Green Work and Environmental Knowledge

Abstract:

What is green work, who are green workers, and how are  material cultures of practice and work and sustainable-society-in-transition co-produced? This workshop engages these questions, proceeding from the premise that, generally speaking, studies of environment, science, technology, society (STS), and energy have overlooked studies of material cultures of practice and work and studies of  material cultures of practice and work have overlooked studies of environment, STS, and energy. Over the last half-century, public policies have invested increasingly large resources into environmental mitigation and statistics suggest that many environmentally-sustainable green jobs are being stimulated in the process. Yet green work remains an ill-defined “contested discourse” (Teelucksingh 2019) as evidenced in the disparity between US and European data on this subject (Apostel and Barslund 2024). This controversy and the knowledge deficit it implies raises questions of the character and culture of environmental mitigation, including the technologies, infrastructures, and material practices/social relations informed by environmental policy and green industrialization, as well as what a socially and environmentally-just society would look like for the workers expected to build and maintain it.

Schedule:

10:00 Morning coffee

10:15 Welcome and introductions: Matthew N. Eisler (University of Strathclyde)

11:00 Keynote: University Professor Ferdinanda Ponci (E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University)

11:40 Q&A, discussion

12:00-1:30 Lunch

 1:30  Mila Davids (Eindhoven University)

2:00 Q&A, discussion

2:20  Lisa Claussmann (Paris-PSL)

2:50  Q&A, discussion

3:10  Katie Kung (LMU Munich)

3:40 Q&A, discussion

4:00 Afternoon coffee

4:15 Rosalind Donald (American University)

4:45 Q&A, discussion

5:30-6:30 Wrap-up discussion, moderated by Hannah Star Rogers or Phillip H. Roth

7:00 Dinner (Restaurant Elisenbrunnen)

Please find more information and the abstracts in this document.