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”Två fel gör inte ett rätt” – How China is taken as an argument to not act for the climate

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-11-22

Nina Wormbs, Professor of History of Technology at the division, has published an article relevant in the context of the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 17 November 2021. In the following we will present a short summary of its main points in English, while you can read the original in full length and in Swedish here.

Profilbild av Nina Cyrén Wormbs

Summary:

When climate issues are discussed in Sweden, China is often taken as a comparison. In fact, people use China as an argument to not act in regard to climate change.

During the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, the focus was also on China, since the country is highly invested in coal both at home and abroad. It is obvious that we need to work with China together, since its emissions are enormous. Despite this, China has recently undertaken steps towards a sustainable society.

In particular, it has become normal to point to China in a debate, if one does not want to engage with those questions the current climate crisis is bringing up. This can include coal power plants but also a justification for flying to Mallorca or Thailand for fun, because Chinese tourists could be seen in Gamla Stan. In order for this practice not to spread further, we have to understand why those arguments are not valid and what they result in.

First, it makes no sense to motivate one’s own harm-doing by arguing that someone else would produce even more harm.

Secondly, the comparison with China’s emissions are an eternal but nevertheless problematic way of relativising one’s own influence. Because you are always able to find someone who produces more emissions than yourself. More than Sweden. More than Europe. Of course it is important how much we emit as humanity, but the China-argument suggests that there would be some form of give- and take, like as if life would be a zero-sum-game. Instead, it is the opposite: every ton of CO2 counts.

Additionally, the China-argument points to an understanding, in which one does not have to do a tiny bit of right, while someone else does so much wrong. Maybe this argument is spreading, because more and more people repeat it. People in Sweden have limited knowledge of China. China is bigger, has more people, and all of them are striving towards a better life. That’s why it might be easy to point to China, in order to relativise one’s own responsibility.

Thirdly, China is often portrayed as an enemy in Swedish media. It can therefore be seen as a nation different from Sweden, being imagined like the negative “other”.

Why are the USA never mentioned in this context, despite their higher historical and per-capita-emissions (IPCC and carbonbrief.org)? Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also hardly ever named, even though they are leading the per-capita-emissions statistics.

If one looks into the emissions of production chains of consumer goods, of which a lot are produced in China but used somewhere else like in Sweden, the territorial basis for emission-calculations seems off.

Furthermore, within most individual nations the gap between rich and poor gets bigger, which means that the individual emissions are not what the average suggests, but rather high if you are rich, or low if you are poor. Therefore, it would be a great idea to change the focus from nations to individuals, like Chancel and Piketty suggested in 2015.  This makes even more sense, since the richest 10% of the world’s population accounted for 50% of emissions since 1990. Those 10% can be found in every country, but they are not evenly distributed. More so, since 40% of those live in the USA, while only 10% live in China. It might be a cold shower for a Swedish discussant that every Swede with a monthly income of over 27,500 SEK belongs to this group.

This is not being written to support China’s climate policies. Instead, it is to show that China is not relevant if one wants to discuss a domestic climate action plan, as the relationship between being rich and producing lots of emissions is evident – and Sweden is one of the richest countries on earth.

Achim Klüppelberg avatar
Achim Klüppelberg

Categories:

Opinion, Publications, The Division, The EHL

Where do we publish?

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-11-08

As a division, we publish a lot in many different outlets. Klara Müller, Linus Salö and Sverker Sörlin have compiled the following discussion of our publication pattern in our last Biennial report, which you can find here.

Trends in Publishing

The following section is dedicated to an analysis of the Division’s publication patterns and is based on information collected from Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet, DiVA. The information in DiVA is uploaded by the researchers themselves. “Scientific publications”, as defined here, are publications registered in DiVA as “refereed” or “other academic”. The category does not include the content-type “other (popular science, discussion, etc.)”. For this year’s report, we have also excluded the subcategories “oral presentation only”, “oral presentation with published abstract”, and posters.

