Organic grapes - More than Wine and Statistics

The chapter presents inforamtion on the status of organic viticulture world wide and also includes a global organic wine statistics (hectares per country; not all wine producing countries covered though)

Organic Agriculture Worldwide - Still on the Rise 2004

Organic agriculture has developed rapidly worldwide during the last few years and is now practised in almost all countries of the world. Its share of agricultural land and farms continues to grow. The sixth edition of an annual study that collects worldwide statistics has just been published

Organic Viticulture World-Wide

In most wine growing countries organic viticulture is now becoming more and more important. In most non-European countries organic viticulture is still in an initial stage and the number of organic vineyards is still small. The expansion of organic viticulture is hindered by the fact that in many countries incentives are provided for growers to adopt integrated pest management. Such incentive schemes are generally supported and promoted by the government, the chemical industry and conventional producer associations. As demand for conventional wines is booming, market forces do not provide much incentive for growers to convert to organic production methods. The limited knowledge about organic viticulture also poses a severe restriction of its expansion. Many conventional wine growers only have very little information about organic production techniques. However, there is also growing concern about decreasing soil fertility among some of the large corporate wine growers in Australia who are looking for more “sustainable” means of production. The organic producer associations in many countries do not have sufficient expertise about organic viticulture yet. Therefore, various specific organisations for commercial organic wine growers were formed recently in countries such as New Zealand (Organic Wine Growers’ Association), Australia (Organic Vignerons Association) and South Africa (Cape Organic Growers Association)

High variability discourse in the history and sociology of large technical systems

Gesellschaftsweit operierende technische Infrastrukturen und ihre Verknüpfung und Überlagerung in urbanen Zentren werden seit Mitte der achtziger Jahre in einem internationalen Forschungsnetz "Large Technical Systems" (LTS, deutsch GTS) untersucht. Die WZB-Forschungsgruppe "Große technische Systeme" und in ihrer Nachfolge die Forschungsgruppe "Metropolenforschung" waren an diesem Forschungsprogramm kontinuierlich beteiligt. In diesem Aufsatz wird der techniksoziologische Spezialdiskurs über GTS reflektiert und seine große Variabilität nachgezeichnet. Indem die Vielfalt von metaphorischen und narrativen Strukturen dieses Forschungsfelds herausgearbeitet wird, wird zugleich sichtbar, welche Problemstellungen unterbelichtet geblieben sind: Nutzerforschung, die kulturelle und ökologische Einbettung großer technischer Systeme und ihre Ortseffekte. Die verstärkte Einbeziehung dieser Aspekte wird die Variabilität von GTS-Diskursen weiter steigern; Ansätze, in denen die Systemmetapher weniger zentral ist, werden an Bedeutung gewinnen. (HH)"Globally operating technical infrastructures and their linkages and superimpositions in large urban centers have been studied in an international research-network 'Large Technical Systems' (LTS) since the mid-1980s. The WZB research groups 'Große technische Systeme' and its successor 'Metropolitan Studies' have been part of this research program. The paper reflects on LTS-discourses within the wider field of social studies of technology and traces its high variability. Demonstrating the diversity of metaphorical and narrative structures underlying LTS research at the same time points towards a series of issues which have been underrepresented in this research field: use as opposed to development and management of systems, the cultural as well as the ecological embedding of systems, spatial/ local effects of systems. Including such aspects into the on-going historical and sociological discourses about LTS will tend to increase its variability, approaches where the systems metaphor is given less explanatory power will compete for attention." (author's abstract

Images of Technology in Sociology: Computer as Butterfly and Bat

Computers begin, without being aware of it, to effect a major turn in social science technology research: machine technology, having been left for a long time to engineers and environmentalists, arouses the interest of sociologists, too. The paper highlights the conceptual advances of a new sociology of technology, which takes seriously the social constructions of technology of computer scientists and computer users. In the context of an emerging "media ecology", the main argument is about a social scientific mystification of Artificial Intelligence technologies

Romancing the Machine: Reflections on the Social Scientific Construction of Computer Reality

Summary in GermanSIGLEAvailable from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, Duesternbrook Weg 120, D-24105 Kiel / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

Expertise Lost: An Early Case of Technology Assessment

This Note traces the curious history of an early technological risk assessment from three vantage points: that of historians of technology, of technology assessment (TA) experts, and of those knowledgeable in SSK. The principle of 'double coincidence' is introduced, and the uncertain status of expertise in TA is discussed

Do Politics have Artefacts?

In social studies of technology, as in many other scientific disciplines, highly persuasive similes are at work: pious stories, seemingly reaped from research, suggesting certain general theoretical insights. Variously adapted, they are handed down: in the process, they acquire almost doctrinal unassailability. One such parable, which has been retold in technology and urban studies for a long time, is the story of Robert Moses’ low bridges, preventing the poor and the black of New York from gaining access to Long Island resorts and beaches. The story turns out to be counterfactual, but even if a small myth is disenchanted, it serves a purpose: to resituate positions in the old debate about the control of social processes via buildings and other technical artifacts - or, more generally, about material form and social content