Sweden has set itself aspirational climate goals to reduce its fossil fuel dependence, and has the ambition of being a global climate transition leader. These goals have proven difficult to achieve in the transport system. In this paper we describe the development since 2016 of a broad and heterogeneous discourse coalition in favour of more strategic governance in Swedish transport planning, encompassing business, trade unions, environmental experts and green-left politicians. We first analyse their claims for a radical reorientation of Swedish transport planning, which are shown to focus on fiscal rules, a lack of political courage, and slow-moving environmental legislation processes, as three main reasons why the transport system is slow to transition. We then discuss whether these claims constitute a politicisation of the climate policy discourse, or rather a new iteration of the previously depoliticised discourse.

The paper traces a discursive shift in Swedish transport decarbonisation discourse, by which neoliberal hegemony has been increasingly challenged through the emergence of an eco-Keynesian discourse coalition encompassing trade unions, business and industry, and green and left-wing members of parliament. The investigation testifies to the importance of political ideas in effecting discursive change, and in restricting subject positions within discourses. The Swedish case is informative for transport decarbonisation in general for the tensions it harbours between classic Social Democratic industrial policy and neoliberalism, and between historical continuity and radical discontinuity. In particular, it reveals how the return to a specific historical idea of the state determines the subject positions of actors within the new discourse coalition. 

In this chapter we trace the journey of the Polish Research Institute (PIZ) archive at Lund University Library from the making of the archive at Lund, to its deposition at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, to its return to Lund University Library, and its early digitization. Studying this archival journey, we specifically engage with a set of different ethical dilemmas that have been involved in these each of these processes and spatialities. We suggest that the collection and creation of the archive until the point of digitization has been a history of contested spaces and this journey has involved the creation and maintenance of different kinds of ‘vulnerabilities'.

One way to theorize about we-identities-the identities that individual subjects have as one of us-is in terms of the uniformity, interchangeability, and prototypicality of group members. The social-psychological theory of self-categorization epitomizes this approach, which has strongly influenced contemporary phenomenological research on the we. This paper argues that this approach has one important and largely overlooked limitation: the we-identities tied to close personal relationships-exemplified by long-term friendships and romantic partnerships-are based on patterns of interpersonal interaction and integration through which individuals tend to grasp their non-substitutability and complementarity. This limitation suggests that another approach is needed to tackle the we-identities characteristic of close personal relationships. I outline such an approach, by combining resources from classical phenomenology and ongoing research on the socially extended mind.

Antenatal care in Sweden is voluntary but offered to all pregnant persons. It is organised in accordance with a standardised programme where midwives do pregnancy check-ups and inform about pregnancy, childbirth and becoming parents. But a standardised programme can be difficult to apply to the varying individuals’ wants and needs.Through interviews with midwives and observation of parental education, the article attends to the tension that arises between standards and voluntariness in antenatal care and the often-invisible alignment work done by midwives to make knowledge attractive and palatable to parents-to-be. It does so by showing that the recipients wanting the knowledge becomes important for it to be moved with stability and integrity without losing meaning. The article contributes to ongoing discussions about how scientific knowledge is turned into practice by elucidating the affective dimensions of alignment work and how feelings may facilitate or hinder the movement of knowledge.

Building information modelling (BIM) is a digital tool that offers the possibility to collect and share a multitude of data about a building and increase collaboration across professional borders. However, the uptake of BIM in the construction industry has been relatively slow, and previous research has shown how BIM creates tensions in the workplace. In this article, we explore the impact of BIM on socio-technical knowledge practices, to understand how these are enabled or restricted by the use of BIM. Through a qualitative case study in Sweden, this article analyses BIM through a knowledge infrastructure framework to explain the relatively slow uptake of BIM in a new light. The results show that BIM lacks embeddedness in governmental and corporate practices and regulations and that it sometimes leads to the marginalization of some professions through changed organizations and the slow process of changing complex knowledge infrastructures. This suggests that a critical discussion of the role of BIM in relation to professional flexibility, construction project process organization and power over technological development is vital for the future development of the construction sector.

Unique high Andean ecosystems in South America as the "paramos" have been the object of conservation plans in the last decade. In Colombia, this spurred heated discussions when their conservation was promoted through the cartographic demarcation of their boundaries: what counts as "paramo" and what kind of activities should be allowed there have been highly contested topics. As part of a multisited ethnography that studies the case of paramos conservation with biologists, geographers, and campesinos in the Sumapaz region of Colombia, I argue that the analysis of boundaries is a crucial matter in the unfolding of conservation. By analyzing how boundaries are configured, coordinated, and contested in the conservation of paramos in Colombia, I advance an ontological approach to boundary-making as practices embedded in the concrete transformation of environmental worlds through the involvement of multiple agents such as humans, plants, and technologies.