Thus defined, the output of scientific publications in 2019 and 2020 combined is 212. The two dominant publication types are article in journal (102) and chapter in book (61). Together, these two publication types amount to 77 % of all scientific publications. The remaining publication types consist of book reviews (14) and books (9) along with doctoral theses (4), reports (7) and edited collections (8).

Why should we analyze publication data?
Scholars from a wide range of subjects have criticized the usage of metrics to evaluate research, and this critique has been particularly forceful from scholars active in humanities disciplines. We hope that by compiling publication data from DiVA, we can identify patterns that would not be possible to determine otherwise. This analysis acknowledges certain aspects of the Division’s publication output mediated through visualizations, numbers and charts. We can use the data to identify trends, strengths and weaknesses in publication patterns. But it is, of course, only possible to reflect certain aspects of what the members of the Division have been working on the last couple of years. It also brings up important questions about what we should measure, what this type of analysis of this type of data can tell us, and what research output we should focus on. How much can the Division publish, while maintaining high-quality publications? What is high-quality research, and what can we do to produce that? This analysis will not answer these broad questions, but might instead provoke new insights on what we can use metrics for.

Overall trends 2010 – 2020
Overall, the Division’s publications have seen a stable increase during the last decade. The most prominent category is refereed journal articles, while the output of the other categories (refereed book chapters, books, dissertations, other academic publication types) have been fairly stable. To put this in context, the Division’s research output has grown in a period when such output has in a general decreased in Sweden. According to the latest UKÄ report (February 2021), total publications dropped by 17 %, and in Humanities and Art the decrease has been no less than 23 %. The total number of peer-reviewed articles in the latter category was 1164 in Sweden during 2020.

The 2017 – 2018 Division report identified a salient rise in peer-reviewed publications and publications published in English. These trends are persisting. In 2010, the largest content type was “other”, followed by “other academic” and “refereed”. A decade later, in 2020, the proportions were reversed, with refereed publications being the most numerous and the proportionally largest content type.

Publishing languages
Because Swedish is by far the most common language used in output categorized as “other”, the relative share of Swedish-language publications in the Division has dropped from 55 % in 2010 to 39 % in 2020 when all content types are considered. It follows that this tendency is even stronger when only scientific publications are examined. In 2010, a third of the scientific publications were published in Swedish; in 2020, we are down to a fifth. That said, the trend does not point to a continuous decrease in Swedish-language scientific publications.

Refereed journals 2019 – 2020
The larger the word, the more frequent it is in the titles of the refereed journals that members of the Division have been publishing in over the last two years. This gives a hint of the areas of interest of members of the Division.

During the past two years, members of the Division have been publishing in the following outlets:

