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There is an increasing rise in the number of publications addressing social vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation (SVRA) aspects of natural hazards and climate change. Despite the abundance of research in this field, a systematic understanding of how these studies are theoretically grounded is lacking.In this study, we conducted a systematic review of 4432 articles that address SVRA across a range of disciplinary fields (e.g. psychology, sociology, geography, mathematics) and natural hazards (e.g. floods, droughts, landslides, storm surges, wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions). We investigate the extent to which these studies explicate the frameworks, theoretical constructs or theories they rely on.Our findings indicate that about 90% of the studies under consideration do not explicitly refer to a theoretical underpinning. Overall, theories focusing on individuals' SVRA were more frequent than those focusing on systems, society, groups, and networks. Furthermore, the uptake of theories varied according to the hazard investigated and field of knowledge, being more frequent in wildfire and flood studies and articles published in social science journals.We argue that the abundance of empirical material in SVRA research that lacks explicit theoretical grounding is objectionable. As a result, SVRA research seems to spin in circles: researchers repeatedly conduct similar analyses in different geographical settings with inconsistent or incommensurable findings. Thus, we recommend making theoretical considerations salient to foster more transparent, comparable, and robust empirical research on SVRA.

An optimistic narrative has gained momentum during the first year of the pandemic: the COVID-19 crisis may have opened a window of opportunity to “rebuild better”, to spur societal transitions towards environmental sustainability. In this comment, we review first evidence of individual and political changes made so far. Findings suggest that economies worldwide are not yet building back better. Against this background, we argue that a naïve opportunity narrative may even impair the progress of transitions towards environmental sustainability because it may render green recovery measures ineffective, costly, or infeasible. Based on these observations, we derive conditions for green recovery policies to succeed. They should consist of a policy mix combining well-targeted green subsidies with initiatives to price emissions and scrap environmentally harmful subsidies. Moreover, green recovery policies must be embedded into a narrative that avoids trading off environmental sustainability with other domains of sustainability—and rather highlights respective synergies that can be realized when recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.

There is an increasingly vocal debate on potential long-term changes in environmental sustainability spurred by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This article scrutinizes the social science basis of selected popular hypotheses regarding the nexus between the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal transitions towards environmental sustainability. It presents results that were derived through an interdisciplinary dialogue among social scientists. First, it is confirmed that the COVID-19 crisis has likely created a potential window of opportunity for societal change. Yet, to ensure that societal change is enduring and actually supporting the transition towards environmental sustainability, a clear and well-targeted political framework guiding private investments and behavior is required. Second, it is emphasized that there are important structural differences between the COVID-19 crisis and environmental crises, like time scales. Consequently, many strategies used to address the COVID-19 crisis are hardly suitable for long-term transitions towards environmental sustainability. Third, it is argued that transitions towards environmental sustainability—building both on reducing environmental degradation and building socio-techno-ecological resilience—may create co-benefits in terms of preventing and coping with potential future pandemics. However, research still needs to explore how big these synergies are (and whether trade-offs are also possible), and what type of governance framework they require to materialize.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are controversially discussed worldwide. Germany is no exception. Here, CO2 storage is banned, although successful pilot plants were installed in the late 2000s. However, the recent burgeoning political interest in this technology prompts us to investigate why and how the (public) image of CCS technologies has changed over time and with regard to different CCS applications. For this purpose, we examine the coverage of CCS in German newspapers over the last 20 years on the basis of a quantitative analysis of about 4000 newspaper articles. A sample of 571 articles with different political orientations was studied qualitatively to analyse reporting on different CCS frames and actors. We find evidence that the media debate is shifting towards the application of CCS for negative emissions technologies and carbon removal. However, the negative image of CCS connected to coal fired power plants persists, suggesting that public and political support remain a problem for a technology fixed in binary negotiations for or against it.