Purpose: The information technology (IT) sector has been seen as central to society's transformation to a more just and sustainable society, which underlines teachers’ responsibility to foster engineers who can contribute specifically to such ends. This study aims to report an effort to significantly update an existing engineering programme in IT with this ambition and to analyse the effects and challenges associated with the transformation.

Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on a combination of action-oriented research based on implementing key changes to the curriculum; empirical investigations including surveys and interviews with students and teachers, and analysis of these; and a science and technology studies-inspired analysis.

Findings: Respondents were generally positive towards adding topics relating to sustainability. However, in the unmaking of traditional engineering subjects, changes created a conflict between core versus soft subjects in which the core subjects tended to gain the upper hand. This conflict can be turned into productive discussions by focusing on what kinds of engineers the authors’ educate and how students can be introduced to societal problems as an integrated part of their education.

Practical implications: This study can be helpful for educators in the engineering domain to support them in their efforts to transition from a (narrow) focus on traditional disciplines to one where the bettering of society is at the core.

Originality/value: This study provides a novel approach to the transformation of engineering education through a theoretical analysis seldom used in studies of higher education on a novel case study.

In its early days, Hagerstrands time-geography met critique for being physicalistic and not sufficiently considering social aspects. In his article "Diorama, path and project", Hagerstrand shows that the social dimension is embedded in time-geography and underlines its ecological ambitions by introducing the "diorama" concept. This reflective article follows the development of the time-geographic concepts "path" and "project", both deepening the social dimension. The diorama concept was introduced to contextualize situations wherein humans, animals, plants and things coexist in the time-space, thereby increasing the understanding of how humans and individuals from other populations depend on each other, and how their interaction influence the ecological outcome. Today, the social dimension is integrated in time-geography. The ecological view deepened in Hagerstrands research over time and he found that the diorama concept insufficiently captured the time dimension and suggested the concepts "pocket of local order" and "processual landscape", both setting the diorama in motion.

While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shaping the temporalities of data. Focusing on data centres, the contributors analyze the vast infrastructural assemblage that supports such temporalities. The concept of timescapes (after Barbara Adam) guides us to organize the contributions to this special issue along the analysis of three infrastructural timescapes of data—socio-economic, elemental, and transitory—to reveal new facets of the politics of time in the data economy.

While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shaping the temporalities of data. Focusing on data centres, the contributors analyze the vast infrastructural assemblage that supports such temporalities. The concept of timescapes (after Barbara Adam) guides us to organize the contributions to this special issue along the analysis of three infrastructural timescapes of data—socio-economic, elemental, and transitory—to reveal new facets of the politics of time in the data economy.

Att kunna dela begränsade resurser via digitala plattformar har presenterats som en attraktiv och innovativ hållbarhetslösning. Men vad händer när det är dags att tillämpa de digitala lösningarna och omsätta förväntningarna i praktiken? I den här rapporten fokuserar vi på ett specifikt tillämpningsområde där delningslösningar föreslagits, nämligen kollektivtrafik och skolskjuts. Skolskjuts är en välfärdstjänst som svenska kommuner måste tillhandahålla sina invånare enligt skollagen. De digitala delningstjänsterna och plattformarna påverkar relationerna mellan samhällets aktörer, där människors data blir till en ny resurs för företag, och bidrar med möjligheter för att förutspå, planera och påverka. Inom logistik och skolskjuts, till exempel, förväntas data bidra med optimering av rutter, som gör tjänsten mer effektiv. Ny teknik för mobilitet förväntas bidra till ökad trafiksäkerhet och förarlösa bussar testas på olika håll för att komma runt behov, kostnad och säkerhet. Att använda digitala tjänster i offentlig sektor ses som innovativt. Inom offentlig sektor förväntas digitalisering bidra till demokratiska resultat som ökad transparens och offentligt deltagande, liksom kunskapsutbyte och samarbete mellan organisationer. I den här rapporten använder vi institutionella logiker för att förstå hur olika aktörer kan ha olika intressen och mål. Syftet med den här rapporten är att utforska den kunskap som finns om möjligheter och utmaningar med att använda digitala delningsplattformar i glesa geografier, eller i landsbygder för att organisera skolskjuts och kommunala transporter.