Peer-reviewed journals
• Ab Imperio: Theory and History of Nationalities and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Realm
• Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society
• Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Body & Society
• Cahiers du Monde Russe
• Cogent Arts and Humanities
• Current Anthropology
• Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
• Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities
• Ecology & Society
• Ecology and Evolution
• Energy Policy
• Energy Research & Social Science
• Environment and History
• Environmental History
• Environmental humanities
• Environmental Justice
• Environmental Science and Policy
• Ėtnograficheskoe Obozrenie
• Fennia: International Journal of Geography
• Fish and Fisheries
• Frontiers in Energy Research
• Geographical Journal
• Global Environment
• Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism
• H-Environment Roundtable Reviews
• Historiallinen Aikakauskirja [Historical Journal]
• History and Anthropology
• Humanities
• Industry & Higher Education
• International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
• Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
• J ournal of Environmental Policy & Planning
• Journal of Historical Geography
• Journal of Northern Studies
• Journal of Transport History
• Land Use Policy
• Landscape and Urban Planning
• Landscape Research
• Language in Society
• Leonardo Music Journal
• Media Theory
• Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy
• Mobilities Journal
• Multilingua: Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication
• Nature
• Nature Climate Change
• Niin & Näin: filosofinen aikakauslehti
• NTM: International Journal of History and Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine
• Polar Geography
• Polar Record
• Popular Communication
• Progress in Planning
• Public History Weekly
• Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities
• Scandinavian Economic History Review
• Scandinavian Journal of History
• Scientia Canadiensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
• Sibirskie Istoricheskie Issledovaniia
• Sport in Society: Cultures, Media, Politics, Commerce
• Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
• Sustainability
• Sustainability Science
• Technology and Culture
• Technology in Society
• Tertiary Education and Management
• The Extractive Industries and Society
• Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis
• Trace: Journal of Writing, Media, Ecology
• Turkish Studies
• Urban Geography
• WIREs [Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews] Water
Books with the following publishing houses:
• KK-stiftelsen (Stockholm)
• Routledge (3)
• Natur & Kultur (Stockholm)
• Baggrund.com (Copenhagen)
• Ellerströms förlag (Lund, SE)
• Campus Verlag (Frankfurt)
• Bokförlaget Atlas (Stockholm)
• MIT Press (Cambridge, MA)
Chapters in books with the following publishing houses:
• Aalto ARTS Books (Helsinki) (2)
• Arche Press (Gothenburg)
• Arkiv förlag & tidskrift (Lund) (3)
• Art and Theory Publishing (Stockholm)
• Bentham eBooks
• De Gruyter (Berlin)
• Deutsches Museum Verlag (Munich)
• Dialogos Förlag (Stockholm) (2)
• Föreningen för folkbildningsforskning (Stockholm)
• Gnasso Editore (Aversa, IT)
• John Wiley & Sons
• Jovis Verlag GmbH (Berlin)
• Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskap-sakademien (Stockholm) (3)
• MIT Press (3)
• Natur & Kultur (Stockholm)
• Nordiska museets förlag (Stockholm) (3)
• Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) (5)
• Open Humanities Press (London)
• Palgrave Macmillan (4)
• PM edizioni (Varazze, IT)
• Polaris (Stockholm)
• Regeringskansliet (Stockholm)
• Routledge (22)
• Sage Publications (Los Angeles & London)
• SISU Idrottsböcker (Stockholm)
• Springer Nature (2)
• Tartu University Press (Tartu, FI)
• Taylor & Francis (7)
• The University of Alabama Press

Topics
Keywords corroborate the impression from journal titles that environment is a cross cutting theme in much of the Division’s research. The strong social concern is also visible (words such as political, justice, human, labour), along with an interest in urban issues, infrastructures, and energy in various forms. Science and technology also loom large as do gender/feminist, heritage, climate, and the Anthropocene. A significant category is “earth objects” such as sea, earth, air, water. As for geographical spread many regions appear, from the Philippines to the Baltic, but Sweden and Polar/Arctic are the most frequent ones, reflecting major research efforts in these areas. Our two special hubs are reflected in a strong presence of “Environmental Humanities”, and “Posthumanities”.

Collaboration
Collaboration in academic publishing is a strong trend. On page 35 we have listed the Division’s unique collaboration partners during 2019 and 2020, through co-authorships registered in DiVA. It is possible to identify certain clusters – outside of Sweden, universities in the US and the UK are frequent collaboration partners in our publishing. There are also many collaboration partners in the north – Norway, Iceland, Russia, Canada and Finland.

The rise of our co-authorships reflects, above all, continued internationalization, both of research collaboration and research content. This is in line with a general trend in humanities research in Sweden for more than a decade. According to a report from the research council VR (The Research Barometer 2019, p. 62), the share of Arts and Humanities publications co-authored internationally grew from 18 to 30 % from 2007 to 2017. As the figure illustrates the Division has moved in the same direction, only somewhat earlier and in a more pronounced way. In 2020 such publications made up around 50 % of our total publications (taking into account that a small handfulof the co-authorships are within Sweden). Part of the explanation is probably the relatively high proportion of non-Swedes among our researchers, but our collaboration networks are also important.

