The working paper analyses the case of Lighting Africa, which successfully transformed access to solar lighting in Kenya and, as far as we are aware, conceptualises and illustrates for the first time Lighting Africa’s approach. This builds on past STEPS research that focusses on building sociotechnical innovation systems.
Transforming Access to Clean Technology: Learning From Lighting Africa
Smart as Democratically Transformative? An Analysis of ‘Smart City’ Sociotechnical Imaginary in India
Focussing on the urban mobility aspects of one Smart City Challenge, submitted by New Town, Kolkata, we assess how democratically transformative was the collective process of imagining smart cities in India. Our results indicate that while considerable efforts were made to engage with citizens in the making of the imaginary, the process remained highly uneven and technology-centric, shaped by ‘globalised’ aspirations of urban smartness and by the upper and middle classes, leaving behind the voices and needs of poor and marginalised citizens of Kolkata.
Crises in Variegated Capitalism, Co-produced, Hydro-Social Impacts
Drawing on fieldwork undertaken on Dutch aid in the Mozambican waterscape, this working paper asks how seemingly unrelated crises jointly reproduced politico-economic and hydro-social conditions in Mozambique. To this end, literature on the political ecology of crisis and austerity is mobilised and adapted to the needs of this paper through the notion of variegated capitalism. This relational approach helps to make sense of interdependencies between the two crises (and the responses they triggered) in a singular global, but spatially differentiated, capitalism.
‘Good Governance’ as Conflict Resolution? Locally Mediated Governance and Mining Law at the Côte d’Ivoire Ity Gold Mine
This paper examines the exploitation and management of gold mining in the western region of Côte d’Ivoire and the associated local social tensions and conflicts.
Destabilisation of Sustainable Energy Transformations: Analysing Natural Gas Lock-in in the case of Germany
STEPS Working Paper 106 by Louise Fitzgerald, Isabell Braunger and Hanna Brauers Download this paper In recent years, natural gas has seen increased support in the context of climate change…
What is Uncertainty and Why Does it Matter?
STEPS Working Paper 105 April 2019 Uncertainty defines our times. Whether it is in relation to climate change, disease outbreaks, financial volatility, natural disasters or political settlements, every media headline…
Engineering and Sustainability: Control and Care in Unfoldings of Modernity
SPRU Working Paper series SWPS 2019-06 (February) Forthcoming as a chapter in Diane P. Michelfelder and Neelke Doorn (eds), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Engineering, London: Routledge, 2019 This chapter…
How Deep Is Incumbency? Introducing a ‘Configuring Fields’ Approach to the Distribution and Orientation of Power in Socio-Material Change
This paper examines a variety of theories bearing on ‘socio-material incumbency’ and explores methodological implications. The aim is to develop a systematic general approach, which builds on strengths and mitigates…
Transformations to Sustainability
STEPS Working Paper 104 September 2018 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight how transformations to sustainable economies and societies are a major global challenge. This Working Paper offers a brief…
Waste to Energy in Delhi: Alternatives towards Sustainable Urban Waste Management
With the increasing waste production in urban areas, multiple technological solutions, models of waste governance and alternative practices of solid waste management have started acquiring momentum in Indian cities. Of…