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The influential work by Barca on place-based development, which has permeated policy and academic discourses alike in recent years, builds on the premise that localities are expected to utilize their endogenous potential rather than placing their trust in redistributive policies. This endogenous potential involves local knowledge and place-based knowledge, and how these two types can tap into actions. This has barely been explored in a systematic and comparative manner. This paper therefore examines 20 urban and rural development actions across Europe in order to understand how, and the extent to which, local knowledge and place-based knowledge are mobilized (or not). It makes use of empirically informed evidence to identify evolving mechanisms and to analyse how learning loops are triggered. We argue that it is crucial for leading actors in such development actions to pay attention to these different mechanisms of mobilizing these two types of knowledge and how to trigger learning loops. Since this analysis also highlights a number of shortcomings and inhibitors regarding the extent to which these collective knowledge and learning capacities actually inform actions over time, the concept of 'networks of deep learning' is suggested as a knowledge management principle for key actors in local governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the systematic literature review process is extensive, but a justified explanation of how a narrative literature review process progresses remains absent from the existing literature. The purpose of this study is to increase understanding about the narrative literature review process. By building on process theory and the literature on systematic literature reviews and by empirically examining the literature review processes for bachelor's theses in a European business school, we reveal that a narrative literature process is iterative, non-structured and multi-layered; contains several cumulative written outcomes; and is embedded in a social context wherein various official and non-official actors guide and support the beginning researcher. This study is a fresh attempt to explain the progress of a literature review process with help of process theory, thereby offering novel insights into the research on literature reviews in general and on narrative literature reviews across various fields of human sciences specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the concept “sustainable development” has scope to open up societal futures, this opportunity has been limited by dominant agendas promoting capital-intensive innovations. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have criticised these agendas, especially through campaign activities, while also intervening in these issues through research activity. Such interventions were extended by our project, “Co-operative Research on Environmental Problems in Europe”, which brought together CSOs and academics as partners to carry out joint research. Focusing on agricultural practices and innovations, the project analysed divergent accounts of sustainable agriculture. Through academic-CSO cooperation, critical concepts from CSOs (e.g. agrofuels and agroecology) became perspectives for research and for wider stakeholder involvement. These concepts helped to deepen critical analysis of the EU's dominant innovation agenda, which is seen by many CSOs as unsustainable development – perpetuating sustainability problems in the name of addressing them. Itself a societal intervention, the research process also strengthened CSOs’ efforts to intervene in EU policy frameworks, to challenge dominant innovation agendas and to promote alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is about women and science although it does not specifically or directly examine the position and experience of practising scientists who carry out experiments, publish and are otherwise engaged in academic traffic. Building on John Law’s modes of mattering (2004), the authors explore the enactments of ‘women and science’ in various locations where gender and feminist approaches, science policies and support activities for women in science meet in the European context. By exploring some of these ‘trading zones’ (Galison, 1999), the authors offer some suggestions on power and marginalization in the flagship of European research, the European Research Area. By introducing the notion of a mode of ‘retrenchment’, they argue that while gender equality has been co-opted into European science policy, an enactment with a feminist potential that emerged at the beginning of the new millennium has been gradually displaced by one building on an economic perspective of utility, resources and waste. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the late-nineteenth century food production and trade were greatly transformed. Changes in the food chain gave rise to new problems connected with food safety and food quality, which caused new controls to be introduced throughout Europe. In this paper I will contribute to ongoing debates by focusing on the regulation of saccharin in an agrarian city in the south of Europe, Valencia. The laboratory-made sweetener was introduced into the food market at the turn of the century, becoming highly controversial shortly afterwards. Several local groups of players got involved in this dispute. The sugar industry was not only an important stakeholder in the passing of some specific laws that were to constrain the use of saccharin, but also the main driver of regulation, primarily in periods when saccharin could become a serious competitor and reduce the sector’s profit. Furthermore, the combined work of the sugar industry and the municipal laboratories was essential for the implementation of regulations. It was in such municipal laboratories that scientists played a main role in regulation. My paper will address the commercial disputes linked to the use of saccharin and the limited role of science and scientists in its control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent years, science and technology have been reassessed increasingly in ethical terms. Particularly for life science governance, ethics has become the dominant discourse. In the course of this ''ethical turn'' national ethics councils were set up throughout Europe and in the United States to advice politics in ethically controversial issues such as stem cell research and genetic testing. Ethics experts have become subject to traditional warnings against expertocracy: they are suspected to unduly influence political decision- making. However, any reliable ethics expertise has to reflect societal disagreements in moral issues. Therefore, expert dissent is a normal feature of legitimate ethics expertise. Based on theoretical considerations we argue that in principle, expert dissent does not cause problems for political legitimacy; rather, it enhances the salience of politics: obviously decisions on ethical issues cannot be taken on the basis of expert knowledge alone. We therefore conclude that expert dissent, not consent, supports politics. Focussing on Germany and Austria, we show how politics deal with expert dissent in practice. While in Germany politics acknowledge dissent and use it to foster a fundamental political debate, Austrian politics attribute authoritative power to ethics expertise and try to construct an overall consensus. This illustrates how the drawing of boundaries between politic and expertise differs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following trends in operational weather forecasting, where ensemble prediction systems (EPS) are now increasingly the norm, flood forecasters are beginning to experiment with using similar ensemble methods. Most of the effort to date has focused on the substantial technical challenges of developing coupled rainfall-runoff systems to represent the full cascade of uncertainties involved in predicting future flooding. As a consequence much less attention has been given to the communication and eventual use of EPS flood forecasts. Drawing on interviews and other research with operational flood forecasters from across Europe, this paper highlights a number of challenges to communicating and using ensemble flood forecasts operationally. It is shown that operational flood forecasters understand the skill, operational limitations, and informational value of EPS products in a variety of different and sometimes contradictory ways. Despite the efforts of forecasting agencies to design effective ways to communicate EPS forecasts to non-experts, operational flood forecasters were often skeptical about the ability of forecast recipients to understand or use them appropriately. It is argued that better training and closer contacts between operational flood forecasters and EPS system designers can help ensure the uncertainty represented by EPS forecasts is represented in ways that are most appropriate and meaningful for their intended consumers, but some fundamental political and institutional challenges to using ensembles, such as differing attitudes to false alarms and to responsibility for management of blame in the event of poor or mistaken forecasts are also highlighted. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]