Over the last few years, electrically assisted cycling, e-biking, has increased substantially worldwide. Replacing car driving for individual journeys, especially commuting, is highlighted as important to mitigate climate change, improve public health, and reduce congestion and other unwanted consequences connected to the car. Car driving, how-ever, is still the overwhelmingly dominant mode of personal transport globally and the ‘system of automobility’ permeates the whole of soci-ety. Flexibility and autonomy are considered the main reasons for the car’s dominance (Urry 2004). By analysing interviews and diaries kept by e-bikers, collected in semi-urban and urban settings in Sweden, this art-icle aims to contribute to knowledge about emerging micromobility practices such as e-biking in relation to a transport system where flexi-bility is the norm. The results show that e-biking encompasses elements that give the practice potential to both recruit and retain practitioners. By successfully combining elements of conventional cycling and car driving, it offers reliability, convenience, and flexibility. E-biking facili-tates transforming a dull commute into leisure as the rider can enjoy the sensuous and reflective aspects of the journey. At the same time, through that squeezing of time, it does not challenge prevailing struc-tures but rather maintains the time-space of automobility

Due to the long timescales and deep uncertainties involved, comprehensive model-building has played a pivotal role in creating shared expectations about future trajectories for addressing climate change processes, mobilizing a network of knowledge-based experts who assist in defining common problems, identifying policy solutions, and assessing the policy outcomes. At the intersection between climate change science and climate governance, where wholly empirical methods are infeasible, numerical simulations have become the central practice for evaluating truth claims, and the key medium for the transport and translation of data, methods, and guiding principles among the actors involved. What makes integrated assessment unique as a comprehensive modeling-effort is that it is explicitly policy-oriented, justified by its policy-relevance. Although recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as invaluable to their review assessments, the role of integrated modeling in implementations of the Paris Agreement, such as in impact assessments of climate legislation on the national level, is far less known. Taking as its starting-point the boundary-work carried out in public administration, this paper examines how foresight knowledge produced with the help of model-based scenario analysis has been made relevant in Swedish climate policymaking, focusing on the processes by which key indicators for political action become institutionalized through the choice and use of model parameters. It concludes by arguing for an expanded understanding of policy-relevance, beyond institutional approaches and toward a process-based point of view, treating relevance as something in-the-making.

Empowerment, an already central concept in public health, has gained additional relevance through the expansion of mobile health (mHealth). Especially direct-to-consumer self-testing app companies mobilise the term to advertise their products, which allow users to self-test for various medical conditions independent of healthcare professionals. This article first demonstrates the absence of empowerment conceptualisations in the context of self-testing apps by engaging with empowerment literature. It then contrasts the service these apps provide with two widely cited empowerment definitions by the WHO, which describe the term as a process that, broadly, leads to knowledge and control of health decisions. We conclude that self-testing apps can only partly empower their users, as they, we argue, do not provide the type of knowledge and control the WHO definitions describe. More importantly, we observe that this shortcoming stems from the fact that in the literature on mHealth and in self-testing marketing, empowerment is understood as a goal rather than a process. This characterises a shift in the meaning of empowerment in the context of self-testing and mHealth, one that reveals a lack of awareness for relational and contextual factors that contribute to empowerment. We argue that returning to a process-understanding of empowerment helps to identify these apps’ deficits, and we conclude the article by briefly suggesting several strategies to increase self-testing apps’ empowerment function.

Over the past 30 years, several sustainability-profiled districts have been developed in Sweden with high ambitions for the energy systems, such as Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm and Western Harbor in Malmö. Research into energy systems in urban districts is interdisciplinary and therefore spread over different areas, which means that an overview of the current state of knowledge and lessons learned is lacking. This semi-systematic literature review aims to provide an overview of previous research on the planning, development, and evaluation of energy systems in sustainability-profiled districts in Sweden. The review of 70 journal and conference articles reveals seven research themes in the interdisciplinary nexus of energy systems and sustainability-profiled districts: (1) Conceptualizations and critique of sustainability-profiled districts, (2) Evaluations of energy goals and requirements, (3) Technical and economic assessments of heating and electricity systems, (4) Integration of innovative (energy) solutions in urban planning, (5) Stakeholder perspectives on energy systems, (6) Stakeholder collaboration on the building and the district level, (7) Governance and policy instruments for sustainable urban development and energy systems. We use a socio-technical ecology approach to critically discuss the existing research on energy systems planning, development, and evaluation to guide future research on energy systems development in urban districts. An increase in integrated approaches across all identified research themes and relationships between scales, phases, and impacts are discussed as central observations that can guide future research. Future research is needed on new or better-adapted energy indicators, the inclusion, perspectives, and roles of (new) stakeholders, and the consideration of ecology and nature in research on the planning, development, and evaluation of energy systems.

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such asalterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging.Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illnessincluding lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” agingand aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences of being testedfor dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context wheredementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though thisunderstanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, doesnot dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthynor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. Toenter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in thegrey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways thatare thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimentaleffects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become“stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease.

