基于多级视角模型的风能产业对比研究

基于多级视角理论模型,结合行动者-网络的视角对比了中国、丹麦和德国的风能产业系统的演化,以此探究从风能大国向风能强国的动力和机制。多案例的对比研究促进了多级视角理论的发展,分析表明,发达国家和发展中国家产业的多级视角模型有较大差异:前者起步于利基市场的突破性技术创新;后者起步于技术的引进、消化和吸收,因而系统的演化路径也不尽相同。结论显示,管理体制直接影响产业发展模式和技术创新方式;技术创新、市场需求和制度建设是否协同是影响三个国家产业竞争力差异的关键,因此促进多主体的广泛参与、鼓励多样化的技术创新显得尤为重要。     

Keep Fit and Play the Game

ABSTRACT

This article provides new insight into the modernization of the monarchy after the First World War by exploring how George VI promoted fitness and outdoor recreation during the interwar years. Sport functioned as a site of cross-class male bonding which formed part of a wider strategy by the monarchy to strengthen social cohesion. The new royal charities raised substantial funds, and they established a national fitness movement during the 1930s which was supported by the National Government, Labour leaders and the Trades Union Congress, but eschewed extremes on both left and right.     

从“产学研”合作到“政产学研用物”合作——某超级稻技术研发的行动者网络分析

传统的"政产学研"合作主要强调人类行动者及其组织的作用。在行动者网络理论模式下,对"用户"行动者的发现和对非人行动者的重视,使得"政产学研"合作被拓展为"政产学研用物"合作。因为缺失农民行动者的参与和缺乏育种材料,超级稻品种"G"的技术研发行动者网络被证明是一个不成功的案例。研究揭示,组建行动者网络要尽可能发现行动者,重视非人行动者的作用,同时要考虑行动者的主张和需求。     

Perspectives on academic staff involvement in the acquisition and implementation of educational technologies

This article presents the results of a study using both quantitative and qualitative data to uncover the extent and nature of the involvement of academic staff in the processes of acquisition and implementation of educational technologies. Actor-network theory (ANT) is used to inform the design of the study and the analysis of the data. Three main areas of investigation are (1) issues of institutional policy and overall purpose of technology, (2) issues of staff involvement in various activities related to acquisition and use of technology and (3) issues related to the existence of arenas for dialogue and discussions of technological needs and requirements across organisational boundaries. The analysis focuses on the diffuseness of the role of academic staff in processes of development of institutional policies and technology acquisition. The article concludes with suggestions for organisational policy in higher education contexts, and possible directions for new research.     

New lamps for old: financialised governance of cities and clean energy

ABSTRACT

Using a six-year case study of Glasgow’s Sustainable City business model, this paper examines interactions between financialised governance of cities and clean energy strategies. Research on the role of cities in developing clean energy has paid limited attention to the interaction with financialised governance of infrastructure, which makes the implementation of plans largely dependent on private investment. A conceptual approach combining economic sociology of actor networks and urban political economy is used to analyse the career of the business model designed to transform old infrastructures into new clean energy assets. The analysis focuses on interactions between city council, public bodies and electricity distribution network business. Climate policies are creating uncertainties for energy businesses over revenues from ageing networks, suggesting scope for alliance with local governments. Making new liquid assets for clean energy from old infrastructure is however shown to be a process marked by instability and reversals. In conclusion, it is argued that concepts from actor-network theory and urban political economy used together reveal the hidden contingencies of financialisation in particular socio-technical interactions, and their materiality in the context of climate change.     

PERFORMING CALCULATION IN THE ART MARKET

The purpose of this article is to suggest a model of calculation in art markets based upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and of actor-network theory. It will be argued that Bourdieu's concepts of capitals, economic, symbolic and cultural are useful for the specificity they lend to value making processes in the art market. However, actor-network theory's proposal of a distributed form of agency between humans and non-humans (e.g. calcualtion tools) is favoured here, posing a fundamental challenge to Bourdieu's notion of agency as resting solely at the hands of human agents. In order to understand the performance of calculation, this article explores the role of catalogues as an example of a market device in the Scottish auction market. It will be argued that the performativity of the catalogue cannot be fully understood without taking into account not only how it represents and enacts the value/s of aeshtetic objects, e.g. paintings, but also how this performance is mediated by its role as an aesthetic object.     

Creating the valuable: reading as a matter of health and successful parenthood

ABSTRACT

There have been increasing demands to improve Swedish children’s reading habits, triggered by poor PISA results in 2013, and public healthcare has stepped in as a strong reading-promoting actor. Drawing on the emerging field of valuation research in STS, the paper explores the values enacted in health-related information brochures about reading that are distributed to all Swedish parents at various times of their children’s lives. The analysis demonstrates how the lack of reading books is enacted as a public health problem that requires prevention and intervention of public healthcare. Health is thus recruited as a stabilising actor in the process of determining the value and importance of reading and where the problem of non-reading of books becomes a private matter for families to solve. The analysis also shows how instances of health-promoting intentions of doing good can in effect be marginalising by viewing specific people as less valuable.     

The mall,the library and the church: inquiring into the resourcing of early learning through new spaces and networks

Early learning has increasingly been the focus of social policy and programmes with a proliferation of public, community and commercial entities entering the field of production. Understanding this phenomenon requires educational researchers to conceptualise early learning both within a globalised network of circulating commodities and within specific situated spaces of local sociocultural practice. This paper describes how a research project has drawn on geosemiotic and actor-network theories, and employed spatially sensitive methods, to investigate the resourcing of early learning in spaces new to most educational researchers. Focusing on the suburban field site ‘Midburb’, we analyse the ways in which discourses operate through/in place producing different entry points, pathways and access for parents, impacting on their opportunities for encountering early learning resources.     

Constructing learning spaces? Videoconferencing at local learning centres in Sweden

This article explores videoconferencing in the context of local learning centres in Sweden. The practice is described as a ‘learning space’ in which adult learners construct socio-spatial relations. The study goes beyond a sociological apprehension of actors and opposes the idea of the material as neutral, passive and conformed by practice. On the contrary, the classroom layouts and the technical artefacts have a profound impact on interaction, communication and learning. The results of the study concern how human actors have to take on different strategies to escape the influence of material actors. It will be argued that the learning space of videoconferencing is a network of interrelations in which control is handed over from humans to material actors. In terms of learning, we may have to rethink the roles of environments and technical artifacts and reconsider such predetermined and static roles of material objects.     

Short Cuts and Extended Techniques: Rethinking relations between technology and educational theory

Building upon a recent call to renew actor-network theory (ANT) for educational research, this article reconsiders relations between technology and educational theory. Taking cues from actor-network theorists, this discussion considers the technologically-mediated networks in which learning actors are situated, acted upon, and acting, and traces the novel positions of creative capacity and participation that emerging media may enable. Whereas traditional theories of educational technology tend to focus on the harmonization of new technologies with extant curricular goals and educational practices, an educational theory of technology looks to novel forms of technologically-mediated learning experience—from production pedagogies to role play in the virtual—to make visible the surprising relations, techniques, and opportunities that emerging media, and their attendant social contexts, may offer educational research.