Können Theorien und Methoden der Science and Technology Studies (STS) für die Untersuchung sozialwissenschaftlicher Wissensfabrikation hilfreich sein? Mit dem Ziel, die soziologische Konstruktion und Wirkung von Deutungen sozialer Ungleichheit am Beispiel des »Prekariats« zu beforschen, stellte sich diese Frage in meinem Dissertationsprojekt ganz praktisch. Es galt zu klären, inwiefern der Blick der STS, der bisher primär den Natur- und Technikwissenschaften verhaftet blieb, sich auf die weit weniger »ortsgebundenen« (z.B. nicht in Labors zu lokalisierenden) Sozialwissenschaften übertragen lässt und inwiefern diese Übertragung eine Verfolgung der Spezifika soziologischer Wissenskulturen ermöglichen würde. Wir können angesichts des Forschungsstands in STS und Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie auf theoretischer Ebene davon ausgehen, dass für die Genese, Verbreitung und Wirkung von (sozialwissenschaftlichen) Deutungen eine Vielzahl ineinander verwobener menschlicher und nicht-menschlicher Entitäten relevant ist. Allerdings stellt das damit eröffnete Spektrum potentieller Einflussgrößen die empirische Einholung vor erhebliche Herausforderungen und zahlreiche Fragen. Ist es möglich, den Soziolog*innen nach Vorbild der Laborstudien bei der Arbeit nachzuspüren? Und falls ja, mit welchen methodischen Mitteln ist das zu erreichen und welche Justierungen sind an bereits durch STS erprobten Verfahren vorzunehmen? Wie können die Assoziationen, die zur Entstehung, Verbreitung und Stabilisierung von Deutungen beigetragen haben und potentiell in den Hintergrund getreten sind, wieder sichtbar gemacht werden? Wie ist der theoretisch aufgeworfenen Vielfalt an potentiellen Einflussgrößen, die einer Deutung Wirkmächtigkeit verleihen bzw. die Wirkmächtigkeit einer Deutung ermöglichen, methodisch zu entsprechen? Vereinzelt haben sich Beiträge mit diesen Fragen befasst, aber sie verblieben weitgehend auf der Ebene theoretischer oder methodologischer Überlegungen. Im vorliegenden Artikel, der an meine Dissertation mit dem Titel Dem »Prekariat« auf der Spur. Eine Deutungsmachtanalyse soziologischer Wissensgenerierung (Otto 2019) sowie eine weitere Publikation zur Fabrikation soziologischen Wissens (Otto 2018) anschließt, bearbeite ich diese Leerstelle, indem ich erstens die methodologischen Ansätze systematisiere und um eine empirische Anwendung erweitere. Zweitens führe ich eine bisher ausstehende Diskussion über Chancen und Risiken von STS inspirierten Untersuchungen des eigenen Fachs.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is discussed as a technology for mitigating climate change. With social scientific research on CCS having increased considerably over the last decade, this paper offers a first comprehensive review and evaluation of studies that investigate the way CCS projects are communicated to (local) stakeholders and the general public. We conduct a systematic review of 115 papers for a state-of-the-art assessment of research on communication practices in CCS projects. Based on this review we compile an extensive list of the recommendations provided for CCS outreach activities and scrutinize it for limitations. This enables us to show that “best practices” in communication need to be applied in context sensitive approaches and to highlight factors in communication (such as social media) which have been underutilized up to now. Furthermore, we identify two conceptual shortcomings that limit the scope of CCS communication research: first, the majority of the literature refers to CCS as applied to the fossil fuel-based energy sector and thereby narrows the debate. Second, while the social scientific debate has moved on from the mere study of acceptance of CCS to practices of communication, we find that the theoretical lens applied to communication is still largely focused on convincing people to accept CCS. We argue that future research should tackle these shortcomings by paying more attention to CCS projects that go beyond coal or natural gas power plants. Additionally, it is advised to theoretically reframe communication efforts by emphasizing long-term alliance building through participation and joint goals instead of focussing on short-term persuasion and simple strategies of raising acceptance.

Many researchers and politicians believe that the COVID-19 crisis may have opened a “window of opportunity” to spur sustainability transformations. Still, evidence for such a dynamic is currently lacking. Here, we propose the linkage of “big data” and “thick data” methods for monitoring debates on transformation processes by following the COVID-19 discourse on ecological sustainability in Germany. We analysed variations in the topics discussed by applying text mining techniques to a corpus with 84,500 newspaper articles published during the first COVID-19 wave. This allowed us to attain a unique and previously inaccessible “bird’s eye view” of how these topics evolved. To deepen our understanding of prominent frames, a qualitative content analysis was undertaken. Furthermore, we investigated public awareness by analysing online search behaviour. The findings show an underrepresentation of sustainability topics in the German news during the early stages of the crisis. Similarly, public awareness regarding climate change was found to be reduced. Nevertheless, by examining the newspaper data in detail, we found that the pandemic is often seen as a chance for sustainability transformations—but not without a set of challenges. Our mixed-methods approach enabled us to bridge knowledge gaps between qualitative and quantitative research by “thickening” and providing context to data-driven analyses. By monitoring whether or not the current crisis is seen as a chance for sustainability transformations, we provide insights for environmental policy in times of crisis.

