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Publications by members of the Environment, Management and Society Research Group


Journal Article

Lippert, Ingmar. "Extended Carbon Cognition as a Machine." Computational Culture 1 (2011). Abstract
Abstract: By way of exploring ethnographic data on carbon construction practices by agents of ecological modernisation in a multinational corporation, this paper seeks to problematise the distributed and heterogeneous intelligence assembled by human and non-humans to make intelligible their carbon footprint. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork at a leading multinational in the financial services sector over a period of more than 12 months, I focus on everyday work practices as taking place in a capitalist context. It is through practical work that the presences of carbon emissions are imagined and brought into being. Thus, carbon emerges as co-constituted by thought. I will focus on instances in which the corporate machinery, i.e. automated thought, had to be supplemented by immediate human practices of 1) thinking themselves, 2) organising materials to think through and 3) ordering others to think. At another layer of analysis, I am to scrutinise carbon construction practices through the tension between creatively thinking / envisioning – and calculating / number crunching. Tracing members' practices allows to reconstruct how their usage of dichotomies renders carbon emissions intelligible. As a result of this analysis carbon accounting emerges as enabled through an extended system of cognition. The paper concludes by tentatively suggesting a view on this machinery as co-constituting a wider – to borrow Guattari's term – Universe: A Universe of references to carbon. Following these relations of thinking allows to question the conceptualisations of the actors involved and how their practical interactions render carbon, nature and our society (un)sustainable. This, I hope, provides a chance to better conceptualise individuals, their social and material contexts, and through that, corresponding room for manoevre.
Strauss, Hannah. "Involving the Finnish public in nuclear facility licensing: participatory democracy and industrial bias." Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences 7, no. 3 (2010): 211-228.
Lippert, Ingmar. "``Wissen'' für emanzipatorische Bildungspolitik." fzs:magazin (2007): 41-43.


