Heraus aus dem Dornröschenschlaf! Eine Diskussion um eine zukünftige Öffnung und Neujustierung der Umweltsoziologie

Derzeit sind Transformationsprozesse der Wissenschaftslandschaft zu beobachten, die insbesondere die klassischen Wissenschaften und integrativen Disziplinen angreifen. Dies ist nicht ohne Kritik geblieben und Querschnittsfächer wie Geographie oder Politikwissen­schaft sehen sich selbst in der Krise.Auch die Umweltsoziologie als Ausflussform des Umwelt-Trends der 1970er und 1980er Jahre ist eine typische Querschnittsdisziplin. Auf den ersten Blick scheint es überraschend, dass angesichts jüngster gesellschaftlich hoch relevanter Forschungsthematiken wie Energie-/Agrar-/Verkehrswende, Klimawandel, Nachhaltigkeit, Postwachstumsgesell­schaft, Naturen-Kulturen, Bio-Bewegung usw. gerade diese Teildisziplin nicht aufgeblüht ist. Paradoxerweise werden diese Themen jedoch von anderen Disziplinen wie etwa den Wirtschaftswissenschaften geradezu aufgesogen und in transdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppen bearbeitet. Dieses Dilemma wird im Falle der Energiewende deutlich: Soziologische Forschungsarbeiten bleiben weit hinter den Beiträgen anderer Fächer zurück, obgleich dies ein geradezu originäres Betätigungsfeld der UmweltsoziologInnen wäre. Offenbar will es den Querschnittsteildisziplinen nicht richtig gelingen, sich der ›Grand Challenges‹ anzunehmen.In diesem Beitrag soll der Frage näher nachgegangen werden, welche Ursachen für den derzeitigen Zustand gefunden werden können und welche Wege zur zukünftigen Um­weltsoziologie führen:1. Theoretisches Fundament: Wie anknüpfungsfähig, belastbar und tragfähig sind theoretische (umwelt)soziologische Ansätze für zeitgenössische Forschungsthemen?2. Rückbesinnung und Wiederentdeckung von soziologischen Konzepten: Wie können neue und alte soziologische Konzepte einer Revitalisierung dienen, um die Bedeutung einer soziologischen Betrachtungs-, Forschungs- und Erklärungsebene herauszustellen und zu betonen?3. Verhältnis Theorie und Empirie: Wie kann deren Auseinanderdriften durch die Idee einer integrativen Teildisziplin begegnet werden?4. Öffentlichkeitswirksamkeit: Welche Formate könnten hierzu geeignet sein, welche Bedeutung könnten Citizen-Science-Ansätze, Real-Labore, Forschendes Lernen usw. haben?In Beitrag und Diskussion sollen Ansätze und Ideen für die Zukunft der Umweltsoziologie gesammelt werden. Wünschenswert wäre ergänzend eine Diskussionsdokumentation als Anstoß für weiterführende Debatten.

Technokratie oder Gemeinschaftswerk? Expertengremien und Partizipation in der Energiewende

Maßgeblich beeinflusst durch Expertenkommissionen folgt die Energiewende bisher vornehmlich technisch-ökonomischen Logiken, während Laienperspektiven kaum Berücksichtigung finden. Dies kann zum Eindruck einer Technokratie beitragen und die gesellschaftliche Unterstützung für die Energiewende erodieren. So kommt der partizipativen Technikfolgenabschätzung besondere Bedeutung zu, um Ziele politischer Entscheiderinnen und Entscheider mit Interessen der Bürgerinnen und Bürger besser zusammenzubringen. Indes weist die partizipative TA in der Energiewende wesentliche Schwachpunkte auf. Der Beitrag umreißt die Rollen von Expertengremien und partizipativer TA in der Energiewende und diskutiert hieraus resultierende Probleme und Chancen einer stärker responsiven Governance.To date the energy transition has primarily followed technological and economic rationales and has been, significantly influenced by expert commissions, while laypersons’ perspectives have hardly been taken into account. This can add to the impression of a technocracy and erode public support for the energy transition. Thus, participatory technology assessment is seen as crucial to align political decision makers’ perspectives with those of citizens. However, participatory technology assessment has major shortcomings with regard to the energy transition. This article outlines the roles of expert committees and participatory technology assessment in the energy transition and discusses resulting problems and opportunities for more responsive governance

Impulse für eine Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit

Das Thema Nachhaltigkeit ist in der deutschen Soziologie nur selten als eigenständiger Topos der Forschung und der Theoriebildung verankert. Im Rahmen der Umweltsoziologie stehen mikrosoziologische Studien zum Verhalten von Individuen und Organisationen angesichts einer Vielzahl von Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeitskrisen im Vordergrund des Interesses, im Rahmen der Wirtschaftssoziologie werden neue Modelle einer Post-Wachstumsgesellschaft oder einer post-kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung mit dem Ziel einer Nachhaltigkeitsorientierung diskursanalytisch oder normativ betrachtet. Der Beitrag vermittelt einen kurzen Überblick über die Verortung der Nachhaltigkeit in der soziologischen Literatur und entwickelt aus dieser Zusammenschau eigene Impulse für eine Ausrichtung der soziologischen Forschung und Lehre, in der Nachhaltigkeit und das Leben im Anthropozän als Eckpunkte der Analyse und als Zielpunkte einer interdisziplinären normativen Orientierung dienen. The topic of sustainability is rarely treated in German sociology as an independent topos of research and theory building. Within the framework of environmental sociology, micro-sociological studies on the behaviour of individuals and organizations in the face of a multitude of environmental and sustainability crises are in the foreground of interest; within the framework of economic sociology, new models of a post-growth society or a post-capitalist economic order with the goal of a sustainability orientation are considered predominantly by means of discourse-analysis or as a normative concept for social change. The article provides a brief overview of the status of sustainability in the sociological literature and, from this synopsis, develops its own impulses for a reform of sociological research and teaching in which sustainability and living in the Anthropocene serve as cornerstones of analysis and as target points of an interdisciplinary normative orientation

