Nico Stehr

Changing economic circumstances - namely, an end to the primacy of labour and property as determinants of prosperity - have created a need for a new theoretical platform: one that transcends standard economic discourse.

The Social Foundations of the Modern Economy

Knowledge and Economic Conduct

This anthology of studies by the eminent geographer and climate scientist Eduard Brückner (1862-1927) on anthropogenic climate change and the social, political and economic impact of climate variations on societies in historical times, assembles his pioneering work in English for the first time. The issues discussed by Brückner are now considered to be among the most pressing facing modern society and climate research. At the turn of the twentieth century, Brückner was one of the central protagonists in a vigorous debate in science and society about global climate variability and its political and economic significance. The studies published here were chosen to demonstrate Brückner 's wide-ranging scientific interest in climate variability, his extensive empirical research and theoretical analysis of climate change, his assessment of contemporary analyses and thinking about anthropogenic climate change (such as the widespread concern about desiccation), and how he approached the questions of the transfer of scientific knowledge into society. In many ways Brückner was a thoroughly modern scientist, convinced, for example, that the issue of climate change and its impact was of considerable scientific merit and that future climate changes are of great significance for the well-being of humankind as well as for the global balance of political and economic relations. Brückner 's formidable ideas should have a significant impact on our present views of climate, climate variability and climate impact.

Eduard Brückner - The Sources and Consequences of Climate Change and Climate Variability in Historical Times

The relationship of knowledge and liberties in modern societies presents a multitude of fascinating issues that deserve to be explored more systematically. The production of knowledge is dynamic, and the conditions and practice of freedom is undergoing transformation. These changes ensure that the linkages between liberty and knowledge are always subject to changes. In the past, the connection between scientific knowledge, democracy, and emancipation seemed self-evident. More recently, the close linkage between democracy and knowledge has been viewed with skepticism. This volume explores the relationship between knowledge and democracy, Do they support each other, do they mutually depend on each other, or are they perhaps even in conflict with each other? Does knowledge increase the freedom to act? If additional knowledge contributes to individual and social well being, does it also enhance freedoms? Knowledge and Democracy focuses on the interpenetration of knowledge, freedom and democracy, and does so from various perspectives, theoretical as well as practical. Modern societies are transforming themselves into knowledge societies. This has a fundamental impact on political systems and the relationship of citizens to large social institutions. The contributors to this book systemically explore whether, and in what ways, these modern-day changes and developments are connected to expansion of the capacities of individual citizens to act. They focus on the interrelation of democracy and knowledge, and the role of democratic institutions, as well as on the knowledge and social conduct of actors within democratic institutions. In the process of investigation, they arrive at a new platform for future research and theory, one that is sensitive to present-day societal conflicts, cleavages, and transformations generated by new knowledge. In this way, this volume will attract the interest of political scientists, sociologists, economists and students within various disciplines. Nico Stehr is Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany and a fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study of the Humanities, Essen, Germany. During the academic year 2002/2003 he was Paul F. Lazarsfeld Professor at the University of Vienna. Stehr is also a professor emeritus of the University of Alberta. His research interests include sociology, economics and labor, globalization, and ecology.

A 21st Century Perspective

Knowledge and Democracy

Gernot Böhme

The original essays collected here under the general title of The Knowledge Society were first commissioned for a conference held in the late fall of 1984 at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, West Germany. The conference in Darmstadt saw a larger number of contribu tions presented than could be accommodated in this edition of the Sociol ogy of the Sciences Yearbook. However, all contributions were important and affected those published in this collection. We are therefore grateful to all participants of the Darmstadt conference for their presentations and for their intense, useful as well as thoughtful discussion of all papers. Those chosen for publication in the Yearbook and those undoubtedly to be published elsewhere have all benefitted considerably from our discussions in Darmstadt which also included a number of the members of the edito rial board of the Yearbook. In addition, we are pleased that the authors were able to read and comment further on each other's papers prior to publication. As is the case in every endeavor of this kind, we have incurred many debts and are only able to acknowledge these at this point publicly while expressing our sincere thanks and appreciation for all the intellectual sup port and the considerable labor invested by a number of persons in the realization of the collection.

