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, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural disasters, migration, crime and security and spirituality and religion.The book argues that uncertainties mu…
The present study was born out of an agreement between the Sieben Linden community (Siedlungsgenossenschaft Ökodorf e.G.) and the Politecnico di Torino (DIST), approved on May 9, 2013. The Politecnico team, led by professor Andrea Bocco, intended to perform an overall analysis of the way of living in the ecovillage, including a number of areas among which are agriculture, biodiversity, buildin…
This book serves as a guide for local governments and private enterprises as they navigate the unchartered waters of investing in climate change adaptation and resilience. This book serves not only as a resource guide for identifying potential funding sources but also as a roadmap for asset management and public fi nance processes. It highlights practical synergies between funding mechanisms, a…
The Circular Economy in Europe presents an overview and a critical discussion on how circularity is conceived, imagined, and enacted in current EU policy-making. In 2013, the idea of a circular economy entered the stage of European policy-making in the efforts to reconcile environmental and economic policy objectives. In 2019 the European Commission declared in a press release that the Circular…
The alpine cryosphere including snow, glaciers and permafrost are critical to water management in the Aral Sea Basin (ASB) and larger Central Asia (CA) under changing climate: as they store large amounts of water in its solid forms. Most cryospheric components in the Aral Sea Basin are close to melting point, and hence very vulnerable to a slight increase in air temperature with significant con…
From self-help books and nootropics, to self-tracking and home health tests, to the tinkering with technology and biological particles - biohacking brings biology, medicine, and the material foundation of life into the sphere of »do-it-yourself«. This trend has the potential to fundamentally change people's relationship with their bodies and biology but it also creates new cultural narratives…
A sociological and historical study of the development of reproductive technologies, this book focuses on key technological developments through a biomedicalization lens with special attention to gender. Using in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a hub, it critically examines the main areas of related socio-technical developments: reproductive science, birth control, animal husbandry, genetics and r…
Food production on present and future saline soils deserves the world’s attention particularly because food security is a pressing issue, millions of hectares of degraded soils are available worldwide, freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce, and the global sea-level rise threatens food production in fertile coastal lowlands. Future of Sustainable Agriculture in Saline Environments aims to…
Based on fieldwork among state officials, NGOs, politicians, and activists in Costa Rica and Brazil, A Future History of Water traces the unspectacular work necessary to make water access a human right and a human right something different from a commodity. Andrea Ballestero shows how these ephemeral distinctions are made through four technolegal devices—formula, index, list and pact. She arg…
Drawing on anthropology, historical sociology and social-epidemiology, this multidisciplinary book investigates how pharmaceuticals are produced, distributed, prescribed, (and) consumed, and regulated in order to construct a comprehensive understanding of the issues that drive (medicine) pharmaceutical markets in the Global South today. Based on primary research conducted in Benin and Ghana,…