ESRC STEPS Centre
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The ESRC STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement centre uniting development studies with science and technology studies. Our cross-cutting work covers agriculture & food; energy & climate change; health & disease and water & sanitation.
You can visit the website at http://steps-centre.org/
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ESRC STEPS Centre [225]
Recent Submissions
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What is Environmental Degradation, What Are Its Causes, and How to Respond?
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-08-22)This short paper explores the question: what is environmental degradation and what are its causes? It seems an obvious question, but it is not. The paper explores definitions of environmental degradation (and restoration), ... -
People’s Relational Agency in Confronting Exclusion in Rural South India
(STEPS Centre, 2021)Social exclusion is considered critical for understanding poverty, livelihoods, inequality and political participation in rural India. Studies show how exclusion is produced through relations of power associated with gender, ... -
Are Livestock Always Bad for the Planet? Rethinking the Protein Transition and Climate Change Debate
(PASTRES, 2021-09)Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction if not elimination of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on ... -
Vernacular Resilience: An Approach to Studying Long-Term Social Practices and Cultural Repertoires of Resilience in Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo
(STEPS Centre, 2021)This working paper aims to situate our research project within the various debates around resilience. It advocates a historical, cultural and plural approach to understanding how communities develop and share resilient ... -
Disputing Security and Risk
(2020-07-15)This chapter explores some of the dilemmas that arise in using uncertainty as a lens to interpret societal problems and issues. Using several cases to open up discussion we argue that it is vitally important to understand ... -
Disasters, Humanitarianism and Emergencies: A Politics of Uncertainty
(Routledge, 2020-07-15)Long-standing research on disaster risk has tended to focus on physical science and directly connected and observable cause and effect between hazard and impact. More recently, work has extended into questions of complex ... -
Expanding Cities
(2020-07-15)This chapter presents readers with an opportunity to engage with the concept of uncertainty through the lens of cities and urbanism. Operating within an environment of profound uncertainty relating to the future of humanity, ... -
Control, Manage or Cope?
(2020-07-15)Just as an emancipatory politics of uncertainty recognises that uncertainty and unknown-unknowns cannot be closed down to measurable risk, so too does the politics require better differentiation among controlling, managing ... -
The Unravelling of Technocratic Orthodoxy?
(Routledge, 2020-07-15)This chapter argues that the contemporary politics of technology regulation play out through a key tension – between an established narrow framing of what is at stake in technology regulation, namely the optimisation of ... -
Sharing Risks or Proliferating Uncertainties?
(Routledge, 2020-07-15)Amid the proliferating uncertainties of globalised modernity, development institutions have deployed insurance to transfer risk across more geographic and hazard domains. This chapter first explores why insurance and other ... -
The Assault of Financial Futures on the Rest of Time
(Routledge, 2020-07-15)The question we ask in this chapter is how financialised capitalism shapes and formats the politics of the future. Our central tenet is that, far from providing an engine for imagining futures that guides collective actions, ... -
The Politics of Uncertainty
(Routledge, 2020-07-15)Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, ... -
Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Policy Briefing 2: Genome Editing in Agriculture: The Politics of Regulation in the European Union
(Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Network, 2020-09)Genome editing, also known as gene editing, is a technique of genetic engineering that involves the alteration of an organism’s genetic structure by adding, deleting, changing or replacing individual nucleotides or sequences ... -
Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Policy Briefing 1: Genome Editing in Agriculture: Issues for Policy and Regulation
(Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Network, 2020-09)Genome editing, also known as gene editing, is a technique of genetic engineering that involves the alteration of an organism’s genetic structure by adding, deleting, changing or replacing individual nucleotides or sequences ... -
Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Policy Briefing 4: Future Pathways for Genome Editing in Agriculture: Public Policies, Public Debates, Public Goods
(Genome Editing and Agriculture: Policy, Practices and Public Perceptions (GEAP3) Network, 2021-03)Genome editing belongs to a category of cutting-edge modern technologies that have assumed a totemic importance for some politicians and policy advisors as, urged on by futurologists and business executives, they contemplate ... -
The Green Revolution and Poverty in Northern Tamil Nadu: a Brief Synthesis of Village-Level Research in the Last Half-Century
(ESRC STEPS Centre, 2020-12-17)Between 1972 and 2014, in Northern Tamil Nadu (NTN), India, the Green Revolution (GR) in agriculture was studied through five rounds of village-level studies (VLS). Over the decades, the number of villages dwindled; from ... -
Brighton & Hove’s Farmland Potentials for a More Local and Ecological Food Supply
(Pathways Network, 2018-08)The City of Brighton & Hove has made impressive progress toward improving access to healthy and sustainable food for its residents. Recent research and consultations have indicated a great potential for farmland ... -
Unsettling the Apocalypse: Uncertainty in Spirituality and Religion
(Routledge, 2020)Current crises that link nature with human agency are increasingly described as ‘apocalyptic’, and people faced with uncertain futures continue to express their doubts, fears and hopes in spiritual terms. Religious language ... -
Intertwining the Politics of Uncertainty, Mobility and Immobility
(Routledge, 2020)This chapter explores how politics of uncertainty shape mobilities and immobilities. Recognising that institutions of different types are central in producing and resisting uncertainty, the chapter unpicks how formal and ... -
Disease Outbreaks: Navigating Uncertainties in Preparedness and Response
(Taylor and Francis, 2020)In recent years, fears about infectious diseases with pandemic potential have led to global initiatives to predict, prepare and respond to outbreaks. Practices that are focused on prediction and control centre on turning ...
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