchical structure).



This argument attempts to close what I term the 'arms control gap', the discrepancy between the value arms control is assigned by academic theorists of nuclear weapons and their importance in the actual provision of security in the nuclear era. During the Cold War, thinking among IR theorists about nuclear weapons tended to fall into three broad schools—war strategists, deterrence statists, and arms controllers. Where the first two only seem to differ about the amount of nuclear weapons necessary for states seeking security (the first think many, the second less), the third advocates that states do what they have very rarely done before the nuclear age, reciprocal restraints on arms.



But this Cold War triad of arguments is significantly incomplete as a list of the important schools of thought about the nuclear-political question. There are four additional schools, and a combination of their arguments constitutes, I argue, a superior answer to the nuclear-political question. First are the nuclear one worlders, a view that flourished during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and held that the simple answer to the nuclear political question is to establish a world government, as some sort of state. Second are the populist anti-nuclearists, who indict state apparatuses of acting contrary to the global public's security interests. Third are the deep arms controllers, such as Jonathan Schell, who argue that nuclear weapons need to be abolished. Fourth are the theorists of omniviolence, who theorize situations produced by the leakage of nuclear weapons into the hands of non-state actors who cannot be readily deterred from using nuclear weapons. What all of these schools have in common is that they open up the state and make arguments about how various forms of political freedom—and the institutions that make it possible—are at issue in answering the nuclear-political question.

                                                                                                                

Yet one key feature all seven schools share is that they all make arguments about how particular combinations and configurations of material realities provide the basis for thinking that their answer to the nuclear-political question is correct. Unfortunately, their understandings of how material factors shape, or should shape, actual political arrangements is very ad hoc. Yet the material factors—starting with sheer physical destructiveness—are so pivotal that they merit a more central role in theories of nuclear power. I think we need to have a model that allows us to grasp how variations in material contexts condition the functionality of 'modes of protection', that is, distinct and recurring security practices (and their attendant political structures).



For instance, one mode of protection—what I term the real-state mode of protection—attempts to achieve security through the concentration, mobilization, and employment of violence capability. This is the overall, universal, context-independent strategy of realists. Bringing into view material factors, I argue, shows that this mode of protection is functional not universally but specifically—and only—in material contexts that are marked by violence-poverty and slowness. This mode of protection is dysfunctional in nuclear material contexts marked by violence abundance and high violence velocities. In contrast, a republican federal mode of protection is a bundle of practices that aim for the demobilization and deceleration of violence capacity, and that the practices associated with this mode of protection are security functional in the nuclear material context.



What emerges from such an approach to ideas about the relation between nuclear power and security from violence is that the epistemological foundations for any of the major positions about nuclear weapons are actually much weaker than we should be comfortable with. People often say the two most important questions about the nuclear age are: what is the probability that nuclear weapons will be used? And then, what will happen when they are used? The sobering truth is that we really do not have good grounds for confidently answering either of those two questions. But every choice made about nuclear weapons depends on risk calculations that depend on how we answer these questions.





You have also written extensively on space, a topic that has not recently attracted much attention from many IR scholars. How does your thinking on this relate to your overall thinking about the global and planetary situation?

                                                                                                          

The first human steps into outer space during the middle years of the twentieth century have been among the most spectacular and potentially consequential events in the globalization of machine civilization on Earth. Over the course of what many call 'the space age,' thinking about space activities, space futures, and the consequences of space activities has been dominated by an elaborately developed body of 'space expansionist' thought that makes ambitious and captivating claims about both the feasibility and the desirability of human expansion into outer space. Such views of space permeate popular culture, and at times appear to be quite influential in actual space policy. Space expansionists hold that outer space is a limitless frontier and that humans should make concerted efforts to explore and colonize and extend their military activities into space. They claim the pursuit of their ambitious projects will have many positive, even transformative, effects upon the human situation on Earth, by escaping global closure, protecting the earth's habitability, preserving political plurality, and enhancing species survival. Claims about the Earth, its historical patterns and its contemporary problems, permeate space expansionist thinking.



While the feasibility, both technological and economic, of space expansionist projects has been extensively assessed, arguments for their desirability have not been accorded anything approaching a systematic assessment. In part, such arguments about the desirability of space expansion are difficult to assess because they incorporate claims that are very diverse in character, including claims about the Earth (past, present, and future), about the ways in which material contexts made up of space 'geography' and technologies produce or heavily favor particular political outcomes, and about basic worldview assumptions regarding nature, science, technology, and life.



By breaking these space expansionist arguments down into their parts, and systematically assessing their plausibility, a very different picture of the space prospect emerges. I think there are strong reasons to think that the consequences of the human pursuit of space expansion have been, and could be, very undesirable, even catastrophic. The actual militarization of that core space technology ('the rocket') and the construction of a planetary-scope 'delivery' and support system for nuclear war-fighting has been the most important consequence of actual space activities, but these developments have been curiously been left out of accounts of the space age and assessments of its impacts. Similarly, much of actually existing 'nuclear arms control' has centered on restraining and dismantling space weapons, not nuclear weapons. Thus the most consequential space activity—the acceleration of nuclear delivery capabilities—has been curiously rendered almost invisible in accounts of space and assessments of its impacts. This is an 'unknown known' of the 'space age'. Looking ahead, the creation of large orbital infrastructures will either presuppose or produce world government, potentially of a very hierarchical sort.  There are also good reasons to think that space colonies are more likely to be micro-totalitarian than free. And extensive human movement off the planet could in a variety of ways increase the vulnerability of life on Earth, and even jeopardize the survival of the human species.



Finally, I think much of space expansionist (and popular) thinking about space and the consequences of humans space activities has been marked by basic errors in practical geography. Most notably, there is the widespread failure to realize that the expansion of human activities into Earth's orbital space has enhanced global closure, because the effective distances in Earth's space make it very small. And because of the formidable natural barriers to human space activity, space is a planetary 'lid, not a 'frontier'. So one can say that the most important practical discovery of the 'space age' has been an improved understanding of the Earth. These lines of thinking, I find, would suggest the outlines of a more modest and Earth-centered space program, appropriate for the current Earth age. Overall, the fact that we can't readily expand into space is part of why we are in a new 'earth age' rather than a 'space age'.





You've argued against making the environment into a national security issue twenty years ago. Do the same now, considering that making the environment a bigger priority by making it into a national security issue might be the only way to prevent total environmental destruction?