Publishing for other audiences
The following category of publications is not included in the analysis of scientific publications, since it is based on what is defined as “other (popular science, discussion, etc.)” in DiVA. This review was made to get a better understanding of how the Division’s publishing engages with audiences outside academia. In 2019 and 2020, members of the Division’s most frequent “non-scientific” publications, were in the newspapers Dagens Nyheter (16) and Svenska Dagbladet (9). The web-based magazine Curie, issued by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), has also been a dominant outlet for non-scientific publications.
As the word cloud indicates, with newspapers as the dominant outlet, “article in journal” is the most common outlet in the category “other”, with 54 posts. But it is not the only one. There are also “chapter in book” (6) and, again, “other” (16). In this category, we find a mixture of blog posts and other online discussion outlets.
The category “other” has been fairly stable the last decade, except for a dip in 2013 and a rise in 2020. The stability indicates that members of the Division have not published less in non-peer-reviewed outlets, for example, newspapers, due to the rise in refereed articles and book chapters. We can also identify a notable rise in publications in the category “other” during 2020. A possible explanation of this rise in publications during 2020 might be the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for researchers to engage in public debates, which members of the Division have done with at least 10 texts reflecting on the crisis.

In the category “other”, Swedish is the dominant language with 61 publications, followed by English with 10 publications. This can be compared to the Division’s scientific publications, where English has been the dominant language of use since 2006.

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Achim Klüppelberg

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Publications, Research, The Division

An Environmental History of Italian Migrations

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-10-11

Former colleagues at our division Roberta Biasillo and Daniele Valisena have written together with Claudio de Majo a new article in Modern Italy. The article with the title “Environments of Italianness: for an environmental history of Italian migrations” is part of a special issue edited also by the three of them about the concepts of italianness, environment, and socio-natures.

Check out this great piece, which might lead to a new trend in environmental history!

Abstract:

Italian mobility played a fundamental part in the history of the peninsula, since it was a global phenomenon reaching every continent except Daniele ValisenaAntarctica. The Italian diaspora counted over 26 million expatriates who left the country between 1876 and 1976 and, to date, Italy remains one of the states that has contributed the most to the Great European Migration. Although impressive, these figures do not take into account pre-unitary Italian mobilities or Italian settlements in colonial territories. By adopting the perspective of environmental history of migration, this collection of essays allows us to consider various contextually embedded migratory environments, creating a means to find common constitutive features that allow us to explore and identify Italianness. Specifically, in this special issue, we intend to investigate how Italians transformed remote foreign environments in resemblances of their distant faraway homeland, their paesi, as well as used them as a means of materially re-imagining landscapes of Italianness. In return, their collective and individual identities were transformed by the new surroundings.

BIASILLO, Roberta • European University InstituteAbstract in Italian:

Le forme di mobilità degli italiani rappresentano un aspetto fondamentale della storia della penisola, ma non solo, poiché le comunità italiane hanno raggiunto tutti i continenti, fatta eccezione per l’Antartico. Nel periodo tra il 1876 e il 1976, la ‘diaspora italiana’ ha coinvolto più di 26 milioni di persone, facendo dell’Italia uno degli stati che più ha contribuito al fenomeno della Grande Emigrazione europea. A questi dati bisogna altresì aggiungere quelli relativi alle mobilità preunitarie e a quelle verso le colonie, argomenti inclusi tra i saggi qui raccolti. Adottando pertanto la prospettiva della storia ambientale delle migrazioni e muovendo dalle ricerche presentate nei singoli saggi, i curatori propongono una sintesi delle caratteristiche socio-ambientali che hanno influenzato e caratterizzato l’emergere di identità italiane all’estero, ovvero forme di italianità. Gli articoli contenuti in questo numero monografico illustrano come italiani e italiane abbiano trasformato e utilizzato gli ambienti naturali stranieri per ricostruire le proprie piccole patrie, i loro paesi. Allo stesso tempo, questi nuovi paesaggi dell’italianità hanno contribuito a formare identità ibride, collettive e individuali.

