Suchergebnisse

"Es wird gezeigt, inwiefern das Sinnsystem heutiger Umweltschützer und Umweltschützerinnen moralische Dimensionen aufweist. Es wird untersucht, wie das umweltschützerische Moralsystem historisch entstanden ist und wie es sich gewandelt hat." Anhand historischer Quellentexte und jüngerer Sekundärdaten werden die Sinndeutungen von Umweltschützern beschrieben. Drei historische Etappen werden betrachtet: (1) Die historischen Vorläufer der Ökologiebewegung des Zeitraums 1750 - 1930; (2) die moderne Ökologiebewegung der 70er bis Mitte der 80er Jahre; (3) die Phase Mitte der 80er bis in die 90er Jahre. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die rousseauistischen Ideen von 1750 bis in das 20. Jahrhundert hinein kontinuierlich überliefert werden. Die immer wiederkehrenden Sinnelemente werden benannt. Daneben werden aber auch Transformationen festgestellt. Die Aktivitäten der Ökologiebewegung werden als "moralische Kreuzzüge" eingestuft, "auch wenn sie heute in einer überwiegend versachlichten Weise geführt werden". (prf)

Reads the discourse of the modern environmental movement as moral allegory. The central categories of modern ecological mores are found in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: skepticism about civilization, idealization of natural life, location of redemption & justice in nature, etc. These ideas were further developed by the Romantics & became part of the environmental movement of the 1970s-1980s. The moral discourse of this period centered on the idea of a coming apocalypse brought on by human prodigality to be forestalled by the renunciation of luxury, an ascetic lifestyle, & a holistic, harmonious view of the nature-society relationship. The strategy preached was recruitment of proselytes through conversion to save the world from environmental destruction. 19 References. Adapted from the source document.

Renderings are digital visualisations of urban development projects in the field of urban design that aim to create spatial knowledge about future-built urban environments, which we also refer to as imaginaries. In our contribution, we ask how visual artists design renderings, how they try to influence spatial knowledge about future urban spaces, and in which processes renderings are produced. Using the cases of the Eko Atlantic City project in Lagos (Nigeria) and the Hudson Yards project in New York City (USA) as examples, it will be shown empirically how specialized visual artists try to make urban development projects appear convincing and appealing. The analyses show that visual artists particularly use design elements such as photorealistic aesthetics and lighting to make the presentations of the planned building projects desirable. They also attempt to make them appear coherent in their built environment by digitally collaging different imaginary elements. Interestingly, only a limited number of image types are used. They can nevertheless put the imaginary space of the planned building projects in a positive light, create pleasant affective atmospheres, and appeal to a wide audience. By visually constructing imaginaries about urban development projects and thus influencing the subjective spatial knowledge of stakeholders and a broader public, renderings develop power. The constructed - and widely shared - imaginary space can guide investment and influence planning processes and the materialization of the built project.

Social innovation (SI) research tends to understand rural SI processes as collective initiatives of equally engaged, supportive, and like-minded people. However, recent research has indicated that SI projects often benefit from dedicated key players who find support in their communities but also must deal with resistance and barriers. Against this backdrop, this article explores the figure of the key player in SI research and exposes the patterns of rural SI processes with the empirical cases of two small communities in Germany that jointly created rural infrastructure systems, thus seeking emancipation from remote political and economic control and marginalization. Using the empirical cases, we tested and specified a heuristic framework of key players that combines analytical dimensions at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. According to our findings, the heuristic framework is appropriate for analyzing key players in rural SI processes. Notably, we show that SI processes benefit from assertive key players and strong communities capable of joint action. Both are crucial for dealing with internal opposition and overcoming external hurdles that appear when novel approaches irritate familiar solutions and routines.

Digital information and communication technologies influence not only on urban planning but also citizen participation. The increasing level of politically driven involvement of the public in urban planning processes has led to the development of new participatory technologies and innovative visual tools. Using an empirical case study, the article investigates a completed participation process concerning an e-participation platform in Berlin, while focusing on the following questions: (1) How are visualisations communicatively deployed within e-participation formats? (2) In what ways do citizens communicate a kind of spatial knowledge? (3) Which imaginings of public urban space are constructed through the use of visualisations? The exploration of the communication conditions and the 'methods' employed will demonstrate the way participants visually communicate their perceptions and local knowledge as well as how they construct their imagining of urban places. In this context, visualisations in participation processes are understood as products of 'communicative actions' (Knoblauch, 2019) that allow people to present their visions in ways that are more understandable and tangible to themselves and others. Within this context, by the example of the state-driven e-platform 'meinBerlin' a discussion will trace how far digitalised and visualised communicative actions from Berlin residents contribute to the social construction of urban spaces and the extent to which they can be considered a part of cooperative planning.