I den här rapporten undersöker vi olika sätt att dela och återvinna resurser online och på plats i Ydre kommun, en liten och glest befolkad svensk kommun i Region Östergötland med cirka 3,700 invånare. Digitala lösningar och delningsplattformar har presenterats som ett sätt att dela begränsade resurser, i det som kallats smarta samhällen. Men delningsplattformar har framför allt studerats i storstäder, vilket motiverar studier av små och glesat befolkade samhällen. Utöver att vara känd för sin litenhet är kommunen också känd för sina många föreningar och ett mycket starkt civilsamhälle. Syftet med rapporten är att utforska det ekosystem av varor och information som cirkulerar i en Facebook-grupp, med både kvalitativa och kvantitativa data. Frågorna som har ställts är: vem är engagerad i Facebookgruppens interaktioner? Vad säljer de, byter de, återvinner de? På vilket sätt möjliggör Facebook som plattform återanvändning av varor och delning? Totalt samlades 1,137 inlägg in under tre månader från en offentlig Facebookgrupp med över 4,500 medlemmar där människor säljer och byter begagnade varor samt söker och utbyter information. Insamlingen av inlägg gjordes manuellt och en kvalitativ kodning av innehållet gjordes inspirerad av frågor som lyfts inom delningsekonomi och cirkulär ekonomi: kläder, bilar och fordon, ge bort gratis, hemelektronik, hobbyer, husgeråd och möbler, utomhusredskap och reparation, offentlig information inklusive från lokala föreningar och företagare. Den metod som tillämpats i studien kan liknas vid digital etnografi, med intresse för det vardagliga. För att tolka resultatet av kartläggningen av vad som erbjuds, byts och säljs via Facebook-gruppen är det relevant att notera att det till exempel inte finns reguljära klädbutiker i kommunen, och att närmsta fysiska butiker för att köpa nytt är belägna i omkringliggande kommuner.

Vår kartläggning visar att invånarna ger uttryck för en känsla av gemenskap och samarbetar i stor utsträckning via delningsplattformen Facebook.  Resultatet visar att de vanligaste kategorierna för posterna är kläder, inklusive barnkläder 28%, husgeråd och möbler 26%, information till allmänheten 11%, barnsaker inklusive leksaker 7%. Data visar att många olika personer är engagerade i Facebook-gruppen eftersom det totala antalet medlemmar är 4,500, och en majoritet av personerna gjort ett enskilt inlägg (56%) under den studerade perioden. Sammanställningen visar att kvinnliga profiler gör närmare 80% av inläggen och är i klar majoritet, medan endast cirka 20% görs av manliga profiler. Det är inte ovanligt att de bestämmer träff för att granska kvaliteten på produkterna eller för att överlämna produkten. Medan husgeråd och möbler är den största gruppen när det gäller antalet varor som erbjuds, är barnkläder den mest sålda varan. Av 292 inlägg om hushållsartiklar är 25 eller 9 % sålda, medan 42 barnkläder av 225 är sålda, dvs. 19 %. Ungefär hälften av posterna lades upp av någon som på sin profil uttryckte att de bodde i Ydre kommun.   

Resultaten från studien kan användas av kommuner som vill öka delningen och nå mer cirkulär ekonomi och återvinning och är ett bidrag till förståelsen för hur ett plattformsekosystem fungerar på en specifik plats.

Sewage sludge management is torn between a desire for pollution prevention and reuse of a valuable resource. Reconciling these interests in sustainable management is a challenge for researchers. This study focuses on how research on sewage sludge management practices has evolved and scrutinizes how this research is interlinked with concerns and societal issues such as contaminants, economic efficiency, and legislation. Based on published academic papers on sewage sludge management between 1971 and 2019, this study found four trends in research focused on sewage sludge management: a decreasing interest in disposal (landfilling and sea dumping), a dominant interest in land application, a growing interest in sewage sludge as product, and a stable interest in energy recovery. Research on disposal focuses on increasing sludge volumes, legislative changes, and economic challenges with an interest in waste co-treatment. Research on land application concerns nutrient use and contaminants, mainly heavy metals. Research on sewage sludge as a product focuses on the extraction of certain resources and less on use of sewage sludge specifically. Research on energy recovery of sewage sludge focuses on volume reduction rather than contaminants. Two-thirds of the papers are detailed studies aiming to improve single technologies and assessing single risks or benefits. As management of sewage sludge is multifaceted, the narrow focus resulting from detailed studies promotes some concerns while excluding others. Therefore, this study highlights potential gaps such as the combination of nutrient use and disposal and energy recovery and nutrient use.

As the national and supranational levels of government embrace the concept of missions to solve wicked problems, the importance of understanding how missions move from one level of governance to another becomes essential. In this paper, we present a comparative case analysis of evolving regional biogas systems to consider how global missions on climate action are enacted in local practice. Referring to wickedness in terms of contestation, complexity, and uncertainty of both problems and solutions, we examine how such framings affect the operationalisation of the missions. Our results indicate that in the process of local translation, wickedness often increases, but additional wickedness does not always worsen the outcomes.

This round table originated in an online discussion to launch the Geophilosophy Special Issue, held on 14th December 2022. In what follows, Joe Gerlach offers an extended commentary on each of the papers, with responses from the contributors to the Special Issue.