The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations

The Knowledge Society

Richard V. Ericson

Inquiries into Contemporary Societies

The Culture and Power of Knowledge

Hans von Storch

Der Klimawandel, die Klimakatastrophe sind in aller Munde. Vielfach reden wir vom Klima, meinen aber eigentlich das Wetter. Wie sich die Idee vom Klima selbst über die Zeiten gewandelt hat, wo Wetter aufhört, Klima anfängt und wo ""normale"" Veränderungen zu hysterischen Reaktionen führen - all dies erfahren Sie in diesem Buch. Ein Naturwissenschaftler und ein Sozialwissenschaftler zeigen das Zusammenspiel von Klima und Gesellschaft. Das natürliche Klima ist eine der wichtigen Bedingungen für die Möglichkeit menschlicher Existenz. Schon deshalb ist das Klima seit Jahrhunderten eines der zentralen Themen menschlichen Nachdenkens. Ursprünglich und dann immer wieder, wenn auch in abgeschwächter Form, hat man den Verdacht geäußert oder mit großer Sicherheit verkündet, dass Klima nicht nur Grundlage der menschlichen Zivilisation ist, sondern ihre besonderen Formen, Erfolge und Unterschiede hervorbringt und erklärt. Der Mensch ist deshalb je nach Klimaregion Opfer oder Begünstigter. Allerdings ist der Mensch angeblich nicht nur ein durch Klima bestimmtes Geschöpf und Klima ist nicht nur ein Objekt menschlicher Reflexion, sondern, wie wir in jüngster Zeit zunehmend feststellen müssen, ist Klima auch Ergebnis menschlichen Handelns. Dieses Buch erläutert die verschiedenen Facetten des Begriffs ""Klima"" und zeigt, wie der Begriff soziale und politische Wirkung entfaltet und wie er sich im Laufe der Geschichte gewandelt hat. Aus dem Inhalt: Klima oder Wetter? Eine Einführung Klima als Zustand und als Begünstigung Klima als Umwelterfahrung Klima naturwissenschaftlich Klima sozialwissenschaftlich Klima formt Gesellschaften und Menschen Die Wirkungen des Klimas auf Menschen Klima als Risiko und Bedrohung Klimaänderungen Natürliche Klimaschwankungen Anthropogener Klimawandel Klimaänderungen als soziales Konstrukt Die Geschichte der Klimakatastrophen Der Einfluss von Klimaveränderungen auf die Gesellschaft Schluss: ""Normale"" Veränderungen oder Katastrophe?

Klima, Wetter, Mensch

Reiner Grundmann

It is often said that knowledge is power, but more often than not relevant knowledge is not used when political decisions are made. This book examines how political decisions relate to scientific knowledge and what factors determine the success of scientific research in influencing policy. The authors take a comparative and historical perspective and refer to well-known theoretical frameworks, but the focus of the book is on three case studies: the discourse of racism, Keynesianism and climate change. These cases cover a number of countries and different time periods. In all three the authors see a close link between 'knowledge producers' and political decision makers, but show that the effectiveness of the policies varies dramatically. This book will be of interest to scientists, decision makers and scholars alike.

From Research to Public Policy

The Power of Scientific Knowledge

Volker Meja

Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia has been a profoundly provocative book. The debate about politics and social knowledge that was spawned by its original publication in 1929 attracted the most promising younger scholars, some of whom shaped the thought of several generations. The book became a focus for a debate on the methodological and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than thirty major papers were published in response to Mannheim’s text. Writers such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Robert Curtius, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Helmuth Plessner, Hans Speier and Paul Tillich were among the contributors. Their positions varied from seeing in the sociology of knowledge a sophisticated reformulation of the materialist conception of history to linking its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. The English publication in 1936 defined formative issues for two generations of sociological self-reflection. Knowledge and Politics provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces the leading contributions. It sheds new light on one of the greatest controversies that have marked German social science in the past hundred years.