When I started writing about the relationships between environment and security twenty years ago, not a great deal of work had been done on this topic. But several leading environmental thinkers were making the case that framing environmental issues as security issues, or what came to be called 'securitizing the environment', was not only a good strategy to get action on environmental problems, but also was useful analytically to think about these two domains. Unlike the subsequent criticisms of 'environmental security' made by Realists and scholars of conventional 'security studies', my criticism starts with the environmentalist premise that environmental deterioration is a paramount problem for contemporary humanity as a whole.



Those who want to 'securitize the environment' are attempting to do what William James a century ago proposed as a general strategy for social problem solving. Can we find, in James' language, 'a moral equivalent of war?' (Note the unfortunately acronym: MEOW). War and the threat of war, James observed, often lead to rapid and extensive mobilizations of effort. Can we somehow transfer these vast social energies to deal with other sets of problems? This is an enduring hope, particularly in the United States, where we have a 'war on drugs', a 'war on cancer', and a 'war on poverty'. But doing this for the environment, by 'securitizing the environment,' is unlikely to be very successful. And I fear that bringing 'security' orientations, institutions, and mindsets into environmental problem-solving will also bring in statist, nationalist, and militarist approaches. This will make environmental problem-solving more difficult, not easier, and have many baneful side-effects.



Another key point I think is important, is that the environment—and the various values and ends associated with habitat and the protection of habitat—are actually much more powerful and encompassing than those of security and violence. Instead of 'securitizing the environment' it is more promising is to 'environmentalize security'. Not many people think about the linkages between the environment and security-from-violence in this way, but I think there is a major case of it 'hiding in plain sight' in the trajectory of how the state-system and nuclear weapons have interacted.



When nuclear weapons were invented and first used in the 1940s, scientists were ignorant about many aspects of their effects. As scientists learned about these effects, and as this knowledge became public, many people started thinking and acting in different ways about nuclear choices. The fact that a ground burst of a nuclear weapon would produce substantial radioactive 'fall-out' was not appreciated until the first hydrogen bomb tests in the early 1950s. It was only then that scientists started to study what happened to radioactive materials dispersed widely in the environment. Evidence began to accumulate that some radioactive isotopes would be 'bio-focused', or concentrated by biological process. Public interest scientists began effectively publicizing this information, and mothers were alerted to the fact that their children's teeth were become radioactive. This new scientific knowledge about the environmental effects of nuclear explosions, and the public mobilizations it produced, played a key role in the first substantial nuclear arms control treaty, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in the ocean, and in space. Thus, the old ways of providing security were circumscribed by new knowledge and new stakeholders of environmental health effects. The environment was not securitized, security was partially environmentalized.



Thus, while some accounts by arms control theorists emphasize the importance of 'social learning' in altering US-Soviet relations, an important part of this learning was not about the nature of social and political interactions, but about the environmental consequences of nuclear weapons. The learning that was most important in motivating so many actors (both within states and in mass publics) to seek changes in politics was 'natural learning,' or more specifically learning about the interaction of natural and technological systems.



An even more consequential case of the environmentalization of security occurred in the 1970's and 1980's. A key text here is Jonathan Schell's book, The Fate of the Earth. Schell's book, combining very high-quality journalism with first rate political theoretical reflections, lays out in measured terms the new discoveries of ecologists and atmospheric scientists about the broader planetary consequences of an extensive nuclear war. Not only would hundreds of millions of people be immediately killed and much of the planet's built infrastructure destroyed, but the planet earth's natural systems would be so altered that the extinction of complex life forms, among them homo sapiens, might result. The detonation of numerous nuclear weapons and the resultant burning of cities would probably dramatically alter the earth's atmosphere, depleting the ozone layer that protects life from lethal solar radiations, and filling the atmosphere with sufficient dust to cause a 'nuclear winter.' At stake in nuclear war, scientists had learned, was not just the fate of nations, but of the earth as a life support system. Conventional accounts of the nuclear age and of the end of the Cold War are loath to admit it, but it I believe it is clear that spreading awareness of these new natural-technological possibilities played a significant role in ending the Cold War and the central role that nuclear arms control occupies in the settlement of the Cold War. Again, traditional ways of achieving security-from-violence were altered by new knowledges about their environmental consequences—security practices and arrangements were partly environmentalized.



Even more radically, I think we can also turn this into a positive project. As I wrote two decades ago, environmental restoration would probably generate political externalities that would dampen tendencies towards violence. In other words, if we address the problem of the environment, then we will be drawn to do various things that will make various types of violent conflict less likely.





Your work is permeated by references to 'material factors'. This makes it different from branches of contemporary IR—like constructivism or postmodernism—which seem to be underpinned by a profound commitment to focus solely one side of the Cartesian divide. What is your take on the pervasiveness and implications of this 'social bias'?



Postmodernism and constructivism are really the most extreme manifestations of a broad trend over the last two centuries toward what I refer to as 'social-social science' and the decline—but hardly the end—of 'natural-social science'. Much of western thought prior to this turn was 'naturalist' and thus tended to downplay both human agency and ideas. At the beginning of the nineteenth century—partly because of the influence of German idealism, partly because of the great liberationist projects that promised to give better consequence to the activities and aspirations of the larger body of human populations (previously sunk in various forms of seemingly natural bondages), and partly because of the great expansion of human choice brought about by the science-based technologies of the Industrial Revolution—there was a widespread tendency to move towards 'social-social science,' the project of attempting to explain the human world solely by reference to the human world, to explain social outcomes with reference to social causes. While this was the dominant tendency, and a vastly productive one in many ways, it existed alongside and in interaction with what is really a modernized version of the earlier 'natural-social science.' Much of my work has sought to 'bring back in' and extend these 'natural-social' lines of argument—found in figures such as Dewey and H.G. Wells—into our thinking about the planetary situation.



In many parts of both European and American IR and related areas, Postmodern and constructivist theories have significantly contributed to IR theorists by enhancing our appreciation of ideas, language, and identities in politics. As a response to the limits and blindnesses of certain types of rationalist, structuralist, and functional theories, this renewed interest in the ideational is an important advance. Unfortunately, both postmodernism and constructivism have been marked by a strong tendency to go too far in their emphasis of the ideational. Postmodernism and constructivism have also helped make theorists much more conscious of the implicit—and often severely limiting—ontological assumptions that underlay, inform, and bound their investigations. This is also a major contribution to the study of world politics in all its aspects.