Scholars widely agree that cities and their built environments play a decisive role for a global transformation towards sustainability. This necessitates a shift away from unsustainable practices and constellations in cities towards more sustainable ones - particularly in contexts of the Global South, as they see the strongest current and projected urban growth and related construction activities. Research on urban sustainability transitions has however largely been biased conceptually towards innovation and new technologies, and geographically towards the Global North. While more research recently emerged that addresses the destabilization of dominant orders, it still predominantly considers Northern cases, and those with discernible transition processes. This paper seeks to address these biases and studies factors that contribute to the (in)stability of socio-technical regimes. We argue that (de)stabilizing factors and the particular (in)stability configurations they form, must be scrutinised regardless of transition phase as they are ingrained in regime structures before transition processes become apparent. Identifying and characterizing (in)stability configurations and the seeds of destabilization can then support the development of contextualised transition governance strategies. Employing the building sector of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as an empirical case, this study differentiates sources of (in)stability from economic, socio-cultural and political-institutional dimensions. Our analysis suggests an ambiguous (in)stability configuration with ten-sions primarily within the socio-cultural and economic dimensions, and a dominance of stabilizing effects from the political-institutional dimension. The paper closes with implications for transition governance strategies and general arguments on the heterogeneity of transition contexts and regime constellations, particularly in countries of the Global South.

With this paper we aim to contribute to the field of sociotechnical studies, and more specifically Large Technical Systems (LTSs) to understand what happens in mature systems and how different segments develop. We argue that there is a need to discuss LTSs more heterogeneously to fully grasp how phases of stagnation and drift play out differently. Our focus is on district heating in Swedish municipalities with a shrinking population. As such district heating is an important system for climate measures in Europe and in Sweden it has a long tradition of municipal ownership and strong development. The emphasis is on the ways different district heating systems evolve and how various segments of an LTS develop. We have used a mixed-methods approach and the empirical material in this study builds on municipal documents and annual reports of energy companies, an online survey to energy companies, and qualitative interviews with representatives from energy companies and municipalities. Our results show that private companies are overrepresented in small and shrinking municipalities, and that they develop their business models around small systems to keep them profitable. Instead, municipal owned companies face several challenges concerning capacity, requirements, and economic profitability. From an LTS-perspective, the analysis shows how different actors in the segments adopt different strategies to manage stagnation, leading to segments drifting apart.

Unless just and inclusive, transitions to low carbon-energy systems are unlikely to receive sufficient legitimacy and broad public support. While research on inequalities and injustices in energy transitions is growing, these issues remain less explored in the case of the digitalisation of the energy systems through smart grids and smart homes. This paper aims to synthetise our understandings of inequality, exclusion and vulnerability in energy transitions by systemically analysing different dimensions of marginalisation in the transition to a digitalised electricity infrastructure in Sweden. To synthetise understandings of marginalisation and exclusion, con-ceptualisations of these processes in different social science approaches to energy studies are reviewed. More-over, an empirical analysis of interviews with a range of Swedish actors such as energy utilities, social housing developers or pensioner organisations is carried out and enriched by previous research on smart grid users. The empirical analysis demonstrates what specific forms that diverse categories of marginalisation, as already identified generally in different social science approaches to energy studies, may take in smart grids. We argue that marginalisation of household users in smart grids may take place along multiple dimensions, relating to matters of literacy, participation, infrastructure, and the economy. The analysis suggests that bundles of mar-ginalisation aspects concerning household users in sustainable energy transitions should be recognised and addressed simultaneously.

Svenska kommuner har redan höga ambitioner i sitt klimatarbete, men för att uppnå de mål som satts upp globalt och nationellt behöver positionerna hela tiden flyttas fram. Samhällsplaneringen spelar en central roll eftersom det är genom dessa processer som städer och landsbygd byggs upp, och de strukturer som skapas kommer finnas under många decennier framåt.

Kommunerna har planmonopol men i takt med allt högre inblandning av privata aktörer har de tappat makt och då möjligheten att i samma utsträckning som tidigare styra planeringen i den riktning de vill. Genom markanvisningar, något som blivit vanligare de senaste tio åren, kan kommunerna ta kontroll över specifika projekt, för att styra dem mot högre ambitioner sett till exempelvis hållbarhet.

Syftet med denna rapport är att undersöka och studera om och hur kommuner kan ställa hållbarhets-, energi- och miljökrav i markanvisningar. För att uppnå syftet ska rapporten besvara följande frågeställningar: Hur arbetar svenska kommuner med markanvisning? Vilka miljö- och energikrav ställer kommuner som genomför markanvisningar? På vilket sätt strukturerar och genomför kommunerna uppföljning av genomförda markanvisningar? 

Metoden som använts är huvudsakligen intervjuer med representanter för kommuner som arbetar med markanvisningstävlingar och där olika aspekter av hållbarhet och klimatnytta är framträdande. Dokument har även studerats som ett komplement. 