In social-science based research, it is still an open question how cities cope with the multi-faceted challenges of climate change. Via the example of the German coastal cities of Lübeck and Rostock and on the basis of a discourse analysis (of news articles and expert interviews), this paper contributes to this research question by asking how cities actually perceive their vulnerability and resilience related to climate impacts. The study reveals that perceptions in the two cities differ considerably and are idiosyncratic when compared to each other. This is remarkable because both cities share similar geographic conditions as well as climate forecasts. Furthermore, they both have in common a long history as Hanseatic cities. What makes Rostock special, however, is that it was part of the former German Democratic Republic and that, after the German reunification in 1990, it suffered from socio-economic problems and marginalization. The paper's findings raise the question of how divergent local knowledge about climate-related vulnerability and resilience can be conceptualized. It is also imperative to consider how local experiences of economic problems and social marginalization influence local knowledge regarding climate change. Consequently, the authors suggest a theoretical approach which is mainly based on social constructionism. Furthermore, they highlight the role that locally shared experiences— such as of social marginalization—play in the emergence of climate change constructions.

This paper argues that the conceptions of "vulnerability" and "resilience", which have been strongly influenced by ecology and natural hazards research, have been widely used in an essentialist manner. Thus, vulnerability is treated as the factual susceptibility and resilience as the factual adaptive capacity of systems, which are measurable by certain indicators. Although in the meantime social dimensions have received greater consideration than previously and although both notions have been transferred to a wider field of phenomena ranging from technology to economy and society, the conception of vulnerability and resilience still lacks the dimension of the social construction of reality that implies that actors may develop different perceptions of potential threats and of the precautionary measures that are to be adopted—even though the nature of an endangerment seems clear and proven. In this contribution we identify major conceptual desiderata and suggest a social science based conception of vulnerability and resilience addressing them. We take up ideas from social constructivism in the form pointed out in actor-network theory. We dissolve the tired dichotomy between social and material entities and instead emphasise that all kinds of entities have the same ontological status and thus interact directly with one another on the same level ('flat ontology'). Against the background of a generic definition of governance, questions of agency in networks will be addressed. Based on a relational understanding of space, a spatial research perspective will be developed also taking into account the dimension of time. Finally the conception comprises an empirical strategy for investigating vulnerability and resilience.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- I Introduction -- 1 Introduction: Communicative Constructions and the Refiguration of Spaces -- Introduction -- From the Objectively Given to (Communicatively) Constructed Space: Milestones of Spatial Theory -- The Concept of this Volume -- Notes -- References -- Part II Theoretical and Methodological Approaches -- 2 From the Constitution to the Communicative Construction of Space -- Introduction -- Space and Sociology -- From Dualism to Duality of Space -- From Constitution to Communicative Construction -- Subjectivation, Knowledge, and Mediatization -- Digitalization and Synthetic Situation -- The Refiguration of Space -- Notes -- References -- 3 The Symbolic Construction of Spaces: Perspectives From a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse -- Introduction -- Social Constructivism -- Discourses -- The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse -- Heuristics of Analysis -- Methodology -- The Discursive Construction of Spaces -- Notes -- References -- 4 Digital Media, Data Infrastructures, and Space: The Refiguration of Society in Times of Deep Mediatization -- Introduction -- The Domain Specificity of (Deep) Mediatization -- Figurations, Communications, and Media -- A Figurational Perspective On Society -- Transformation as Refiguration -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 5 Cities, Regions, and Landscapes as Augmented Realities: Refiguration of Space(s) Through Digital Information Technologies -- Introduction -- Concepts and Their Spatial Dimensions -- Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality: Merging Actual and Media Spaces -- Virtual, Actual, and Real: The Media Character of Mixed Reality Technology -- Digital and Analogue -- Augmented Reality as a Socio-Technological Refiguration of Spatial Experiences and Behavior.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license Through a variety of empirical studies, this volume offers fresh insights into the manner in which different forms of communicative action transform urban space. With attention to the methodological questions that arise from the attempt to study such changes empirically, it offers new theoretical foundations for understanding the social construction and reconstruction of spaces through communicative action. Seeing communicative action as the basic element in the social construction of reality and conceptualizing communication not only in terms of the use of language and texts, but as involving any kind of objectification, such as technologies, bodies and non-verbal signs, it considers the roles of both direct and mediatized (or digitized) communication. An examination of the conceptualization of the communicative (re-)construction of spaces and the means by which this change might be empirically investigated, this book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the notion of refiguration as a means by which to understand the transformation of contemporary societies. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, and geographers with interests in social construction and urban space.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, residents in peripheral and structurally weak rural areas began to move into the digital age. Digital tools are being used and developed to address existing challenges in rural areas such as local communication, healthcare or mobility. Against the background of a conceptual framework of social and digital innovations from a process perspective, this paper asks how the processes and dynamics of digitally supported social innovations in rural areas can be understood and described. By analysing five villages in Germany, we show that the digital initiatives - despite their different contexts, contents and driving actors - develop over three phases: an inspiration phase, an emergence phase and a consolidation phase. This dynamic process can be interpreted as "linear-circular", because while overall a very targeted development of innovative problem solutions can be observed within the three-phase process, at the same time creative development loops and new inspirations exercise influence.