Transitioning into a sustainable energy system is becoming ever more pressing as the reality of an anthropogenic ecological crisis becomes difficult to ignore. Due to the complexity of the matter, proposed solutions often address the symptoms of the current socioeconomic configuration rather than its core. To conceptualise possible future energy systems, this Perspective focuses on the disconnect between science and technology and engineering studies. On the one hand, this disconnect leads to social science research that passively critiques rather than contributes to tackling societal issues in practice. On the other, it produces technical work limited by the incumbent conceptualisations of economic activity and organisational configurations around production without capturing the broader social and political dynamics. We thus propose a schema for bridging this divide that uses the "commons" as an umbrella concept. We apply this framework on the hardware aspect of a conceptual energy system, which builds on networked microgrids powered by open-source, lower cost, adaptable, socially responsible and sustainable technology. This Perspective is a call to engineers and social scientists alike to form genuine transdisciplinary collaborations for developing radical alternatives to the energy conundrum.
En el siguiente trabajo se examinan las representaciones de lo monstruoso en la narrativa fantástica chilena, particularmente en el formato cuento. Para ello se propone un análisis temático e histórico de esta vertiente desde el romanticismo político hasta la literatura reciente, siempre desde una mirada general pero enmarcada en una matriz de sentido fundada en el terror como manifestación estética. El estudio se fundamenta a través del análisis de las transgresiones del terror sobrenatural y las implicancias políticas y sociales que inciden en el sistema de representación chileno. Lo anterior con el propósito de reactualizar el canon nacional más allá del dominio mimético. ; The following work examines the representations of the monstrous in Chilean fantastic narrative, particularly in the short story format. For this purpose, a thematic and historical analysis of this aspect is proposed from political romanticism to recent literature, always from a general perspective but framed in a matrix of meaning based on terror as an aesthetic manifestation. The study is based on the analysis of the transgressions of supernatural terror and the political and social implications that affect the Chilean system of representation. The foregoing with the purpose of updating the national canon beyond the mimetic domain. ; Esta publicación es parte del proyecto de I+D+i PGC2018-093648-B-I00, financiado por MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER «Una manera de hacer Europa» - Estrategias y figuraciones de lo insólito. Manifestaciones del monstruo en la narrativa en lengua española (de 1980 a la actualidad).
How do changes in climatic conditions and disaster patterns affect the persistence of civil unrest across countries over time? Existing studies postulate that changing climate conditions will exacerbate various social conflicts through their impacts on degraded environmental and economic conditions, which is further conditional on political institutions. Nevertheless, there are two major pitfalls in the existing studies. First, vulnerability as a major underlying mechanism has been used as an umbrella term or been presumed. Using vulnerability as an umbrella term has a detrimental effect on climate-conflict theory-building because it prevents scholars from deriving testable empirical implications for relevant concepts. Second, previous research has pinpointed the importance of political institutions in moderating impacts of climate on conflict, but the literature says little about what aspects of political institutions might aggravate or alleviate vulnerability to climate in ways that are simmering or amplifying civil strife. Using the structural causal approach and machine learning methods, this dissertation improves the identification of the mediation effect of vulnerability and the moderation effect of political institutions on the climate-conflict relationship. The important mechanisms and implications revealed by this study are twofold. First, this dissertation finds that the impacts of extreme climatic events are more important in shaping local vulnerability than that of annual weather variations, and that adaptive capacity is more important than economic sensitivity in mitigating local vulnerability. Annual weather variations (i.e., the slow-moving mechanics) have a significant impact on cumulative conflict hazards, whereas extreme climatic events (i.e., the fast-moving drivers) fuel onset of a new conflict. In the presence of socio-psychological vulnerabilities, an increase in annual weather variations can boil new conflicts. Second, the state capacity is more important than democracy in exacerbating a country's vulnerability to climate, and the degree of executive bribery especially plays a crucial role in moderating the impacts of vulnerability to climate on civil conflict. However, of different aspects of democracy, freedom of academic and cultural expression has the most important moderating effect on conflict. What is striking is the role of socio-psychological vulnerability in transmitting the impacts of extreme climate and weather variations on civil conflict. Mainstream conflict theory has shown that institutional and economic conditions are the most important factors determining conflicts even though socio-psychological factors are meaningful contexts. However, this present study shows that socio-psychological vulnerability is more important than institutional and economic conditions in shaping civil conflict.