The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute

Knowledge and Politics (RLE Social Theory)

Christoph Henning

Bernd Weiler

Nothing affects the modern economy (and society) more than decisions made in the market place, especially, but not only, decisions made by consumers. Although it is not startling to suggest that decisions made in production are affected by choices consumers make, consumers have long been viewed, not only by academic economists, as individual, isolated rational actors that make or refrain from purchases purely on the basis of narrow financial considerations. Markets are not and never were morally neutral. Market relations have always had an often taken-for-granted moral underpinning. The moralization of the markets refers to the dissolution and replacement of the conventional moral underpinnings of market conduct, for example, in the music market, financial markets, and corporate governance. It further implies not only the heightened importance of new ethical precepts, but the significant change in the role of moral ideals in market behavior. These profound transformations of economic conduct are accompanied and co-determined by societal conflicts. The moralization of markets represents thus a new stage in the social evolution of markets. The book is divided into four parts, in which the twelve chapters, written by contributors from different social science disciplines, deal with the context of the moralization of the markets; the major social institutions; and present case studies that examine European and American attitudes and behavior towards tobacco and GMO; expansion of the private and ethics in business; and how workers respond to the new corporate norms. This volume will be of interest to sociologists, economists, social scientists, and the general consumer alike.

The Moralization of the Markets

Stephan A. Jansen

Eckhard Schröter

Welchen Wert hat der Kapitalismus für uns heute - in Zeiten also, in denen Heilsversprechungen über die freie Entfaltung der Marktkräfte vehement mit dramatischen Krisenprognosen konkurrieren? Gibt es eigentlich das Kapital oder den Kapitalismus? Welches Verständnis von Märkten und ihrem Kapital gewinnen wir nicht nur aus ökonomischer, sondern auch aus soziologischer, kulturwissenschaftlicher und politikwissenschaftlicher Sicht? Und welche Entwicklung solcher Kapitalien und ihrer Beziehungen untereinander ist für die Zukunft zu erwarten? Der Band nähert sich diesen Fragen vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Entwicklungen in Wirtschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft aus unterschiedlichen fachwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven, die sowohl die aktuellen praktischen Probleme als auch die theoretischen Dimensionen im Blick behalten.

Multidisziplinäre Beiträge zu Formen des Kapitals und seiner Kapitalien

Mehrwertiger Kapitalismus

Who Owns Knowledge? explores the emerging linkages between the extension of knowledge and the law. It anticipates that the legal system will not only be called upon to adjudicate in matters of creative minds, but will be expected to do so to an ever increasing degree. Linkages between the legal system and knowledge are bound to multiply in modern societies. Ironically, while increasingly relying on knowledge, we are simultaneously investing significant resources into controlling this same knowledge. This includes developing a system of legal governance over how knowledge is extended or enlarged. Such modes of governance may take the form of regulatory legal codes, or legal challenges and judgments that shape the evolution of modern society and potentially transform knowledge itself, as a productive force. Who Owns Knowledge? asks such questions as: What is the appropriate balance of public and private interests involved in this process? How can creative powers, natural resources and indigenous knowledge be protected from either public or private exploitation? Does the law have the power to prevent this exploitation, or is adaptive technology needed? Also, in this identity theft conscious age, how can the rights of the individual be protected against policies allowing access to any kind of information, especially confidential information? The editors and contributors demonstrate that the relationship between knowledge and the law needs to be further researched and discussed. Who Owns Knowledge? is a must-read for those interested in the subjects of intellectual property, the history and development of modern legal and economic systems and their entanglements, and how judicial systems make choices between the legal and economic systems and, especially, between the public and private good and their often opposing interests.

Knowledge and the Law

Who Owns Knowledge?

