Becoming Responsible with Solar Power? Extending Feminist Imaginings of Community,Participation and Care

ABSTRACT

Solar power has long incited feminist imaginings of socio-environmental justice and a commoning of energy, despite its associations with military technology and precarious labour. This article addresses the question of responsible collaboration with a form of power that remains indifferent to human pursuits. It does so through a situated inquiry into a solar energy initiative in the Czech Republic considered as a technoecological phenomenon. Feminist technoecology is developed in terms of a double process of associations and dissociations – or technoecological dis/articulation – through which a collective and its milieu and ethos are constituted. It thereby attends to the immanent tensions and exclusions in the economic, political and ecological work of solar panels in particular encounters, including relations with the land and racialised labour, that differentially produce an ethos of interest and indifference. In this light, the non-participation of local Roma in the solar installation does not signal the absence of a relation but makes responsiveness, and responsibility, towards the indifference they constitute, possible. In a mode of speculative re-articulation, immanent frictions and potentialities are reworked to expand an ethos of caring and communing that incorporates extinguishment, non-participation and indifference.     

Understanding for Which Students and Classes a Socio-Ecological Aggression Prevention Program Works Best: Testing Individual Student and Class Level Moderators

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - School-based aggression prevention programs may not be equally effective for all students and classes, depending on student and class characteristics. This study...     

Mechanismen institutionellen Wandels im deutschen Kapitalismus

In the debate on the convergence of Rhenish capitalism towards the Anglo-Saxon model there is a growing consensus on the emergence of hybrid institutional configurations which combine elements of both systems. Our paper traces the mechanisms and driving forces leading to varying degrees of convergence with Anglo-Saxon standards and institutions by comparing the changes in two areas of German corporate governance regulation, namely internal corporate governance and accounting. Whereas existing institutions were coupled with Anglo-Saxon elements in the case of internal corporate governance (?layering“), traditional standards and institutions were substituted for new ones in the case of accounting (?displacement“). We argue that the varying degree of convergence can be explained by the different preferences of key national actors, such as companies and trade unions, in the two cases and the varying exogenous pressures for reforms. Our study highlights the importance of a meso-level analysis of causal mechanisms for the explanation of institutional change in modern capitalism.     

Entwicklungswege des regulativen Staates — Ein Vergleich zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada

The paper takes Giandomenico Majone’s characterization of the regulatory state as starting point for a comparative analysis of the structures, politics and policies of regulation in the United States and Canada. It argues that Majone’s approach only partly captures the reality of the US regulatory system and, by concentrating on the US, fails to incorporate other versions of the regulatory state. The American regulatory state is only of limited value as a reference model for the European nation states, because the characteristics of national regulatory regimes are shaped by political culture and state structures. In this regard, Canada bears a much stronger resemblance to the European nations. Therefore, its long experience with regulatory institutions and practices is likely to be more instructive for the European debates. Future analysis should focus more strongly on the filtering processes by which national responses to general trends are shaped and on the distinct paths of development resulting from these processes.     

War's dark glamour: ethics of research in war and conflict zones

The article addresses three questions concerning violent conflicts in Sri Lanka, Burma and southern Thailand: How is it possible to investigate questions of war and conflict in the field, especially concerning access and exit options? Access was gained in different ways in all three areas depending on the respective situations; special conditions and restrictions influenced the type and quality of data to be collected. The second question concerns the ethics and permissibility of research and data collection in conflict zones. What are the dangers or risks for both researcher and the local informants? What will be the quality of data so gathered? Third is a related question of ethics, that of impartiality: this is less a question of whether it is possible than of whether it is permissible for the researcher to stay ‘neutral’ in violent conflicts. This also has to be determined individually and in a different manner for each conflict zone. It is obvious that all researchers violate the ideal of ‘objectivity’ implicitly or explicitly from the start, yet this need not invalidate their findings. The paper concludes that research in conflict zones is mandatory, despite all doubts and qualifications. Only making such zones public can shape perceptions, give voice to the voiceless and so prevent these conflicts becoming invisible—‘war without witness’.