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Achim Klüppelberg

Categories:

Environmental Humanities, Publications, Research, The EHL

Technical Development and Education

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-09-13

As digitisation and computers in general are advancing rapidly, many engineers and scientists work on the possibilities and challenges developing artificial intelligence might pose. AI as a topic is also being researched by a handful of members of our division.

As such, researcher Lina Rahm has published a new article with the title “Education, automation and AI: a genealogy of alternative future” in the journal Learning, Media and Technology. She discusses the co-development of education technologies with both new trends in digital advancements and views on these issues from the past. The way we do education as humanities scholars has already changed profoundly during the ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, change is an ongoing thing and thus Lina’s research is necessary more than ever.

If you are interested in the article you can find it here.

Abstract:

The relationship between technical development and education is a reciprocal one, where education always stands in relation to those skills, competencies, and techniques that are anticipated as necessary in a technological future. At the same time, skills and competencies are also necessary to drive innovation and technical development for the progressive creation of desirable futures. Jumping back to the 1950s, this article illustrates how automation and AI have been anticipated as both problems and solutions in society, and how education has been used to solve these problems or realize these solutions. That is, computerization debates have concentrated on both the growing opportunities and the increasing risks, but almost always also on the need for corresponding education. The article uses a genealogical approach to show how, from the 1950s and up until today, education has been mobilized as an important tool for governance in computer policies.

 

 

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Achim Klüppelberg

Categories:

Posthumanities Hub, Publications, Research, The Division

Sabine Höhler in the Cultural Histories Series

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2021-09-07
Sabine Höhler recently contributed with the chapter “Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography” in the sixth volume of the The Cultural Histories of the Sea in the Global Age (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).

Throughout history, how has the sea served as a site for cross-cultural exchange, trade and migration? As historians, how do the fields of naval history, maritime history and oceanic history intersect?
About the series, from Bloomsbury

Sabine’s chapter is available open access here: Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography

The full series can be purchased through the Bloomsbury link under the above qoute.

Information

Hoehler, S. (2021)
Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography: Creating the Blue Planet from
Modern Oceanography
In: Franziska Torma (ed.), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age (pp. 21-44).
London: Bloomsbury Academic
The Cultural Histories Series

Projects

Formas SDGs: The Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental H2020-ERC-2017-ADG: SPHERE Study of the Planetary Human-Environment Relationship: The Rise of Global Environmental Governance

Funder

Swedish Research Council Formas, 2020-00512
EU, European Research Council, 787516

Sofia Jonsson avatar
Sofia Jonsson

Categories:

Publications, The Division

Environing technologies: a theory of making environment – open access

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2021-08-23
Division professors Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormb’s article “Environing technologies: a theory of making environment” from the 2018 December issue of History & Technology, is available open access. Read the abstract  and find the link for the full article below

Abstract

The central proposal of this article is that environing technologies shape and structure the way in which nature becomes environment, and as such used, perceived and understood. The argument builds on the understanding that environment is the result of human intervention. Technology is here understood broadly as a terraforming practise, materially and conceptually. We suggest that the compound environing technologies enable us to see environmental change on multiple scales and in new registers. That technologies alter the physical world is not new; our contribution focuses on the conceptual, epistemological, economic and emotional appreciation of systems and aggregates of technologies that is part and parcel of material change. The environing technologies that enable such articulation and comprehension hold potential in the future transformation that our societies need to undergo to overcome the crisis of environment and climate.

Full article

Sofia Jonsson avatar
Sofia Jonsson

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Publications

When Research Interests Mix

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-07-05

The WaterCentre@KTH is a hub of expertise in water research at our university. Its director and longstanding researcher at our division, David Nilsson, is working together with several scholars from the fields of EKV Kraft- & Värmeteknologi, Vatten- och Miljöteknik, Industriell Bioteknologi, Resursåtervinning, and Hållbarhet, Utvärd och Styrning. Furthermore, it cooperates with Stockholm Vatten och Avfall. Partners of the centre are ivl – Svenska Miljöinstitutet, Stockholms Stad, Stockholm Environment Institute and Värmdö Kommun. Multiple researchers at our division are also involved in the centre’s work or have been in the past, such as the Water Centre’s Research Coordinator Timos Karpouzoglou.