Unfortunately, this turn to ontology has also had intellectually limiting effects by going too far, in the search for a pure or nearly pure social ontology. With the growth in these two approaches, there has indeed been a decided decline in theorizing about the material. But elsewhere in the diverse world of theorizing about IR and the global, theorizing about the material never came anything close to disappearing or being eclipsed. For anyone thinking about the relationships between politics and nuclear weapons, space, and the environment, theorizing about the material has remained at the center, and it would be difficult to even conceive of how theorizing about the material could largely disappear. The recent 're-discovery of the material' associated with various self-styled 'new materialists' is a welcome, if belated, re-discovery for postmodernists and constructivists. For most of the rest of us, the material had never been largely dropped out.



A very visible example of the ways in which the decline in appropriate attention to the material, an excessive turn to the ideational, and the quest for a nearly pure social ontology, can lead theorizing astray is the core argument in Alexander Wendt's main book, Social Theory of International Politics, one of the widely recognized landmarks of constructivist IR theory. The first part of the book advances a very carefully wrought and sophisticated argument for a nearly pure ideational social ontology. The material is explicitly displaced into a residue or rump of unimportance. But then, to the reader's surprise, the material, in the form of 'common fate' produced by nuclear weapons, and climate change, reappears and is deployed to play a really crucial role in understanding contemporary change in world politics. 



My solution is to employ a mixed ontology. By this I mean that I think several ontologically incommensurate and very different realities are inescapable parts the human world. These 'unlikes' are inescapable parts of any argument, and must somehow be combined. There are a vast number of ways in which they can be combined, and on close examination, virtually all arguments in the social sciences are actually employing some version of a mixed ontology, however implicitly and under-acknowledged.



But not all combinations are equally useful in addressing all questions. In my version of mixed ontology—which I call 'practical naturalism'—human social agency is understood to be occurring 'between two natures': on the one hand the largely fixed nature of humans, and on the other the changing nature composed of the material world, a shifting amalgam of actual non-human material nature of geography and ecology, along with human artifacts and infrastructures. Within this frame, I posit as rooted in human biological nature, a set of 'natural needs,' most notably for security-from-violence and habitat services. Then I pose questions of functionality, by which I mean: which combinations of material practices, political structures, ideas and identities are needed to achieve these ends in different material contexts? Answering this question requires the formulation of various 'historical materialist' propositions, which in turn entails the systematic formulation of typologies and variation in both the practices, structures and ideas, and in material contexts. These arguments are not centered on explaining what has or what will happen. Instead they are practical in the sense that they are attempting to answer the question of 'what is to be done' given the fixed ends and given changing material contexts. I think this is what advocates of arms control and environmental sustainability are actually doing when they claim that one set of material practices and their attendant political structures, identities and ideas must be replaced with another if basic human needs are to going to continue to be meet in the contemporary planetary material situation created by the globalization of machine civilization on earth.

                                  

Since this set of arguments is framed within a mixed ontology, ideas and identities are a vital part of the research agenda. Much of the energy of postmodern and many varieties of critical theory have focused on 'deconstructing' various identities and ideas. This critical activity has produced and continues to produce many insights of theorizing about politics. But I think there is an un-tapped potential for theorists who are interested in ideas and identities, and who want their work to make a positive contribution to practical problem-solving in the contemporary planetary human situation in what might be termed a 'constructive constructivism'. This concerns a large practical theory agenda—and an urgent one at that, given the rapid increase in planetary problems—revolving around the task of figuring out which ideas and identities are appropriate for the planetary world, and in figuring out how they can be rapidly disseminated. Furthermore, thinking about how to achieve consciousness change of this sort is not something ancillary to the greenpeace project but vital to it. My thinking on how this should and might be done centers the construction of a new social narrative, centered not on humanity but on the earth.





Is it easy to plug your mixed ontology and interests beyond the narrow confines of IR or even the walls of the ivory tower into processes of collective knowledge proliferation in IR—a discipline increasingly characterized by compartimentalization and specialization?



The great plurality of approaches in IR today is indispensible and a welcome change. The professionalization of IR and the organization of intellectual life has some corruptions and pitfalls that are best avoided. The explosion of 'isms' and of different perspectives has been valuable and necessary in many ways, but it has also helped to foster and empower sectarian tendencies that confound the advance of knowledge. Some of the adherents of some sects and isms boast openly of establishing 'citation cartels' to favor themselves and their friends. Some theorists also have an unfortunate tendency to assume that because they have adopted a label that what they actually do is the actually the realization of the label. Thus we have 'realists' with limited grasp on realities, 'critical theorists' who repeat rather than criticize the views of other 'critical theorists,' and anti-neoliberals who are ruthless Ayn Rand-like self aggrandizers. The only way to fully address these tendencies is to talk to people you disagree with, and find and communicate with people in other disciplines.



Another consequence of this sectarianism is visible in the erosion of scholarly standards of citation. The system of academic incentives is configured to reward publication, and the publication of ideas that are new. This has a curiously perverse impact on the achievement of cumulativity. One seemingly easy and attractive path to saying something new is to say something old in new language, to say something said in another sect or field in the language of your sect or field, or easiest of all, simply ignore what other people have said if it is too much like what you are trying to say. George Santyana is wide quoted in saying that 'those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.' For academics it can unfortunately be said, 'those who can successfully forget what past academics said are free to say it again, and thus advance toward tenure.' When rampant sectarianism and decline in standards of citation is combined with a broader cultural tendency to valorize self-expression and authenticity, academic work can become an exercise in abstract self expressionism.



Confining one's intellectual life within one 'ism' or sect is sure to be self-limiting. Many of the most important and interesting questions arise between and across the sects and schools. Also, there are great opportunities in learning from people who do not fully share your assumptions and approaches. Seriously engaging the work and ideas of scholars in other sects can be very very valuable. Scholars in different sects and schools are also often really taking positions that are not so different as their labels would suggest. Perhaps because my research agenda fits uncomfortably within any of the established schools and isms, I have found particularly great value in seeking out and talking on a sustained basis with people with very different approaches.





My final question is about normativity and the way that normativity is perceived: In Europe and the United States, liberal Internationalism is increasingly considered as hollowed out, as a discursive cover for a tendency to attempt to control and regulate the world—or as an unguided idealistic missile. Doesn't adapting to a post-hegemonic world require dropping such ambitions?