Huvudsakliga slutsatser från projektet är att allt fler kommuner väljer att arbeta med markanvisningar eftersom det ger en möjlighet att styra processerna mer och ta kontroll. Samtidigt kräver detta en markreserv och då en aktiv politik för uppköp av mark samt att det främst är i större kommuner med attraktiv mark det är möjligt att genomföra, eftersom det annars finns risk för att de får in för få intresserade aktörer. 

Det är en utmaning att arbeta med hållbarhetsfrågorna eftersom kommunerna inte får ställa tekniska särkrav i sina planer, varför de behöver andra arbetssätt. Kommunerna väljer därför generellt att på sätt och vis vända på processen, genom att sätta upp kriterier de anser viktiga och sen får byggaktörer komma in med förslag på hur de ska möta dessa kriterier. Fördelarna är att byggherrarna ofta kommit långt själva i sitt hållbarhetsarbete och driver därför utvecklingen framåt, men en nackdel är att det är en resurskrävande process som kräver att kommunen i olika skeden skriver avtal med villkor och löften som de sen måste följa upp genom processen. Det ger en utmaning för kommunerna, att skapa en intern organisation där alla olika personer och förvaltningsdelar som kan vara inblandade behöver förstå syftet med det specifika projektet.

Kommunerna är försiktiga med att ställa krav som kan klassas som särkrav, men det har aldrig prövats i domstol och det sätts i vissa fall upp krav som skulle kunna argumenteras finns i gråzonen, såsom krav på fjärrvärmeanslutning. En av de största utmaningarna för kommunerna är att jobba med uppföljning eftersom det kräver mycket tid och ibland kompetenser som inte finns lättillgängliga. De undviker viten eller andra sanktioner om de märker att byggaktörerna inte lever upp till vad de lovat, men en effekt blir att byggherren kan få det svårare att få en marktilldelning i kommande markanvisningar. 

Research and innovation policies (IPs) across Europe, particularly in Sweden, are increasingly framed by an orientation towards societal challenges, missions, and transformative change. Innovation-funding agencies are adapting to these new approaches but struggle with a host of new questions and challenges on how to re-structure public policy interventions and develop new structures for monitoring, learning, and evaluation. In this article, we investigate how this IP paradigm shift is dealt with in the IP discourse and practice in Sweden and how an incomplete shift creates mismatches and tensions with existing structures for programme evaluation and monitoring. Despite the new paradigm, the implementation of evaluation strategies mostly follows a traditional summative framing. The ongoing discussions in Swedish IP demonstrate that a paradigm shift towards transformative innovation cannot unfold its potential unless it is also followed by a shift in the practices of programme implementation and evaluation.

Mission-oriented innovation policies are increasingly recognized as an effective strategy for initiating and guiding far-reaching transition processes towards sustainability. In this article, we examine a successful early example of a national mission-oriented research and innovation (R&I) programme (Building of Tomorrow) that has had a significant impact on the building sector in Austria. The objective is to identify the factors and dynamics that contributed to the programmes success and helped maintain its momentum over a period of more than 20 years. By successively integrating different groups of researchers and practitioners, organizing programme development as an adaptive process of co-production, and regularly reinventing itself by shifting focus and guiding ideas, the programme sustained its mission momentum. Several insights from this case study can provide valuable guidance for organizing mission-oriented programmes, particularly by avoiding an exclusive emphasis on mission orientation by design at the expense of processes of sense-making, emergence, and reinvention.

This article assays geographical research into nuclear cultures, and cognate conversations in atomic heritage, toxic waste studies, and memory and landscape studies, as one way to develop the notion of nuclear memory. In doing so, we survey how geographers and social scientists have sought to think and communicate memory of nuclear things through three specific modes: the archival, the aesthetic, and the speculative. Our central argument is that nuclear memory provides a theoretical orientation for geographers to engage with alternative possibilities for thinking nuclear waste futures besides anthropocentric notions of common sense.

Thinking critically about the role of complaint in patient care, Jelmer Brüggemann, Lisa Guntram and Ann-Charlotte Nedlund explore the ’difficult patient’ as a medical humanities concept.

This paper reports on the findings of an experimental study that investigated the impact of various environmental factors on the growth of lettuce and basil plants in vertical farms. The study employed the Taguchi method, a statistical design of experiments approach, to efficiently identify the optimal growth conditions for these crops in a hyper-controlled environment. By reducing the time and cost of designing and running experiments, this method allowed for the simultaneous investigation of multiple environmental factors that affect plant growth. A total of 27 treatments were selected using the Taguchi approach, and the signal to noise ratio was calculated to predict the optimal levels of each environmental condition for maximizing basil and lettuce growth parameters. The results showed that most of the parameters, except for EC and relative humidity for certain growth parameters, were interrelated with each other. To validate the results, confirmation tests were conducted based on the predicted optimal parameters. The low error ratio between expected and predicted values (1-3%) confirmed the effectiveness of the Taguchi approach for determining the optimal environmental conditions for plant growth in vertical farms.