Water is crucial not only for the survival of living organisms, but also for many industrial purposes. It is here that the research interests of the Water Centre converges with ongoing projects at our division. Since the research project Nuclear Waters tries to put water at the centre of its historical nuclear studies, common interests occur frequently. The following is a repost from a text published on the Water Centre’s Blog, highlighting one example where both interests came together.

Kola Nuclear Power Plant at Lake Imandra, above the Arctic circle. RIAN Archive, Licence CC BY-SA 3.0.

Repost from the WaterBlog@KTH

Why Water Matters for Nuclear Power

We tend to associate nuclear power plants with many different things: smoking cooling towers, Homer Simpson-like operators, or dramatic TV series like HBO’s Chernobyl. But something people generally do not associate nuclear power plants with are massive amounts of water. Still, water is at the centre of nuclear power’s historical development, contemporary challenges, and further future.

The connection between water and generating nuclear power goes back to the Industrial Revolution, when steam technologies such as boilers and steam generators were used to heat up water, turn that water into steam, and use the energy of that steam to generate power. However, this led to many steam explosions with deadly casualties. Countries like the U.S., France and Sweden enforced safety rules, which stipulated how the boilers had to be designed and what the allowed pressures and temperatures were.

In the 1950s, more and more countries saw the potential of using nuclear technologies to generate power. With its Atoms for Peace-program, the U.S. took the lead and promoted the reactor type they developed: the light water reactor. This reactor type uses normal water as a coolant and had its origins in both naval propulsion and fossil fuel power generation. This continuity thus made water-cooled reactors a relatively simple way of rolling out nuclear power fast.

The safety in nuclear power plants was therefore determined by the control of water and the understanding of thermal-hydraulic phenomena, such as transients and steam explosions. The pressure vessels, steam generators, valves, pipes, tubes, and pumps of nuclear power plants suddenly became subjected to the steam regulations of the Industrial age. This created new risks since these codes and regulations did not consider radiation. One of the codes that underwent revision was the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The Code started travelling and was, for instance, almost directly implemented in all Swedish nuclear power plants. Gradually but surely, nuclear safety regulations in the West became more ‘nuclear’ as the intersection between water, steam, steel, and radiation became better understood and nuclear accidents, such as Three Mile Island, pushed governments for more safety legislation.

For the USSR water was equally crucial along all steps of the nuclear lifespan, such as mining, fuel element production, exploitation, and the storage of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. In general, all nuclear power plants were placed next to either a river, a lake or the coast – the latter being an exception. The most common source of coolant was river water. Interestingly, those rivers usually had to be previously ameliorated and often artificial water reservoirs were created.

A specific setup was used for so-called energy complexes, a special form of nuclear-hydrotechnical combine. They embodied the combination of nuclear and hydro power, agricultural irrigation, and fish cultivation in one location. Furthermore, constructing them meant to manipulate water bodies with newly created dams. In this way an energy complex was created to procure valuable synergies through the multiple usage and partial recycling of water.

Finding the right location was crucial for an envisioned energy complex. It needed to be a location with sufficient water supply, with suitable ground conditions, without earthquake or flood dangers. In addition, the complex needed to be within reasonable distance towards a (potential) industrial settlement to provide this population centre with electricity. Safe and ample water supply had to be considered during site selection and was one of the essential criteria for their construction. If there was not enough water, the complex could not be built.