American foreign policy has never been entirely liberal internationalist. Many other ideas and ideologies and approaches have often played important roles in shaping US foreign policy. But the United States, for a variety of reasons, has pursued liberal internationalist foreign policy agendas more extensively, and successfully, than any other major state in the modern state system, and the world, I think, has been made better off in very important ways by these efforts.



The net impact of the United States and of American grand strategy and particularly those parts of American brand strategy that have been more liberal internationalist in their character, has been enormously positive for the world. It has produced not a utopia by any means, but has brought about an era with more peace and security, prosperity, and freedom for more people than ever before in history.



Both American foreign policy and liberal internationalism have been subject to strong attacks from a variety of perspectives. Recently some have characterized liberal internationalism as a type of American imperialism, or as a cloak for US imperialism. Virtually every aspect of American foreign policy has been contested within the United States. Liberal internationalists have been strong enemies of imperialism and military adventurism, whether American or from other states. This started with the Whig's opposition to the War with Mexico and the Progressive's opposition to the Spanish-American War, and continued with liberal opposition to the War in Vietnam.



The claim that liberal internationalism leads to or supports American imperialism has also been recently voiced by many American realists, perhaps most notably John Mearsheimer (Theory Talk #49). He and others argue that liberal internationalism played a significant role in bringing about the War on Iraq waged by the W. Bush administration. This was indeed one of the great debacles of US foreign policy. But the War in Iraq was actually a war waged by American realists for reasons grounded in realist foreign policy thinking. It is true, as Mearsheimer emphasizes, that many academic realists criticized the Bush administration's plans and efforts in the invasion in Iraq. Some self-described American liberal internationalists in the policy world supported the war, but almost all academic American liberal internationalists were strongly opposed, and much of the public opposition to the war was on grounds related to liberal internationalist ideas.



It is patently inaccurate to say that main actors in the US government that instigated the War on Iraq were liberal internationalists. The main initiators of the war were Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Whatever can be said about those two individuals, they are not liberal internationalists. They initiated the war because they thought that the Saddam Hussein regime was a threat to American interests—basically related to oil. The Saddam regime was seen as a threat to American-centered regional hegemony in the Middle East, an order whose its paramount purpose has been the protection of oil, and the protection of the regional American allies that posses oil. Saddam Hussein was furthermore a demonstrated regional revisionist likely to seek nuclear weapons, which would greatly compromise American military abilities in the region. Everything else the Bush Administration's public propaganda machine said to justify the war was essentially window dressing for this agenda. Far from being motivated by a liberal internationalist agenda the key figures in the Bush Administration viewed the collateral damage to international institutions produced by the war as a further benefit, not a cost, of the war. It is particularly ironic that John Mearsheimer would be a critic of this war, which seems in many ways a 'text book' application of a central claim of his 'offensive realism,' that powerful states can be expected, in the pursuit of their security and interests, to seek to become and remain regional hegemons.



Of course, liberal internationalism, quite aside from dealing with these gross mischaracterizations propagated by realists, must also look to the future. The liberal internationalism that is needed for today and tomorrow is going to be in some ways different from the liberal internationalism of the twentieth century. This is a large topic that many people, but not enough, are thinking about. In a recent working paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, John Ikenberry and I have laid out some ways in which we think American liberal internationalism should proceed. The starting point is the recognition that the United States is not as 'exceptional' in its precocious liberal-democratic character, not as 'indispensible' for the protection of the balance of power or the advance of freedom, or as easily 'hegemonic' as it has been historically. But the world is now also much more democratic than ever before, with democracies old and new, north and south, former colonizers and former colonies, and in every civilizational flavor. The democracies also face an array of difficult domestic problems, are thickly enmeshed with one another in many ways, and have a vital role to play in solving global problems. We suggest that the next liberal internationalism in American foreign policy should focus on American learning from the successes of other democracies in solving problems, focus on 'leading by example of successful problem-solving' and less with 'carrots and sticks,' make sustained efforts to moderate the inequalities and externalities produced by de-regulated capitalism, devote more attention to building community among the democracies, and make sustained efforts to 'recast global bargains' and the distribution of authority in global institutions to better incorporate the interests of 'rising powers.'





Daniel Deudney is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He has published widely in political theory and international relations, on substantive issues such as nuclear weapons, the environment as a security issue, liberal and realist international relations theory, and geopolitics.





Related links



Deudney's Faculty Profile at Johns Hopkins
Read Deudney & Ikenberry's Democratic Internationalism: An American Grand Strategy for a Post-exceptionalist Era (Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, 2012) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney et al's Global Shift: How the West Should Respond to the Rise of China (2011 Transatlantic Academy report) here (pdf) 
Read the introduction of Deudney's Bounding Power (2007) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's Bringing Nature Back In: Geopolitical Theory from the Greeks to the Global Era (1999 book chapter) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney & Ikenberry's Who Won the Cold War? (Foreign Policy, 1992) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security (Millennium, 1990) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's Rivers of Energy: The Hydropower Potential (WorldWatch Institute Paper, 1981) here (pdf) 









Print version of this Talk (pdf)

Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Bijjur-2 Microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and the physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characterstics, classification and use potentials of the soils in the microwartershed. The present study covers an area of 440 ha in Shirahatti taluk of Gadag district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought prone with an average annual rainfall of 633 mm of which about 363 mm is received during south –west monsoon, 165 mm during north-east and the remaining 105 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 94 per cent is covered by soils, 6 per cent by waterbodies, settlements and others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below.  The soils belong to 10 soil series and 23 soil phases (management units) and 5 land management units.  The length of crop growing period is about 150 days starting from the 3rd week of June to 1st week of October.  From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated for 21 crops.  Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval.  Land suitability for growing major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing degree of suitability along with constraints were generated.  About 94 per cent area in the microwatershed is suitable for agriculture.  About 59 per cent are moderately shallow to shallow (25-75 cm) and 35 per cent are very shallow (25-75 cm).  About 85 per cent of the area has clayey soils and 10 per cent are loamy soils at the surface.  About 7 per cent of the area has non-gravelly (9.0).  The Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soils are dominantly 337 kg/ha) in available potassium.  Available sulphur is low (20 ppm) in about 3 per cent area.  Available boron is low (0.5 ppm) in about 75 per cent area and 19 per cent medium (0.5-1.0 ppm).  Available iron is low (0.6 ppm) in available zinc.  The land suitability for 21 major crops grown in the microwatershed were assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Sorghum - 54 (12) Jackfruit - - Maize - 69 (16) Jamun - - Bengal gram 17 (4) 244 (55) Musambi - - Groundnut - 14 (3) Lime - - Sunflower - 14 (3) Cashew - - Cotton - 70 (16) Custard Apple - 54 (12) Banana - - Amla - 54 (12) Pomegranate - - Tamarind - - Mango - - Marigold - 69 (16) Sapota - - Chrysanthemum - 69 (16) Guava - - Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 5 identified LMUs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fibre and horticulture crops.  Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc.,  Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required.  As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges. SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF FARM HOUSEHOLDS Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Bijjur-2 micro-watershed (Kanakvad sub-watershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) is located in between 1500' – 1502' North latitudes and 75037' – 75039' East longitudes, covering an area of about 440 ha, bounded by Kokkaragundi, Belhatti, Tangod and Kerikoppa villages with a length of growing period (LGP) 150-180 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Bijjur-2 micro-watershed (Kanakvad subwatershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) are presented here. Social Indicators;  Male and female ratio is 56.8 to 43.2 per cent to the total sample population.  Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 56.8 per cent to the total population.  Literacy population is around 86.4 per cent.  Social groups belong to other backward caste (OBC) is around 62.5 per cent.  Fire wood is the source of energy for a cooking among 62.5 per cent.  About 37.5 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card.  Majority of farm households (50%) are having MGNREGA card for rural employment.  Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system is around 50 per cent.  Swachha bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 75 per cent of sample households.  Institutional participation is only 6.8 per cent of sample households.  Rural migration to urban centre for employment is prevalent among 2.3 per cent of farm households.  Women participation in decisions making are around 75 per cent of households were found. 2 Economic Indicators;  The average land holding is 3.84 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to small and medium farmers. The dry land of 86.8 % and irrigated land 13.2 % of total cultivated land area among the sample farmers.  Agriculture is the main occupation among 36.6 per cent and agriculture is the main and agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation for 40.0 per cent of sample households.  The average value of domestic assets is around Rs. 109150 per household. Mobile and television are popular media mass communication.  The average value of farm assets is around Rs. 113050 per household, about 37.5 per cent of sample farmers having plough and seed cum fertiliser drill.  The average value of livestock is around Rs. 35250 per household; about 80 per cent of household are having livestock.  The average per capita food consumption is around 820 grams (1750.5 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Among all sample households are consuming less than the NIN recommendation.  The annual average income is around Rs.27056 per household. About 87.5 per cent of farm households are below poverty line.  The per capita monthly average expenditure is around Rs.1328. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services;  The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use.  The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs. 912 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs. 378298 per year for the total area of 440.44 ha.  The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around Rs. 10000/ ha/year. Per hectare food grain production services is maximum in onion (Rs. 25205) followed by cotton (Rs. 15991), ground nut (Rs. 5221), sorghum (Rs. 5074), sunflower (Rs. 2215) and maize (Rs. 1264).  The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around groundnut is (Rs. 8028) followed by maize (Rs. 2261) and sorghum (Rs. 988).  The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum in cotton (Rs. 49758) fallowed by sunflower (Rs. 22675), onion (Rs. 22675), maize (Rs. 20980), sorghum (Rs. 20076) and groundnut (Rs. 17179). 3 Economic Land Evaluation;  The major cropping pattern is maize (74.6 %) followed by sorghum (6.6 %), ground nut (5.3 %), onion (5.3 %), sunflower (4.4 %) and onion (4.0 %).  In Bijjur-2 micro-watershed, major soil are banded ferruginous quartzite (BFQ) landscape of series Shirol (SRL) series is having very shallow soil depth cover around 21.2 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing maize (86.2 %) and ground nut (13.8 %), Soratur (SRT) soil series are also having very shallow soil depth cover 3.1 % of area, the main crops are maize. Soil of banded ferruginous quartzite (BFQ) landscape Nabhapur (NBP) soil series having shallow soil depth cover around 13.7 % of areas, crops are cotton (50.0 %) and maize (50.0 %). Attikatti (AKT) soil series are having shallow soil depth cover around 21.0 % of area. The major crops grown are maize (57.1 %), sorghum (21.3 %) and sunflower (22.5%). Attikatti Tanda (ATT) soil series are having moderately shallow soil depth covers around 9.1 % of area, the major crop grown is maize (87.6 %) and onion (12.4 %).  The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for maize ranges between Rs. 25826/ha in ATT soil (with BCR of 1.16) and Rs. 14366/ha in AKT soil (with BCR of 1.53).  In onion the cost of cultivation range between Rs. 68636/ha in ATT soil (with of 1.19) and Rs.47678/ha in NBP soil (with BCR of 1.66).  In groundnut the cost of cultivation in SRL soil is Rs. 28742/ha (with BCR of 1.46).  In cotton the cost of cultivation in NBP soil is Rs. 31556/ha (with BCR of 1.51).  In sunflower the cost of cultivation in AKT soil is Rs.19341/ha (with BCR of 1.11) and sorghum the cost of cultivation in AKT soil is Rs. 14686/ha (with BCR of 1.41).  The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM.  It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. More fertilizer applications in deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions;  Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation.  The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices. 4  Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments.  By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households.  By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in maize (76.3 to 84 %), onion (59.5 to 72.2 %), ground nut (63.9 %), cotton (27.7 %), sorghum (76.5 %) and sunflower (58.6 %) ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project

Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Devihal-4 microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and these physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characterstics, classification and use potentials of the soils in the microwartershed. The present study covers an area of 325 ha in Shirahatti taluk of Gadag district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought-prone with an average annual rainfall of 633 mm, of which about 363 mm is received during south –west monsoon, 165 mm during north-east and the remaining 105 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 85 per cent is covered by soils and 15 per cent is covered by rock lands and others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below.  The soils belong to 8 soil series and 18 soil phases (management units) and 7 land use classess.  The length of crop growing period is about 150 days starting from the 3rd week of June to 1st week of October.  From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated.  Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval.  Land suitability for growing major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated.  About 79 per cent area is suitable for agriculture and 21 per cent is not suitable for agriculture.  About 60 per cent of the soils are shallow (25-50 cm) to moderately shallow (50-75 cm) and about 24 per cent are moderately deep (75-100 cm) to very deep (>150 cm) soils.  About 82 per cent of the area has loamy soils at the surface and 3 per cent of the area has clayey soils at the surface.  About 12 per cent of the area has non-gravelly soils, 41 per cent gravelly soils (15-35 % gravel), 26 per cent very gravelly (35- 60% gravel) soils and 5% of the soils are extremely gravelly.  About 71 per cent low (51-100 mm/m) to very low (0.6 ppm) in 11 per cent and deficient (<0.6 ppm) in 74 per cent area of the microwatershed.  The land suitability for 23 major crops grown in the microwatershed were assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, market price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Sorghum 37(11) 58(18) Sapota 9(3) 62(19) Maize 37(11) 58(18) Jackfruit 9(3) 34(10) Cotton 43(13) 52(16) Jamun 9(3) 34(10) Sunflower 43(13) 52(16) Musambi 9(3) 34(10) Onion 71(22) 24(7) Lime 9(3) 34(10) Groundnut 71(22) 165(51) Cashew 9(3) 71(23) Chilli 71(22) 24(7) Custard apple 43(13) 193(59) Sugarcane 43(13) 28(9) Amla 43(13) 193(59) Pomegranate 43(13) 28(9) Tamarind 9(3) 34(10) Tomato 71(22) 24 (7) Marigold 71(22) 33(10) Guava 43(13) - Chrysanthemum 71(22) 33(10) Mango 9(3) 34(10) Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 7 identified LUCs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fibre and horticulture crops.  Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc.,  Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required.  As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands, field bunds and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges that would help in supplementing the income, provide fodder and fuel and generate lot of biomass. This helps in maintaining an ecological balance and also helps in mitigating the climate change. Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Devihal-4 micro-watershed (Nilogal sub-watershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) is located in between 1507' – 1508' North latitudes and 75037' – 75038' East longitudes, covering an area of about 325 ha, bounded by Majjur village on north, Chabbi, Devihal village on the west, Rantur village on the east with a length of growing period (LGP) 150-180 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Devihal-4 Microwatershed (Nilogal subwatershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) are presented here. Social Indicators;  Male and female ratio is 57.9 and 42.1 per cent to the total sample population.  Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 54.3 per cent to the total population.  Literacy population is around 77.2 per cent.  Social groups belong to other backward caste (OBC) is around 90.0 per cent.  Fire wood is the source of energy for a cooking among 80.0 per cent.  About 40.0 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card.  Majority of farm households (90%) are having MGNREGA card for rural employment.  Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system is around 70.0 per cent.  Swach bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 60.0 per cent of sample households.  Women participation in decisions making for agriculture production among all sample households was found. Economic Indicators;  The average land holding is 1.5 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to small and medium farmers. The dry land account for 66.4 per cent 2 and irrigated land 33.6 per cent of total cultivated land area among the sample farmers.  Agriculture is the main occupation among 7.7 per cent and agriculture is the main and non agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation for 84.6 per cent of sample households.  The average value of domestic assets is around Rs. 14930 per household. Mobile and television are popular media mass communication.  The average value of farm assets is around Rs. 80401 per household, about 31.0 per cent of sample farmers having plough and sprayer (20 %).  The average value of livestock is around Rs.21766 per household; about 75.5 per cent of household are having livestock.  The average per capita food consumption is around 725.5 grams (1552.9 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 80.0 per cent of sample households are consuming less than the NIN recommendation.  The annual average income is around Rs .23559 per household. About all sample farm households are below poverty line.  The per capita monthly average expenditure is around Rs.1510. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services;  The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use.  The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs. 1494 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs. 407982 per year for the total area of 325.11 ha.  The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around Rs. 6742/ ha/year. Per hectare food grain production services is maximum in sunflower (Rs. 9893) followed by maize (Rs. 5512) and cotton (Rs. 4820).  The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around Rs. 1162/ ha/year. Per hectare fodder production services is maximum in maize (Rs. 2017) and cotton (Rs. 308).  The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum in cotton (Rs. 43480) followed by sunflower (Rs. 337) and maize (Rs. 122). Economic Land Evaluation;  The major cropping pattern is maize (75.2 %) followed by cotton (10.0 %) and sunflower (10.8 %).  In Devihal 4 Microwatershed, major soil is Kaggalipura (KGP) soil series having shallow soil depth cover around 6.0 % of area. On this soil farmers are 3 presently growing cotton (20 %) and maize (80 %). Lakkipur (LKR) soil series is also having moderately shallow soil depth cover 40.4 % of area, the crops are maize. Tammadahalli (TDH) soil series having moderately shallow soil depth cover around 7.35 % of area, crops are maize. Chikkamegheri (CKM) soil series having soil moderately shallow depth cover around 8.59 % of areas, crops are cotton (33 %) and maize (67 %). Kumchahalli (KMH) soil series having deep soil depth cover 10.48 % of areas; crops are maize (65 %), sunflower (35 %). Ranatur (RTR) soil series having very deep soil depth cover 2.28 % of areas; crops are bengal gram (17.4 %), maize (33.4 %) and sorghum (49.2 %). Murlapur (MLR) soil series having very deep soil depth cover 14.9 % of areas the crops is maize.  The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for cotton ranges between Rs. 32508 /ha in KGP soil (with BCR of 1.14) and Rs. 17208/ha in CKM soil (with BCR of 1.41).  In maize the cost cultivation is range between Rs. 38586/ha in RTR soil (with of 1.02) and Rs.15126/ha in CKM soil (with BCR of 1.77).  In sunflower the cost of cultivation in KMH soil is Rs. 19527/ha (with BCR of 1.51).  The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM.  It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. More fertilizer applications in deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions;  Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation.  The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices.  Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments.  By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households.  By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in cotton (45.9 to 45.9 %), maize (79.2 to 70.5 %) and sunflower (54.8 %). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project

Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Sonath-1 microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and these physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundaries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characteristics, classification, behaviour and use potentials of the soils in the microwatershed. The present study covers an area of 445 ha in Sonath -1 microwatershed in Gulbarga taluk of Gulbarga district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought-prone with an average annual rainfall of 740 mm, of which about 540 mm is received during south–west monsoon, 126 mm during north-east and the remaining 74 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 96 per cent is covered by soils, four per cent by waterbodies, settlements and others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below.  The soils belong to 5 soil series and 14 soil phases (management units) and 5 land use classes.  The length of crop growing period is about 120-150 days starting from the 3rd week of May to 1rd week of October.  From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated.  Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval.  Land suitability for growing 19 major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated.  About 80 per cent area is suitable for agriculture and 16 per cent is not suitable for agriculture.  About 65 per cent area has very shallow (150 cm) soils.  About 72 per cent of the area has clayey soils and about 24 % loamy soils at the surface.  About 55 per cent of the area has non-gravelly soils, 12 per cent gravelly to very gravelly soils (15-60 % gravel) and 29 per cent extremely gravelly soils (60-80%).  About 65 per cent of the area has soils that are very low (200 mm/m) in available water capacity.  About 67 per cent of the area has very gently sloping (1-3%), about 13 per cent area is gently sloping (3-5%) and about 16 per cent area has moderately sloping (5-10%) lands.  An area of about 34 per cent has soils that are slightly eroded (e1), 33 per cent moderately eroded (e2) and 29 per cent severely eroded (e3).  An area of about 23 per cent has soils that are slightly alkaline (pH 7.3 to 7.8), about 37 per cent moderately alkaline (pH 7.8-8.4), about 15 per cent strongly alkaline (pH 8.4-9.0) and 22 per cent area is neutral (pH 6.5-7.3) in soil reaction.  The Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soils are dominantly 0.75%) in organic carbon.  Major area of 47 per cent has soils that are low (57 kg/ha) in available phosphorus.  About 7 per cent low (337 kg/ha) in available potassium.  Available sulphur is low (4.5 ppm).  Available manganese and copper are sufficient in all the soils.  About 82 per cent area has soils that are deficient (0.6 ppm).  The land suitability for 19 major crops grown in the microwatershed was assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, market price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Sorghum 140 (31) - Sapota - - Maize - - Jackfruit - - Red gram - 140 (31) Jamun - 107 (24) Sunflower 140 (31) - Musambi 107 (24) 33 (7) Cotton 107 (24) 33 (7) Lime 107 (24) 33 (7) Sugarcane - - Cashew - - Soybean 140 (31) - Custard apple 140 (31) - Bengal gram 140 (31) 75 (17) Amla 140 (31) - Guava - - Tamarind - 107 (24) Mango - - Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 5 identified LUCs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fibre and horticulture crops that helps in sustained production and also maintaining in the ecological balance in the microwatershed.  Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc.,  Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required.  As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands, field bunds and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges. This would help in not only supplementing the farm income but also provides fodder and fuel and generate lot of biomass. This helps in maintaining an ecological balance and also contributes to mitigating the climate change. Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Sonath-1 micro-watershed (Sonath-1 sub-watershed, Gulbarga taluk and district) is located in between 17035'–17037' North latitudes and 7705'–7707' East longitudes, covering an area of about 445 ha, bounded by Mormanchi, Malsapur, Kinhi, Chengta and Margatti villages with length of growing period (LGP) 120-150 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified. Results: The socio-economic outputs for Sonath-1 micro-watershed (Sonath subwatershed, Gulbarga taluk, Gulbarga district) are presented here. Social Indicators;  Male and female ratio is 60.5 to 39.5 per cent to the total sample population.  Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 62.8 per cent to the total population.  Literacy population is around 72.1 per cent.  Social groups belong to general caste is around 50 per cent.  Wood is the source of energy for a cooking among 50 per cent.  About 10 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card.  Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system is around 60 per cent.  Swach bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 30 per cent of sample household.  Women participation in decisions making is among all the households were found. Economic Indicators;  The average land holding 1.6 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belonging to marginal and small and large farmers. The rain fed land is the total cultivated land area among all the sample farmers. 2  Agriculture is the main occupation among 72.1 per cent and agriculture is the main and agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation around 11.6 per cent of sample households.  The average value of domestic assets is around Rs.75901 per household. Mobile and television are popular mass media communication.  The average farm assets value is around Rs. 181375 per household, about 50 per cent of sample farmers having bullock cart, plough, sprayer and tractor.  The average livestock value is around Rs. 71250 per household; among the all sample household are having livestock.  The average per capita food consumption is around 823 grams (1811.5 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 60 per cent of sample farmers are consuming less than the NIN recommendation.  The annual average income is around Rs. 55519 per household. About 80 per cent of farm households are below poverty line.  The per capita monthly average expenditure is around Rs. 2428. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services;  The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use.  The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs. 628 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs. 345861 per year for the total area of 444.65 ha.  The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around Rs. 8286/ha/year. Per hectare food grain production services is maximum in redgram (Rs. 19003) followed by black gram (Rs. 3970) and green gram (Rs. 1886).  The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum in redgram (Rs. 57451) followed by green gram (Rs. 48847) and black gram (Rs. 45488). Economic Land Evaluation;  The major cropping pattern is redgram (86.0 %) followed by black gram (8.2 %) and green gram (5.7 %).  Sonath-1 micro-watershed, major soil is Marguti (DDT) series having very shallow soil depth cover around 44.9 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing redgram, Novinihala (DGR) are having shallow soil depth cover around 3 16.9 % of area, the crops are red gram and Mannur soil series having very deep soil depth cover around 24.0 % of area; major crops are black gram, red gram and green gram.  The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for red gram ranges between Rs. 23799 ha in MAR soil (with BCR of 1.46) and Rs.19508 /ha in NHA soil (with BCR of 2.53).  In green gram the cost of cultivation Rs 38785ha in MAR soil (with BCR of 1.06) and black gram the cost of cultivation in MAR soil Rs.22377/ha (with BCR of 1.18).  The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM.  It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. More fertilizer applications in deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions;  Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation.  The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices.  Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments.  By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households.  By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in red gram (0 to 21.2 %), green gram (18.5 %) and black gram (32.5 %). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project

Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Chikkasavanur-2 microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and these physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characterstics, classification and use potentials of the soils in the microwartershed. The present study covers an area of 474 ha in Shirahatti taluk of Gadag district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought prone with an average annual rainfall of 633 mm of which about 363 mm is received during south –west monsoon, 165 mm during north-east and the remaining 105 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 88 per cent is covered by soils, 19 percent is covered by rock lands and three per cent by waterbodies, settlements and others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below.  The soils belong to 10 soil series and 25 soil phases (management units) and 5 land management units.  The length of crop growing period is about 150 days starting from the 3rd week of June to 1st week of October.  From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated.  Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval.  Land suitability for growing major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated.  About 78 per cent area is suitable for agriculture and 22 per cent is not suitable for agriculture.  About 69 per cent of the soils are very shallow (150 cm) soils.  About 8 per cent of the area has clayey soils at the surface, 56 per cent loamy soils and 14 per cent of the area has sandy soils at the surface.  About 9 per cent of the area has non-gravelly soils, 55 per cent gravelly soils (15-35 % gravel) and 13 per cent very gravelly (35- 60% gravel) soils.  About 78 per cent low (51-100 mm/m) to very low (9.0), 22 per cent neutral (pH 6.5-7.3) and 7 per cent slightly acid (pH 6.0-6.5).  The Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soils are dominantly 337 kg/ha) in available potassium.  Available sulphur is medium (10-20 ppm) in about 21 per cent area and about 57 per cent area is low (1.0 ppm) in 6 per cent area.  Available iron is deficient in about 21 per cent area and sufficient in 57 per cent area.  Available manganese and copper are sufficient in all the soils.  Available zinc is sufficient (>0.6 ppm) in 6 per cent and deficient (<0.6 ppm) in 71 per cent area of the microwatershed.  The land suitability for 23 major crops grown in the microwatershed were assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable(S1) Moderately suitable(S2) Highly suitable(S1) Moderately suitable(S2) Sorghum 75(16) 83 (18) Sapota - 41(9) Maize 75(16) 83 (18) Jackfruit - - Cotton - 158(33) Jamun - - Sunflower - 88(19) Musambi - - Onion 41(9) 117 (25) Lime - - Groundnut 41(9) 139(29) Cashew - 41(9) Chilli 41(9) 117(25) Custard apple - 180(39) Sugarca ne 41(9) 139(29) Amla - 69 (14) Pomegran ate - 41(9) Tamarind - - Tomato 41(9) 117 (25) Marigold 41(9) 133(28) Guava - 117 (25) Chrysanthem um 41(9) 133(28) Mango - - Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 5 identified LMUs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fiber and horticulture crops.  Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc.,  Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required.  As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges. Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Chikasavanur-2 micro-watershed (Nilogal sub-watershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) is located in between 1504' – 1506' North latitudes and 75035' – 75037' East longitudes, covering an area of about 322 ha, bounded by Fatgoan Badani, Nilogal, Chikasavanur and Devihal villages with a length of growing period (LGP) 150- 180 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified for each watershed. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Chikasavanur-2 Microwatershed (Nilogal sub-watershed, Shirahatti taluk, Gadag district) are presented here. Social Indicators;  Male and female ratio is 62.7 to 37.3 per cent to the total sample population.  Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 50.9 per cent to the total population.  Literacy population is around 72.5 per cent.  Social groups belong to scheduled caste (SC) is around 44.4 per cent.  Fire wood is the source of energy for a cooking among 77.8 per cent.  About 44.4 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card.  Majority of farm households (66.7 %) are having MGNREGA card for rural employment.  Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system among all the sample households.  Swach bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 33.3 per cent of sample households.  Institutional participation is only 7.84 per cent of sample households.  Women participation in decisions making is around 58 per cent of households were found. 2 Economic Indicators;  The average land holding is 1.61 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to small and medium farmers. The total cultivated land by dry land condition among the sample farmers.  Agriculture is the main occupation among 22.2 per cent and agriculture is the main and non agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation for 33.3 per cent of sample households.  The average value of domestic assets is around Rs. 106480 per household. Mobile and television are mass popular mass communication media.  The average value of farm assets is around Rs. 137948 per household; about 33.3 per cent of sample farmers owen plough and bullock cart.  The average value of livestock is around Rs. 32550 per household; about 25 per cent of household are having livestock.  The average per capita food consumption is around 819.2 grams (1634.5 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 88.9 per cent of sample households are consuming less than the NIN recommendation.  The annual average income is around Rs. 12537 per household. Among all sample farm households are above poverty line.  The per capita monthly average expenditure is around Rs. 1114. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services;  The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use.  The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs. 467 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs. 171969 per year for the total area of 474.16 ha.  The average value of ecosystem service for food production is around Rs. 20433/ ha/year. Per hectare food production services is maximum in lemon (Rs. 415454) followed by horse gram (Rs. 9228), sunflower (Rs. 5480), cowpea (Rs. 3575), Ragi (Rs. 1356) and sorghum negative returns.  The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around Rs. 2213/ ha/year. Per hectare fodder production services is maximum in maize greengram (Rs 2687) followed by sorghum (Rs. 1976) and maize (Rs. 1976).  The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum in cotton (Rs. 49758), sorghum (Rs. 37643), greengram (Rs. 37317), sunflower (Rs. 33256) and maize (Rs. 21598). 3 Economic Land Evaluation;  The major cropping pattern is maize (65.9 %) followed by greengram (17.4 %), cotton (8.4 %), sorghum (5.6 %) and sunflower (2.8 %).  In Chikasavanur-2 micro-watershed, major soil are soil of alluvial landscape of Chikasavanur (CRS) and Kanchanahali (KNH) soil series are having shallow soil depth covered around 20.59 per cent and 9.61 per cent of areas respectively. On the soil farmers growing crops are maize and cotton. Kutegoudanahundi (KGH) series are having moderately shallow soil depth cover around 18.07 per cent of areas; crops on greengram (38%), maize (44%), sorghum (12 %) and sunflower (6%).  The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for sunflower Rs.57747/ha in KGH soil (with BCR of 1.20).  In cotton the cost of cultivation Rs. 34446/ha in KGH soil (with BCR of 1.47).  In maize the cost of cultivation ranges between Rs. 32642/ha in KGH soil (with BCR of 1.05) and Rs.17944/ha in CRS soil (with BCR of 81.34).  In greengram the cost of cultivation Rs. 19891/ha in KGH soil (with BCR of 1.17) and sorghum the cost of cultivation Rs 21936/ha in KGH soil (with BCR of 1.10).  The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM.  It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. More fertilizer applications in deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions;  Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation.  The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices.  Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments.  By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households.  By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in maize (71.5 to 81.8 %), cotton (56.0 %), sorghum (83.9 %), green gram (27.7 %), sunflower (38.5 %). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project