At an event at the Machines Room in London on 26 October, we discussed the roles that maker communities and the places where they interact can play in sustainable development….
Making and Sustainability
Exploring ‘dynamic sustainabilities’ in the Anthropocene
In this post, STEPS Summer School alumnus Mathew Bukhi Mabele explains plans for a session on ‘Exploring ‘dynamic sustainabilities’ in the Anthropocene’, which will feature at the 6th Annual Dimensions of Political…
Time to rei(g)n back the Anthropocene?
I was very lucky to be able to participate in last week’s Stockholm Resilience Centre conference on ‘Transformations 2015: People and Planet in the Anthropocene‘. Involving a dynamic and highly…
What lies behind the UK’s strange policy on nuclear power?
The UK chancellor George Osborne has recently made further commitments to support massive new investment in nuclear infrastructure, including the much-criticised Hinkley C power station. Why is the UK determined…
Moving beyond products to material culture
Prototyping or debating sustainable developments in makerspaces? In the previous blog I introduced some of the diverse ways that makerspaces are helping cultivate sustainable developments. Admittedly, these initiatives do not represent…
Why should we seek sustainable developments in makerspaces?
Community-based workshops like hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces, equipped with design, prototyping and fabrication tools have spread rapidly in recent years. Interest in the social, economic and environmental possibilities of these spaces has…
Why Germany is dumping nuclear power – and Britain isn’t
by Philip Johnstone and Andy Stirling The starkly differing nuclear policies of Germany and the UK present perhaps the clearest divergence in developed world energy strategies. Under the current major…
Resource politics: living in the Anthropocene
By Ian Scoones, Director of the STEPS Centre This week we are hosting a major conference at the STEPS Centre at Sussex on resource politics. There are panels looking at…
Submerged origins of UK nuclear lock-in?
By Andy Stirling, STEPS Co-Director and Phil Johnstone, Research Fellow at SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit Many legitimately contrasting views are possible on the pros and cons of nuclear…
Does the Anthropocene mean we have to ‘put democracy on hold’?
Our co-director Andy Stirling is at the 2015 conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in Berlin today, and sent us this abstract of his keynote, ‘Emancipating Transformations:…