Nieuws
Coming up: colloquium by Dr. Peter Oosterveer
We are happy to invite you to our next ENP research colloquium, which will take place on November 9th, between 12:30 and 13:30. This colloquium will be hosted by Dr. Peter Oosterveer, and will address the potential of combining “networks and flows”, and “social practices” approaches, in environmental sociology research.
This presentation draws on Peter’s extensive body of environmental sociology research, and a recent International Sociological Association workshop on “Core Concepts in Environmental Sociology”, held in Örebro, Sweden, which Peter participated in, and for which Dr. Kris van Koppen also served on the Scientific Committee. Please feel welcome to attend this presentation, and join the discussion.
Date: Monday, Nov. 9th
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Location: Leeuwenborch, C75
Title: Analyzing environmental change by integrating environmental networks and flows and social practices perspectives; a review.
Abstract:
Analyzing global environmental change, such as sustainable food provision, requires adequate conceptual frameworks. Recent developments in sociological theory may offer attractive contributions. This presentation deals with social practice approaches and the networks and flows perspective. Social practices approaches focus on studying everyday behaviour, such as food consumption, tourism, travelling, etc. and is particularly interesting for environmental social scientists because of their explicit inclusion of material elements in conceptualisation. However, their focus on everyday practices and emerging properties complicates making connections with dimensions of power and with global dynamics. Networks and flows perspectives build on material flows studied in environmental sciences and by connecting this to non-material flows and broader categories of social actors, these perspectives may be applied to study dynamics in global commodity flows, such as palm oil and seafood. However, the focus on structural dynamics complicates the inclusion of actors, agency and everyday behaviour. Combining these two perspectives seems attractive when trying to connect environmentally relevant global and local dynamics in society and build an integrated frameworks. This presentation will review this possibility and its potential contribution to environmental sociology.