In 2019–21, research was carried out at the University of Helsinki regarding thedevelopment of the degree programme in maritime archaeology. To develop the teaching of the programme, we designed and launched an online learning platform. The platform, entitled ‘Perspectives in Maritime Archaeology’, consists of lectures by international experts and literature on a variety of topics ranging from boatbuilding to seamanship and from trade and exploration to public outreach and contemporary art. The purpose of the platform was to convey a broad image of the discipline and promote multidisciplinary thinking among students. To assess the success of the platform in achieving this objective, we conducted surveys on student expectations and satisfaction as well as on (potential) changes in the perceived image of maritime archaeology. We discovered that a kaleidoscopic and eclectic approach to teaching maritime archaeology online made the topic more interesting to the students and helped them understand the variety and importance of different approaches to researching maritime archaeology. In this article, we report the findings of our research on the development of online learning and discuss them in the wider context of higher education in maritime archaeology. We conclude with a reflection on the potential use of poetry and metaphor in teaching holistically about the cognitive and cultural relevance of water.

Previous work on shrinking cities has mainly addressed shrinkageand its effects in large and former industrial cities and not as muchin municipalities in rural areas. In this paper, we focus oninfrastructure challenges, responsibilities, and growth strategies inSwedish municipalities. We argue that there is a tension betweenthe responsibilities connected to the municipal operations andinfrastructure challenges posed by being a shrinking municipalityon the one hand, and the ways the municipalities are planning forgrowth on the other hand. The municipalities are all strugglingwith the effects of population decline, leading to economic strainsin all areas, including infrastructure management anddevelopment, but investments in infrastructure are many timesdirected towards the establishment of specific industries such asthe tourism or mining industry with the belief of attracting newinhabitants, visitors, firms and industry. In addition, many of themunicipalities lack the capacity and jurisdiction needed to managethe infrastructure development in some areas such as fibre optics,district heating, and electricity grids. Also, in some municipalities,the populations are spread over large geographical areas but muststill provide infrastructure services to all inhabitants.

Everyday life as we knew it is increasingly challenged in a world of climate, social, health and political crisis. Emerging technologies, data analytics and automation open up new possibilities which have implications for energy generation, storage and energy demand. To support these changes we urgently need to rethink how energy will be sourced, shared and used. Yet existing approaches to this problem, driven by engineering, data analytics and capital, are dangerously conservative and entrenched.

Energy Futures critically evaluates this context, and the energy infrastructures, stakeholders, and politics that participate in it, to propose plausible, responsible and ethical modes of encountering possible energy futures. Imagining anthropocene challenges, emerging technologies and everyday life otherwise through empirically grounded studies, opens up possible energy futures.

Energy Futures proposes and demonstrates a new critical and interventional futures-oriented energy anthropology. Combining the theories and methods of futures anthropology with the critical expertise and perspectives of energy anthropology creates a powerful mode of engagement, which this book argues is needed to disrupt the dominant narratives about our energy futures. Its contributors collectively reveal and evidence through innovative ethnographic practice how new knowledge about imagined and possible energy futures can be mobilised in engagements with emerging technologies, anthropocene challenges and everyday realities.

Preconception expanded carrier screening (PECS) informs prospective parents about the risk of conceiving a child with a heritable genetic condition. PECS will also, for many, become an important screening test, and websites will likely play a vital role in providing information on this practice. The aim of this article is to examine rationalities in the information on PECS on Dutch websites. The method used is multimodal critical discourse analysis. This method allows an examination of norms and assumptions in the descriptions, as well as of the positions that are discursively made available. The data consist of publicly available material on websites from two genetics departments in the Netherlands. In the results, we present the three main discourses and subject positions that were identified: risk and the couple as possible mediators of severe conditions; the focus on scientific facts and rational conceivers; and severity of the conditions and the responsible couple. In this study, we highlight the importance of acknowledging the interrelation between epistemology and ethics in the discourse on PECS. Finally, it is claimed that the focus on scientific facts in information on PECS risks making existential and ethical dilemmas and choices invisible.

This thesis offers an empirical analysis that critically assesses and expands the concept of “ontological politics” as a tool for understanding environmental conservation practice. It takes the case of páramos conservation in Colombia, a high mountain ecosystem located above 2600 mts altitude. The area is known for its vast biodiversity, its vital role providing water and for the presence of communities of “campesinos” (peasants in english) who fled to these remote places to escape Colombian political violence in the countryside during the 20th century.  Since 2010 the Colombian state has initiated a series of measures to conserve páramos. But it has become apparent that the presence of campesinos in páramos does not seem fully to fit with the conservation goals set by the Colombian government. Taking this as its starting point, the thesis reports on a multi-sited ethnography among campesinos and scientists (biologists and geographers), with the aim of determining to what extent the practices of all those involved can or cannot produce a páramo spacious enough for diverse forms of living. The thesis uses these empirical materials to argue that four key dimensions of ontological politics need to be respecified to provide a method for both analyzing and intervening in conservation practice: boundary-making, space, ontological differences, and intervention. These dimensions, the thesis argues, are central for the twofold task of reconfiguring ontological politics as a tool for social analysis and interrogating the forms of politics that it enables in re-search practice.