Werner Sombart

Werner Sombart (1863-1941) may well have been the most famous and controversial social scientist in Germany during the early twentieth century. Highly influential, his work and reputation have been indelibly tainted by his embrace of National Socialism in the last decade of his life. Although Sombart left an enormous opus spanning disciplinary boundaries, intellectual reaction to his work inside and outside of Germany is divided and ambivalent. Sombart consistently responded to the social and political developments that have shaped the twentieth century. Economic Life in the Modern Age provides a representative sampling of those portions of Sombart's work that have stood the test of time. The volume opens with a substantial introduction reviewing Sombart's life and career, the evolution of his major intellectual concerns, his relation to Marx and Weber, and his political affiliation with the Nazis. The editors' selection of texts emphasizes areas of Sombart's economic and cultural thought that remain relevant, particularly to those intellectual trends that seek a more broadly based, cross-disciplinary approach to culture and economics. Sombart's writings on capitalism are represented by essays on the nature and origin of the market system and the diversity of motives among the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Also included is an excerpt from Sombart's controversial The Jews and Modern Capitalism, exploring the widely perceived relation between economic life and Judaism as a religion. In essays on the economics of cultural processes, Sombart's comprehensive and expansive idea of cultural science yields prophetic insights into the nature of urbanism, luxury consumption, fashion, and the cultural secularization of love. The volume's final section consists of Sombart's reflections on the social influences of technology, the economic life of the future, and on socialism, including the influential essay "Why is there no Socialism in the United States." Encapsulating the most valuable aspects of his work, Economic Life in the Modern Age provides clear demonstration of Sombart's sense for fine cultural distinctions and broad cultural developments and the predictive power of his analyses. It will be of interest to sociologists, economists, political scientists, and specialists in cultural studies. Nico Stehr is professor at the Max Planck-InstitÂ³t fÂ³r Meteorologie in Hamburg. Reiner Grundmann is professor at the Aston Business School of Aston University in Birmingham, U.K.

Economic Life in the Modern Age

In this book, Stehr and Grundmann outline the theoretical significance and practical importance of the growing stratum of experts, counsellors and advisors in contemporary society. They argue that these experts perform knowledge based activities that mediate between the context of knowledge creation and application. Existing approaches tend to restrict the role of the expert to scientists, or to conflate the roles of professionals with experts. In avoiding such restrictions, this book sets out a framework to understanding the growing role of expertise in a better way.

The Knowledge and Power of Expertise

Experts

​In modernen Gesellschaften wächst einerseits die Fähigkeit des Individuums, nein zu sagen. Andererseits ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten die Machbarkeit der Verhältnisse – zumindest aus der Sicht der das zwanzigste Jahrhundert prägenden großen Institutionen der modernen Gesellschaft – zu einer sehr viel zweifelhafteren Erwartung und selteneren Erfahrung geworden. Damit ist die generelle These von der Fragilität der modernen Gesellschaft formuliert, also die wachsende Unfähigkeit staatlicher sowie anderer großer gesellschaftlicher Institutionen gegenwärtig – und voraussichtlich in auch in Zukunft - ihren Willen durchzusetzen. Es kommt, je nach unserem Standort in der Gesellschaft, zu einer stabilen Fragilität oder der fragilen Stabilität der sozialen, politischen, kulturellen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse.​

Fragile Stabilität – stabile Fragilität

Christian Fleck

Paul Neurath

During 1938 and 1939, Paul Neurath was a Jewish political prisoner in the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald. He owed his survival to a temporary Nazi policy allowing release of prisoners who were willing to go into exile and the help of friends on the outside who helped him obtain a visa. He fled to Sweden before coming to the United States in 1941. In 1943, he completed The Society of Terror, based on his experiences in Dachau and Buchenwald. He embarked on a long career teaching sociology and statistics at universities in the United States and later in Vienna until his death in September 2001. After liberation, the horrific images of the extermination camps abounded from Dachau, Buchenwald, and other places. Neurath's chillingly factual discussion of his experience as an inmate and his astute observations of the conditions and the social structures in Dachau and Buchenwald captivate the reader, not only because of their authenticity, but also because of the work's proximity to the events and the absence of influence of later interpretations. His account is unique also because of the exceptional links Neurath establishes between personal experience and theoretical reflection, the persistent oscillation between the distanced and sober view of the scientist and that of the prisoner.