Thesis

Lippert, Ingmar. Enacting Environments: An Ethnography of the Digitalisation and Naturalisation of Emissions. Augsburg: Augsburg University, Philosophisch-Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, 2013. Abstract
Abstract: Enacting Environments is an ethnography of the midst of the encounter between corporations, sustainable development and climate change. At this intersection 'environmental management' and 'carbon accounting' are put into practice. Purportedly, these practices green capitalism. Drawing on fieldwork of day-to-day practices of corporate environmental accountants and managers, Ingmar Lippert reconstructs their work as achieving to produce a reality of environment that is simultaneously stable and flexible enough for a particular corporate project: to stage the company, and in consequence capitalism, as in control over its relations to an antecedent environment. Not confined to mere texts or meetings between shiny stakeholders co-governing the corporation – among them some of the world's biggest auditing firms, an environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO) and standards – control is found to be distributed across as well as limited to a myriad of practical work situations, involving spreadsheets and slide shows. Carbon accounting takes place in the midst of docile as well as dissident humans and nonhumans. As a result of this analysis, Enacting Environments establishes how carbon emission facts are produced and co-configure climate change realities. Ingmar Lippert argues: within capitalism, environment does not exist in the singular but in the plural; and these environments are not existing out there to be read off some anterior Nature but they are brought into social, economic and political existence in the practices of accounting for them. Providing a portfolio of methods to study techno-managerial engagement with carbon, Ingmar Lippert shows how much is overlooked in received theories of corporate environmental accounting, theories of the performativity of environmental economics and, ultimately, the epistemic and ontic effects of fact-making in the heart of neoliberal capitalism.show less
Lippert, Ingmar. ReCycling Towards Agentialities of Ecological Modernisation: Exploring a Bourdieusian Take In Master dissertation. Lancaster University, 2007.
Lippert, Ingmar. Map-Making for ERM-Studies. Cottbus: Brandenburgische Technische Universität, 2005. Abstract
Abstract: This paper discusses the need for a concept ``environmental and resource management'' (ERM), and what ERM meaningfully could be. This problem is approached first by an analysis of the environmental and developmental issues. Consequently the hegemonic discourse on sustainability is questioned. Second, the paper uses Kuhn's ``Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' as a basis for drafting a scientific field ``ERM''. From the perspective of both approaches, different paradigms of environmental management are studied. Based on this analysis a fundamental problem is obtained, namely, how to make individuals and institutions co-operate and under which societal conditions co-operation can be engendered. Subsequently ERM is defined. ERM-Science is being worked out, as being goal-driven, seeking sustainability. It is pointed out that ERM, ERM-Science and its supporting scientific fields are not identical. The major findings following this method are: ERM is stipulated as an inherent social activity. Therefore the scientific field ERM needs to critically focus on the environmental and resource (ER)-manager's behaviour and her context, that both have indicated and non-indicated environmental influences upon the world. To inquire in that object of interest, the following point of view is developed: ``How to make people and society not only speak about environmental problems but implement solutions?'' This leads to the discussion of consequences in terms of ethical implications and methodology. Basing on these results, the legitimate problems for the scientific field ERM are illustrated. The developed definition and its consequences are applied on the three ERM-programs at Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) (Germany) and concludes that a radical reform of the BTU-approach to ERM is required. Kurzfassung in Deutsch Entwicklung von Eckpfeilern für ERM-Studien In dieser Arbeit wird die Notwendigkeit eines Konzepts und Begriffes für "Umwelt- und Ressourcenmanagement" untersucht sowie diskutiert, was Umwelt- und Ressourcenmanagement (URM) sein kann. Das Thema der Arbeit wird mit Hilfe einer Analyse der Umwelt- und der Entwicklungsproblematik angegangen. Daraus ergibt sich die Infragestellung des herrschenden Diskurses zu Nachhaltigkeit. Als zweites wird Kuhns Werk "Struktur wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen" benutzt, um ein wissenschaftliches Feld "URM" wissenschaftstheoretisch zu entwickeln. Aus diesen beiden Perspektiven, Wissenschaftstheorie und Kritik an Nachhaltiger Entwicklung, werden unterschiedliche Paradigmen des Umweltmanagements untersucht. Daraus ergibt sich dann die fundamentale Problematik: Wie können Individuen und Institutionen zur Kooperation gebracht werden und unter welchen gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen ist Kooperation möglich? Darauf folgend wird URM (neu) definiert. URM-Wissenschaft wird als zielorientiert, Nachhaltigkeit suchend, entwickelt. Hierbei wird betont, dass URM, URM-Wissenschaft und andere unterstützende wissenschaftliche Felder nicht identisch sind. Die wichtigsten Resultate dieses Ansatzes sind: URM soll als inhärent soziale Aktivität gedacht werden. Deswegen soll das wissenschaftliche Feld URM, also URM-Wissenschaft, einen kritischen Fokus auf das Verhalten und den Kontext der Umwelt- und Ressourcenmanagenden (UR-ManagerInnen) einnehmen und dabei berücksichtigen, dass beide - Kontext und Verhalten - erwünschte und unerwünschte Umwelteinflüsse haben. Um dieses Erkenntnisobjekt - Verhalten und Kontext - zu untersuchen, wird die folgende Perspektive vorgeschlagen: "Wie können Leute und Gesellschaften dazu gebracht werden, Umweltprobleme nicht nur wahrzunehmen, sondern auch Lösungen zu implementieren?" Daran anschließend werden die ethischen und methodologischen Implikationen des vorgeschlagenen Ansatzes diskutiert. Dies erlaubt dann, die legitimen Untersuchungsprobleme von URM-Wissenschaft zu illustrieren. Die vorgeschlagene Definition sowie ihre Konsequenzen werden schließlich auf die drei URM-Studiengänge der Brandenburgischen Technischen Universität (Cottbus, Deutschland) angewandt und das Resultat herausgearbeitet, dass eine radikale Reform des BTU-Ansatzes zu den URM-Studiengängen notwendig ist.


Web Article

Krause, Franz Martin. River management: Technological challenge or conceptual illusion?., 2008.
Lippert, Ingmar. Questioning the Social Technology "Recycling"., 2008.
Lippert, Ingmar. Introduction to the Workshop: Societial approaches to deal with environmental problems., 2008.
Strauss, Hannah. Climate change as a discursive frame for environmental management: How social movement organisations frame the debate in Finland., 2008.
environment