Environment, Management and Society Research Group

At the 10th Annual IAS-STS Conference Critical Issues in Science and Technology Studies (May 2-3, 2011 at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society - Graz, Austria) we have brought together several researchers to discuss the study of situated practices of managing environments: For that we have designed a session in which Ingmar Lippert, Silvia Bruzzone, Franz Krause, Anna Schreuer and Gerald Aiken contributed analytically and empirically to the topic.

We have been involved in three projects till now:

1. Workshop 2008: "Environmental Management: More of the Same or Time for Change?" (Completed)
2. Part III Limits to Managing the Environment of the book Implementing Environmental and Resource Management1 (published 2011)
3. A Workshop to be held end of May 2012 on the situated practice of environmental management with Lucy Suchman, Kristin Asdal, Werner Krauss, Kenneth Olwig and Claire Waterton (Ongoing).

• 1. Schmidt, M., V. Onyango, and D. Palekhov. Implementing Environmental and Resource Management In Implementing Environmental and Resource Management, Edited by M. Schmidt, V. Onyango and D. Palekhov. Heidelberg: Springer, 2011.

From 2008 on, our group converged in focussing on empirical social realities, studying both practices and discourses of ecological modernisation. For that focus we perceive society as part of "the environment" as well as conceptualise "the environment" as part of society.

To study ecological modernisation practices and discourses - as in realities of environmental policy-making, corporate environmental management or earth-system management - we draw on theories and methods developed in the social sciences, especially in anthropology, science and technology studies and sociology.