Our paper analyses the attitudes of Turkish migrants and their descendants in Germany regarding the importance of a religious funeral ceremony. Previous research provides competing hypotheses on the intergenerational transmission of religiosity in migrant communities, such as, declines in religiosity due to assimilation versus maintenance of religiosity as a means to ethnic identity formation. Quantitative research however has not yet considered funerals. Our study utilises data from the Generations and Gender Survey; our sample comprises roughly 4000 people of Turkish migrant background aged 18–81, most of whom are Muslims. We apply logistic regression methods to attitudes regarding the importance of a religious funeral ceremony. More than 80 per cent of the respondents maintained that a religious funeral ceremony was important. Examination of individual characteristics revealed variation by education, partner's origin, and citizenship. Overall, however, Muslim funeral traditions are sustained ac...

This paper examines the determinants and the effects of the presence of a third person in face-to-face interviews that were conducted with second-generation residents of Turkish parents and their non-migrant counterparts in six western European countries. The presence of a third person in social science interviews is assumed to influence the results of surveys in social sciences. Up to now, however, only a small number of studies have investigated the presence of a bystander in interviews with migrant descendants, its determinants, as well as its effects on other variables. We used data from the project on The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES 2007–2008) for Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The sample consisted of 5870 respondents, of whom 51% were descendants of Turkish immigrants, who had visited school in the respective country of residence. The respondents were 18–35 years old. Our results show that a much larger share of second-generation residents than of non-migrants were interviewed in the presence of a third person (33% and 21%, respectively). In addition, we found that women of Turkish descent were more likely to have been interviewed with a bystander present than men, whereas there was no gender effect among natives. These differences can only partly be explained by differences in the opportunity structures between the groups, which were mainly related to household composition. This finding may be attributable to culture-specific motivations for a bystander presence. Moreover, the effect of a third-party presence on attitudes was tested. The responses given in the presence of a bystander varied from those given in anonymity.

Der Beitrag begibt sich auf die Suche nach zeitdiagnostischen Potentialen in der Theoriebezeichnung „Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie“ (ANT). Ausgehend von einer Darlegung dessen, was unter Zeitdiagnose und speziell zeitdiagnostischem Potential verstanden wird, verfolgt der Text zunachst jene Gegenwartsdiagnosen, die mit Blick auf ANT bisher hervorgehoben wurden. In einem zweiten Schritt wird „Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie“ (inklusive Akronym) selbst als Metapher betrachtet und entlang der Einzelbegriffe reflektiert. Die zahlreichen Schriften in ANT-Tradition, die sich mit der eigenen Theoriebezeichnung unter theorieeigenen Pramissen befassen, eroffnen ein Reservoir an Deutungen daruber was ANT sein bzw. nicht sein soll und damit die Moglichkeit diese Vorstellungen mit den Implikationen der Theoriebezeichnung abzugleichen. Abschliesend wird das zeitdiagnostische Potential der ANT als zwischen drei Positionen oszillierend herausgearbeitet: eine nicht-intendierte Zeitdiagnose, eine wenig intuitive Gegenwartsbeschreibung und eine Distanzierung von derartigen Festschreibungen.

Metaphern begegnen uns uberall. Punkt. Ob wir es wollen oder nicht, standig werden wir mit Sprachbildern konfrontiert, zumeist ohne es zu bemerken. In der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung findet die Metapher, als grundlegende Kategorie unseres Denkens, zusehends Beachtung. Semantik, Linguistik und Philologie scheinen ihre Felder weitgehend abgesteckt zu haben, in der Philosophie spielt das metaphorische Sprechen seit Aristoteles eine Rolle, doch in der Soziologie, jenem Feld welchem diese Arbeit zuzurechnen ist, fuhren Metaphern ein rechtes Schattendasein.