This paper reconsiders the roles of actors in regional innovation systems in the context of transformative industrial change. Empirically, it draws on evidence from the Värmland region of Sweden, where regional innovation system actors, with partial funding from the Swedish Innovation Agency, are striving to build a bioeconomy upon the traditional forest-related industries. The main findings include that transformative industrial change adds a variety of responsibilities to regional actors, including the provision of change legitimacy, influencing the industry’s innovation directionality and achieving social acceptance for change. A combined perspective on sociotechnical transitions and path development in regional innovation systems theoretically informs the case.

The political economy of the “cloud” depends on the continuous transformation of physical space to support the flow of digital commodities. Retrofitting disused infrastructure has been one of the strategies of data center operators to gain cheap access to such space. Tracking the temporal story of a retrofitted bunker in Helsinki, Finland, its conversion into a data center, and its subsequent dismantling, this article advocates for a processual perspective on data centers that does not take for granted their endurance and solidity, but instead sees them as processes of constant assembly and disassembly that interfere with multiple temporalities. I show how data center retrofitting intersects with and reforms multiple layers of historically entangled urban systems, while ruination stresses the fragility and provisional nature of these transformations, allowing to raise questions about the politics and ethics of data center dismantling that articulate data centers as a relevant object for discard studies.

We analyse the action space for strategic planning and sustain-ability transition among planners in Swedish municipalities. We use qualitative and quantitative materials from 103 survey responses obtained from Swedish municipal planners. Our analysis shows that the size and type (e.g. population and density) of the municipality where the planners work are connected to their perceived action space, where policies for densely populated cities are less relevant for rural municipalities. Even if size matters for the action space for sustainability transition, this action space can be modified (e.g. access to resources and participation in networks) and continuously constructed.

Smart grid development is an area where the discussion about who can be negatively affected by low-carbon energy transitions has progressed. The research on vulnerable households in smart grids often focuses on how potentially vulnerable groups react to smart energy technologies. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting how a broad range of actors in society think about neglected and vulnerable households in smart grids. The research question concerns how stakeholders frame potential inequalities, differentiations, and vulnerabilities in smart grids in Sweden. The frame analysis is carried out, building on interviews with national and local public authorities dealing with energy issues and consumer advice, actors involved in developing, testing, and using smart energy technologies as well as interest organizations representing diverse social groups. Three narratives are identified that frame potentially neglected households as consumers without economic benefits; as users without technological interests, competences, and access to technologies; and as households with intersecting vulnerabilities. It is argued that, since there could be different interpretations of inequalities in smart grids, the governance of smart grids, and specifically discussions of neglected/vulnerable households in smart grids, can benefit from the involvement of a broad coalition of actors.

Trots upprepade politiska utfästelser om att transportsystemet ska bli fossilfritt har dess omställning gått trögt. Det har länge funnits en påtaglig kontrast mellan visionerna för transportsystemets omställning och de faktiskt vidtagna åtgärderna. De dominerande förklaringarna till denna kontrast, liksom föreställningarna om vad som kan göras, har skiftat över tid och beroende på vilken regering som suttit vid makten. I grunden kretsar de emellertid alltid kring samma frågor: Hur väl rustat är det svenska planeringssystemet för att genomföra en fundamental omställning av transporterna? I vilken omfattning kräver transportsystemets omställning en mer djupgående förändring av samhället? Vilken roll bör stat och marknad ha i transportsystemets omställning? I denna bok skildrar vi hur den offentliga diskussionen om transportsystemet förändrats under de fyra olika regeringar som suttit vid makten mellan 2006-2022. Genom att följa formuleringen av politiska visioner i statliga utredningar och hur dessa visioner diskuterats i den offentliga debatten visar vi hur en period av utpräglat marknadsliberal politik utmanas av klimatkeynesianistiska idéer. Samtidigt har hela undersökningsperioden karakteriserats av betydande institutionella låsningar.

Technologies have been theorised to understand their powers to produce spacetimes – notably through Bernard Stiegler’s reading of technics as constitutive of human ontology. However, less attention has been paid to how technologies shape spacetimes according to their own distinct logics of evolution, the result being a tendency to reduce technological agency to a question of its effects on human being. The first half of the paper elaborates this problem in conversation with geographies of the digital turn. The second half introduces an alternative approach through Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenetic notion of technology characterised by its own logics of evolution – what I term techno-genesis.