Does Energy Community Membership Change Sustainable Attitudes and Behavioral Patterns? Empirical Evidence from Community Wind Energy in Germany

Community energy is seen as a helping hand for local, decentralized energy transition. Besides the main goal of supporting the community-friendly and socially acceptable development of renewable energies, the hope is also that a pro-environmental influence on sustainability behavior will be triggered when joining a community energy project. An analysis of a survey among 16 community energy projects in Germany, with 565 completed questionnaires, shows that a certain part of the members pays more attention to their energy behavior and develop a more positive attitude towards a decentralized energy transition and citizen participation after joining the community energy project. Therefore, we can empirically support that climate protection projects, such as community energy, influence pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, but this does not apply equally to all population groups. Members with higher income and stronger interest in returns are less likely to change their behavior. Based on these findings, we recommend the development of community energy policies that are more responsive to differences in social structure and address both privileged and underprivileged groups in a sophisticated way using specific offers and modes of involvement within the associations

Research Perspectives on Renewable Energy Cooperatives in Germany: Empirical Insights and Theoretical Lenses

Transformation of energy systems is influencing economic policy agendas all over the world, particularly so in industrialized countries. In this process, Germany has taken a pioneering role. Technical innovations, institutional frameworks, and business models established there are of interest for other countries trying to achieve broader use of renewable energies. Energy cooperatives have been an important building block of the energy transition in Germany, though their practical importance is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively reflected in the academic literature. Drawing on recently collected data, this paper presents an overview of German energy cooperatives in terms of their (1) organization, (2) membership, and (3) financing. We then review theories from economics and the social sciences that, on various levels, have been used to analyze cooperatives in other fields or other forms of community-driven organization. We discuss how these theories could be applied for a better understanding of energy cooperatives, derive a preliminary research agenda and assess the scope for interdisciplinary work among economists, sociologists, and other related disciplines

libCreme: An optimization library for evaluating convex-roof entanglement measures

We present the software library libCreme which we have previously used to successfully calculate convex-roof entanglement measures of mixed quantum states appearing in realistic physical systems. Evaluating the amount of entanglement in such states is in general a non-trivial task requiring to solve a highly non-linear complex optimization problem. The algorithms provided here are able to achieve to do this for a large and important class of entanglement measures. The library is mostly written in the Matlab programming language, but is fully compatible to the free and open-source Octave platform. Some inefficient subroutines are written in C/C++ for better performance. This manuscript discusses the most important theoretical concepts and workings of the algorithms, focussing on the actual implementation and usage within the library. Detailed examples in the end should make it easy for the user to apply libCreme to specific problems.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure. The program code can be downloaded either from the CPC Library (http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk) or directly at http://quantumtheory.physik.unibas.ch/people/roethlisberger/libCreme.zi

Common genetic variation and susceptibility to partial epilepsies: a genome-wide association study

Partial epilepsies have a substantial heritability. However, the actual genetic causes are largely unknown. In contrast to many other common diseases for which genetic association-studies have successfully revealed common variants associated with disease risk, the role of common variation in partial epilepsies has not yet been explored in a well-powered study. We undertook a genome-wide association-study to identify common variants which influence risk for epilepsy shared amongst partial epilepsy syndromes, in 3445 patients and 6935 controls of European ancestry. We did not identify any genome-wide significant association. A few single nucleotide polymorphisms may warrant further investigation. We exclude common genetic variants with effect sizes above a modest 1.3 odds ratio for a single variant as contributors to genetic susceptibility shared across the partial epilepsies. We show that, at best, common genetic variation can only have a modest role in predisposition to the partial epilepsies when considered across syndromes in Europeans. The genetic architecture of the partial epilepsies is likely to be very complex, reflecting genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity. Larger meta-analyses are required to identify variants of smaller effect sizes (odds ratio <1.3) or syndrome-specific variants. Further, our results suggest research efforts should also be directed towards identifying the multiple rare variants likely to account for at least part of the heritability of the partial epilepsies. Data emerging from genome-wide association-studies will be valuable during the next serious challenge of interpreting all the genetic variation emerging from whole-genome sequencing studie

Common genetic variation and susceptibility to partial epilepsies: a genome-wide association study

Partial epilepsies have a substantial heritability. However, the actual genetic causes are largely unknown. In contrast to many other common diseases for which genetic association-studies have successfully revealed common variants associated with disease risk, the role of common variation in partial epilepsies has not yet been explored in a well-powered study. We undertook a genome-wide association-study to identify common variants which influence risk for epilepsy shared amongst partial epilepsy syndromes, in 3445 patients and 6935 controls of European ancestry. We did not identify any genome-wide significant association. A few single nucleotide polymorphisms may warrant further investigation. We exclude common genetic variants with effect sizes above a modest 1.3 odds ratio for a single variant as contributors to genetic susceptibility shared across the partial epilepsies. We show that, at best, common genetic variation can only have a modest role in predisposition to the partial epilepsies when considered across syndromes in Europeans. The genetic architecture of the partial epilepsies is likely to be very complex, reflecting genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity. Larger meta-analyses are required to identify variants of smaller effect sizes (odds ratio <1.3) or syndrome-specific variants. Further, our results suggest research efforts should also be directed towards identifying the multiple rare variants likely to account for at least part of the heritability of the partial epilepsies. Data emerging from genome-wide association-studies will be valuable during the next serious challenge of interpreting all the genetic variation emerging from whole-genome sequencing studies