Papers by Georg N Schäfer
The Anthropocene Review, 2024
Groundwater supplies are dwindling worldwide as the Anthropocene deepens and human-water systems ... more Groundwater supplies are dwindling worldwide as the Anthropocene deepens and human-water systems become more tightly coupled. Key actors are searching for ways to augment water supplies, including by large-scale transport. In this context, the role of human culture-values, beliefs, norms, symbols, language-is becoming even more important as a driver of socioecological change. We explore the role of culture in coupled, human-water systems through a case study of an emergent outcome in a groundwater-dependent system: the Kansas Aqueduct Project (KAP)-a large, yet-to-be-constructed infrastructure project that would divert water from the Missouri River 300 miles uphill, at exceptional cost to replenish groundwater supplies in the High Plains/Ogallala Aquifer, which has been depleted by irrigated agriculture. First proposed in the 1980s, the KAP has re-emerged as a socio-technical 'solution' to the unsustainable use of groundwater in Western Kansas. Given the significant barriers to its construction, why and how has the KAP survived as an idea? We employ the concept of a sociotechnical imaginary to understand the re-emergence of the KAP in this context. We show that the KAP is a re-assertion of an anthropocentric, specifically Euro-American cultural vision of progress and order, one that is based in environmental law, centers humans, naturalizes the region's postwar history, and sees agriculture as the foundation of society. It is this order that is actually more imperiled by groundwater decline than the water itself.
Verlag Karl Alber eBooks, 2023
The Anthropocene Review
Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been... more Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been meticulously quantifying and scrutinizing the global stratigraphic imprint of human activities, the results of which are gathered in this thematic collection of papers in The Anthropocene Review. How can such empirical research, which so impressively articulates the end of a relatively stable Earth System in the mid-20th century, inform our ways of understanding and responding to the planetary crisis that the geological samples quietly represent? In this afterword to the collection we report and reflect on the joint undertaking of the AWG, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science to bring geoscientific evidence, cultural experimentation and historical contextualization together in a shared public framework.
The Anthropocene Review, 2023
Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been... more Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been meticulously quantifying and scrutinizing the global stratigraphic imprint of human activities, the results of which are gathered in this thematic collection of papers in The Anthropocene Review. How can such empirical research, which so impressively articulates the end of a relatively stable Earth System in the mid-20th century, inform our ways of understanding and responding to the planetary crisis that the geological samples quietly represent? In this afterword to the collection we report and reflect on the joint undertaking of the AWG, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science to bring geoscientific evidence, cultural experimentation and historical contextualization together in a shared public framework.
Geld und Gewinn. Zur Erweiterung monetär-ökonomischer Logiken, 2022
Mapping Mainstream Economics
Mapping Mainstream Economics
Mapping Mainstream Economics
Auf philosophischer Expedition. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zur Ökonomie , 2018
Georg N. Schäfer analysiert die Rolle des Wirtschaftens im Anthropozän. Wirtschaften und Anthropo... more Georg N. Schäfer analysiert die Rolle des Wirtschaftens im Anthropozän. Wirtschaften und Anthropozän konstituieren sich gewissermaßen gegenseitig. Eine Dynamik, die am Konzept von Hyperobjekten veranschaulicht wird. Anhand der materiellen und intellektuellen Produktionsbedingungen von Hyperobjekten wird analysiert, inwiefern die wirtschaftliche Tätigkeit das Zeitalter des Menschen konstituiert. Dabei wird ein Fokus auf die Produktionsbedingungen mechanistisches Naturverständnis, das Konzept der permanenten Knappheit und Technologieverständnis gelegt.
Books by Georg N Schäfer
Mapping Mainstream Economics. Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity, 2022
Mapping Mainstream Economics: Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity seeks to establish a defi... more Mapping Mainstream Economics: Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity seeks to establish a definition of the mainstream economics, and by extension the alternatives to it, by adopting a genealogical approach: tracing the methodological development of the economic mainstream through its ancestry, which allows for a definition of the mainstream that is separate from politically charged categories or gridlocked academic arguments between received schools of thought.
The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political to analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics, and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. To put the approach into practice, it examines the relation between today’s mainstream economics and two of its alternatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today’s mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative, and heterodox economics.
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Papers by Georg N Schäfer
Books by Georg N Schäfer
The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political to analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics, and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. To put the approach into practice, it examines the relation between today’s mainstream economics and two of its alternatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today’s mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative, and heterodox economics.
The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political to analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics, and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. To put the approach into practice, it examines the relation between today’s mainstream economics and two of its alternatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today’s mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative, and heterodox economics.