A leading institute for the creation of energy complexes was Gidroproekt (Hydroproject). As the name suggests, Gidroproekt was a Soviet hydraulic research, design and construction agency. By joining its hydraulic expertise with newly introduced nuclear engineering, this institute was the very place where knowledge transfer between these two prestigious engineering communities took place. Here, the water-focused perspective prevailed and embedded nuclear technology into hydro-ameliorated aquatic systems. It promised prestige as well as quick results – and Gidroproekt readily delivered.

In sum, both in the East and the West, water played a crucial role in the development of nuclear power. In the West, knowledge about water was essential for developing nuclear safety practices. In the East, water was seen as a crucial resource, for powering energy complexes in the struggle for building a Communist state. Nuclear’s reliance on water meant that nuclear power plants and energy complexes were meeting places of different long-standing traditions and communities. Given the large number of water-cooled reactors in the world today, and including those under construction, it is fair to say that this crucial connection is there to stay.

By Achim Klüppelberg & Siegfried Evens
Doctoral students at the division for History of Science, Technology and the Environment, within the research project Nuclear Waters.

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Achim Klüppelberg

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Publications, Research, The Division

The power to define resilience in social–hydrological systems

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-06-28

Timos Karpouzoglou, researcher at the division, has published an article together with Art Dewulf, Jeroen Warner, Anna Wesselink and nine other scholars on the social implications of hydrological systems.

If you are interested in their work, you can find the abstract below and the full text here.

Abstract

Since the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience, and water resilience. At the same time, a substantial body of literature has developed that questions the resilience concept’s systems ontology, natural science roots and alleged conservatism, and criticizes resilience thinking for not addressing power issues. In this study, we review these critiques with the aim to develop a framework for power-sensitive resilience analysis. We build on the three faces of power to conceptualize the power to define resilience. We structure our discussion of the relevant literature into five questions that need to be reflected upon when applying the resilience concept to social?hydrological systems. These questions address: (a) resilience of what, (b) resilience at what scale, (c) resilience to what, (d) resilience for what purpose, and (e) resilience for whom; and the implications of the political choices involved in defining these parameters for resilience building or analysis. Explicitly considering these questions enables making political choices explicit in order to support negotiation or contestation on how resilience is defined and used.

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Achim Klüppelberg

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Publications, Research

New Division Report out!

Achim Klüppelberg

 , 2021-06-21
From Transformative, to Defining, to the Intergrative Humanities. The Division has published reports since the beginning of the 1990s, but only in the last six years on a biennial basis. The first years the reports were annual, basic information on staff, courses, seminars, and activities. Since 2015 the reports are themed and open up to all the voices at the Divison with a mix of deep analyzis of publishing patterns, basic information on projects, staff, events etc. and personal reflections from the people who worked with the Divison during the two years represented. The report on Intergrative Humanities was released on June 17, and sums up the two very diverse years, 2019 and 2020.

The theme of the current report reflects our thinking around how humanities knowledge is gaining in significance, which is increasingly by engaging in broad and complex problems that require multiple competencies. – Sverker Sörlin

As a teaser we are republishing the following piece (pp. 14-15). If you want to read the whole thing, download the report and read it here.

Our Work Environment

By Sabine Höhler and Sofia Jonsson

From two hectic but very exciting years with numerous new projects, employees and events, the pace indeed slowed down somewhat during 2019 at the Division. We continued to fill our calendars with both bigger and smaller events. We also ordered noise-cancelling earphones and started a subscription to plants for our corridors. We stopped expanding and instead settled on a number of around 50 employees, which remained steady through the end of 2020. During this period, we also hired our third administrator, making the admin team complete.

Home office in Älvsjö, Ziggy Stardust the Cat

Trying to think back to 2019 during an ongoing pandemic is slightly challenging. We remember that it was the usual busy year full of events and full of the small things we all took for granted then. We started the year with an on-site Higher Seminar with our doctoral student Jean-Sebastién Boutet, and we continued with Marco Armiero’s Docent lecture. Per Högselius held his inaugural lecture as a new professor in history of technology. These events were likely framed by cake in the kitchen. We also initiated a Thursday afternoon fika, a regular coffee break for the intake of cake and other sweets. Our work environment was very much stomach-steered. Work place meetings would always involve the traditional “fralla” or bun. Our two corridors were filled with employees and guests, we met over a lunch, a coffee and a chat in the kitchen most every workday. Our families joined us for the annual picnic to kick off the summer break. To kick off the fall term, we travelled to Falun and climbed down into the old copper mines. A happy crowd decorated for Christmas before we all sang carols to a nice cup of “glögg” before the Holidays.

