Author: Florence Paterson

Study days “Renovating for transition. Social science approaches to energy renovation markets”

21-22 March, 2024. Although building renovation policy is widely recognized as an important factor in the fight against climate change, the modalities of its deployment divide the actors involved, give rise to new entities, and provoke unexpected effects and controversy, both in the design of the instruments and in their implementation.
Technical and commercial innovation continue to play an important role in this field, though other challenges have become more pressing, notably: the overall effectiveness of energy renovation initiatives (implementation of “complete renovations” as opposed to “single-action work”), the need to enhance the skills and coordination of the multitude of small craft businesses involved in these projects, and the ability to support households in defining and managing complex services. The renovation sector is not a single market, it rather provides, as a result of the way in which renovation policies are deployed, a ground for multiple market arrangements.
The objective of these study days is to address these issues through the lens of market recomposition. The aim is to encourage encounters and exchanges between social science research currently being carried out on the topic of renovation from a variety of approaches: through the market, organizations, work, public policies, space, consumption, etc.

Underground futures. Magdalena Kuchler et Bård Lahn

March 1, 2024. The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes Magdalena Kuchler, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Bård Lahn, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK), University of Oslo, and Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), Norway. This session explores the entanglements of forecasting, planning, and economic calculation around underground resources, whether exploited or yet-to-be exploited. This session is organized in collaboration with the Programme Ciblé “Anticip” of the PEPR Sous-sol Bien Commun (Underground Common Good).

Lisa Claussmann

Lisa Claussmann joined the CSI as a postdoctoral fellow in February 2024. She is currently working on a research project on the underground storage of carbon dioxide in France and Norway, as part of the SESAME project, funded by the…

Aline Boeuf

Title of the thesis: Studying care and monitoring objects in the context of ageing at home. Under the supervision of Cornelia Hummel (IRS, Université de Genève) and Madeleine Akrich (CSI, Mines Paris – PSL). My research interests focus on the…

Discounting the Future. The Ascendancy of a Political Technology

A book by Liliana Doganova pubished by Zone Books

A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting.

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.

Michèle Dupré and Jean-Christophe Le Coze

January 23, 2024. The CSI Guests Seminar welcomes Michèle Dupré, labour sociologist, researcher at the Max Weber – UMR 283, and Jean-Christophe Le Coze, Research Director at the French national institute for industrial environment and risks | INERIS · Accidental Risk Division Department, to discuss their book
“Des usines, des matières et des hommes. De la sécurité industrielle dans la chimie”.

Carbon offsetting. Kamilla Karhunmaa and Céline Granjou

January 19, 2024. The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes Kamilla Karhunmaa (University of Helsinki and SPIRAL, University of Liège) et Céline Granjou (LESSEM-INRAE, Grenoble-Alpes University). This session explores the ways in which carbon offsetting mobilizes arguments and expertise from soil science, economics and other fields to produce new entities and recast the way existing objects such as soils tend to be understood.

Reflection on the Materiality of Transition

January 19, 2024. The extraction, importation, and transformation of raw materials play a crucial role in the low-carbon transition. The responsible management of raw materials becomes a crucial issue to ensure an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable transition. Three specialists discuss these topics: Damien Goetz (Centre Géosciences Mines Paris – PSL), Brice Laurent (CSI Mines Paris – PSL, ANSES) and Farah Benramdane (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne).

“Une journée avec Bruno Latour”: The event in videos, texts, drawings and pictures

The Center for the Sociology of Innovation held on October 23, 2023 a day-long tribute to Bruno Latour.

Bruno Latour has left a considerable intellectual legacy, many milestones of which he set during his twenty-five years at the CSI, where he was, in turn and in his own way, an anthropologist of science and technology, a political theologian and an investigative philosopher.
During this event, members of the CSI, Bruno Latour’s companions along the way and researchers whom he has inspired or baffled continued their conversation with his work.

Find out more about the day’s events on the “Une journée avec Bruno Latour” website, with video recordings of the panels, texts, drawings and images. […]

Thomas Beauvisage (Orange / SENSE)

December 18, 2023. The Center for the Sociology of Innovation (i3, UMR CNRS 9217, Mines Paris-PSL) has the pleasure of inviting you to attend the HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in STS (Sciences, Technologies, Societies) defense of Thomas Beauvisage, sociologist of digital technology, Senior Researcher at Orange’s department Sociology and Economics of Networks and Services (SENSE). Original dissertation title: “Sociologie du cookie publicitaire” [Sociology of advertising cookie].