Inside the Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps

Society of Terror

Der Ruf nach Transparenz ist mit Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts – nicht zuletzt aufgrund von Krisen, Terrorismus, Korruption – lauter geworden. Transparenz erscheint als Heilmittell mit der Komplexität unserer unübersichtlichen und undurchsichtigen Welt umzugehen. Aber ist die Forderung nicht zu durchsichtig? Ist umgekehrt Intransparenz immer schon ein Hinweis auf ein Problem oder auf eine besondere Ressource? Ist in einer medialisierten Gesellschaft auch der persönliche Alltag nicht zunehmend eine Ausverhandlung zwischen Transparenz und privatem Rückzug – bei „sozialen Medien“, „gläsernen Kunden bzw. Mitarbeitern“? Oszilliert Transparenz nicht immer zwischen Überwachung und Sicherheit – vom Nacktscanner bis zur Anti-Korruption? Der sechste Jahresband der Zeppelin Universität befasst sich mit diesen und vielen anderen Fragen rund um Transparenz und nimmt eine differenzierte Verortung von Transparenz in unterschiedlichen Lebensbereichen von Wirtschaft, Kultur und Politik vor. Die Beiträge des Bandes spannen einen Bogen von der Transparenz in privaten wie öffentlichen Organisationen über die Transparenz politischer Rhetorik bis hin zur Transparenz im alltäglichen Konsum.

Multidisziplinäre Durchsichten durch Phänomene und Theorien des Undurchsichtigen

Transparenz

Social surveillance and regulation of knowledge will be one of the most important issues in the near future, one that will give rise to unending controversy. In The Governance of Knowledge, Nico Stehr predicts that such concerns will create a new political field, namely, knowledge policy, which will entail regulating dissemination of the anticipated results of rapidly increasing knowledge. The number and range of institutionalized standards for monitoring new knowledge has hitherto been relatively small. Only in cases of technological applications has social control, in the form of political regulation, so far intervened. All modern societies today have complex regulations and extensive concerns with the registration, licensing, testing, and monitoring of pharmaceutical products. The increasingly important and extensive area of intellectual property legislation and administration is an example of social control in which certain measures selectively determine the use of scientific finds and technical knowledge. The Governance of Knowledge assembles a range of essays that attempt to explore the new field of knowledge politics for the first time. It is divided into four parts: The Emergence of Knowledge Politics: Origins, Context, and Consequences; Major Social Institutions and Knowledge Politics; Case Studies on the Governance of Knowledge; and Issues in Knowledge Politics as a New Political Field. Individual chapters concern the emergence of knowledge policy, the embeddedness of such regulations in major social institutions, and offer case studies of the governance of knowledge and discuss controversial issues that are bound to accompany efforts to regulate new knowledge. Professionals and graduate students in the fields of scoiology, political science, social science, and law, including policymakers and natural scientists, will find this book extremely informative.

The Governance of Knowledge

Amanda Machin

Das vorliegende Buch verdeutlicht die hochgradige Komplexität des Verhältnisses von Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Klima. Die Tatsache des Klimawandels erfordert eine multidisziplinäre Herangehensweise, die die Vernetzung der drei Systeme erfasst. Es gilt zu erkennen, dass einerseits das Klima soziale, politische und wirtschaftliche Interaktionen prägt, es andererseits jedoch selbst von sozialen Strukturen, technologischen Praktiken und Energiekulturen beeinflusst wird. Dies ist von besonderer Relevanz in einer Zeit, in der die Klimawissenschaften unter Druck stehen, und zwar sowohl von der breiten Öffentlichkeit als auch von den politischen Entscheidungsträgern. Nicht zuletzt deswegen warnen Nico Stehr und Amanda Machin, ausgehend von den Erkenntnissen verschiedener Disziplinen und anhand von zahlreichen Beispielen, vor einfachen Annahmen und Antworten.

Entwicklungen, Umbrüche, Herausforderungen

Gesellschaft und Klima

The contributions in this book highlight, contextualize and analyze different aspects of social inequality. What are the various cause and effects of inequality? How have these changed over recent decades? Which social policies might be best able to intervene? Written by authors from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions, these contributions provide a rich account of inequality within contemporary society. The role of the state, the media and the market in exacerbating and alleviating patterns of equality are all accessed alongside analysis of changing patterns of exclusion and hierarchy.

Nico Stehr

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