Being such a social work place, with a spirit built on collegiality, food, and a friendly atmosphere on site, the pandemic and the new restrictions it entailed were a huge adjustment and a struggle for many of us. In March 2020, new regulations sent us all into home office and our guests were forced to return to their home countries. Our workplace meetings moved to Zoom and the archives around the world were left unexplored. The spontaneous chat over a coffee in the kitchen seemed impossible to replace in the digital space. Some of us ended up in complete lockdown with kids at home, adding Teletubbies to their workday. On top of this, we experienced Zoom fatigue from all our online meetings and we developed a vulture neck after sitting crouched in a bad working position at a temporary desk for far too many hours.

Home office, Sabine Höhler

Was it all that bad? No, we did manage to create some great memories together after all. In June we had an open-air party to celebrate Daniele Valisena’s PhD defense. In August we had a “hub” kick off, where we met in smaller groups spread out over Stockholm in colleagues’ gardens, discussing teaching and work environment both in smaller groups on site and over Zoom. We had a small and spread-out mingle for Jesse Peterson when he defended his PhD thesis in October, with cheese, songs and tears in the kitchen. Not to forget that at long last we could welcome our overseas colleagues to our online Division meetings. In addition, we got to enjoy the unexpected delivery of a piano to the Division in Real Time during a work place meeting!

Achim Klüppelberg avatar
Achim Klüppelberg

Categories:

Opinion, Publications, Research, The Division

Siegfried Evens on Marcinelle and the European Coal and Steel Community

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2021-06-14
Our NUCLEARWATERS doctoral student Siegfried Evens, just got published with an article on the accident in the Bois du Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle, Belgium on 8 August 1956. You find the arcticle open access in European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, or you can read a summary below!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catastrophe_Marcinelle.jpg

Full article (open access): The seeds of a European risk society: Marcinelle and the European Coal and Steel Community

Siegfrieds own, terrific summary which you also can find on his Twitter account:

In 1956, a terrible accident with a mine chariot happened in the Bois du Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle, Belgium. 262 miners died, of which 136 Italians. The disaster was in many ways transnational. Casualties came from all over Europe (mostly Italy), but the risks that led up to the disaster were similar in other countries too.

My argument: the European Community of Steel and Coal (ECSC) seized this opportunity to increase its power. In doing so, it laid the foundation of later risk management policies, or what we can call ‘the European risk society’. Marcinelle shaped how the EU deals with risk! EU historians have often argued that the impact of Marcinelle on the ECSC was limited and that ECSC failed in mine safety policy. While it was indeed not their proudest moment, we do not have to be too skeptical either. Yes, a lot of social measures regulating wages, working times, and immigration did not materialise. But a lot of other (more technical) measures did. Understanding the impact of Marcinelle thus means looking at risk management at large. The ECSC went all-in on social policy (still a difficult area for the EU today) and therefore created a (fake) contrast with other technical safety measures. Ironically, it is in the latter category it would be the most successful. Social and technical are hardly separable.

In the article, I follow the developments of a conference on mining safety and the foundation of the Mines Safety Commission. Both were important for internationalising many safety discussions and agenda-setting. They also brought risk assessment into the European institutions. Lastly, we have to analyse Marcinelle long-term. Whether the mines actually became much safer is doubtable. Many mines also closed soon after. But European risk management continued, especially in the Single Market. I even found references to Marcinelle in the Euratom archives.

 

Sofia Jonsson avatar
Sofia Jonsson

Categories:

History Class, Publications