Search results

This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible 'sustainable energy' transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of 'the transition' itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to 'open up' (rather than 'close down'), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons.

This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible 'sustainable energy' transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of 'the transition' itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to 'open up' (rather than 'close down'), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons. ; ESRC

The conditions that shaped the rise and expansion of American social science are rapidly changing, and with them, the terms of its relationship with power and policy. As globalization has diminished the role of the state as the locus of public policy i.

This book describes the progression and results of a decade-long program of experimental research on power in social exchange relations. Exchange theorists have traditionally excluded punishment and coercion from the scope of their analyses; but Molm examines whether exchange theory can be expanded to include reward and coercive power. Working within the framework of Emerson's power-dependence theory, but also drawing on the decision theory concepts of strategic action and loss aversion, Molm develops and tests a theory that emphasizes the interdependence of reward and coercive power. Her work shows that they are fundamentally different, not only in their effects on behavior, but also in the structural incentive to use power and the risks of power use. When exchanges are negotiated and secured by the 'shadow of the future,' rather than by binding agreements, dependence both encourages and constrains the use of coercion