Project Details
Description
Advanced study Group (ASG) at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies
Popular science description
The economization of everything or the essence of sustainability?
The Resourcification ASG sets out to discuss society through a resource-based worldview. This has several conflicting aspects, including scarcity of resources (water, antibiotics), abundance of resources (obesity, fossil fuels), mismanagement of resources (land degradation, overfishing), efficient use of resources (circular economy, frugal consumption), strategic use of resources (accounting, branding) and frontiers of resources (synthetic biology, geo-engineering).
A resource is implicitly understood as having an a prioripotential to become valuable. This makes the making of resources – resourcification – an intriguing issue for interdisciplinary inquiry since, arguably, nothing is valuable in and of itself in any social system.
In some cases, there is an association between resourcification and sustainability. However, resourcification might also be interpreted as the reaction from a society that is unwilling or genuinely unable to engage in profound change in order to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. The ASG brings together four faculties and one cross-faculty centre to problematize this dynamic by discussing the question: How do things become resources, and what are the implications of such resourcification?
The Resourcification ASG sets out to discuss society through a resource-based worldview. This has several conflicting aspects, including scarcity of resources (water, antibiotics), abundance of resources (obesity, fossil fuels), mismanagement of resources (land degradation, overfishing), efficient use of resources (circular economy, frugal consumption), strategic use of resources (accounting, branding) and frontiers of resources (synthetic biology, geo-engineering).
A resource is implicitly understood as having an a prioripotential to become valuable. This makes the making of resources – resourcification – an intriguing issue for interdisciplinary inquiry since, arguably, nothing is valuable in and of itself in any social system.
In some cases, there is an association between resourcification and sustainability. However, resourcification might also be interpreted as the reaction from a society that is unwilling or genuinely unable to engage in profound change in order to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. The ASG brings together four faculties and one cross-faculty centre to problematize this dynamic by discussing the question: How do things become resources, and what are the implications of such resourcification?
| Short title | Resourcification |
|---|---|
| Status | Finished |
| Effective start/end date | 2018/09/01 → 2019/06/09 |
UKÄ subject classification
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Free keywords
- Resources
- Sustainability
- Interdisciplinary