Nico Stehr


Nico Stehr was "Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies" at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen / Germany and Founding Director of the .

Biography

Stehr received a PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1970. Between 1967 and 2000, he taught at American and Canadian universities. His last appointment in Canada was that of fellow in Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Study der University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. During the academic year 2002-2003 he was Paul-Lazarsfeld-Professor at the University of Vienna. He is Senior Research Fellow of the Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, a fellow of the Fellow the Center for Advanved Study of the Humanities, Essen, Germany, editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the European Academy of the Sciences and the Arts.
In 2011, Stehr created the European Center for Sustainability Research at Zeppelin University.
His research interests center on the transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies and associated developments in different social institutions of modern society and is focused on these field of attention:
Knowledge: Knowledge is not merely a model of reality but a model for reality. Knowledge represents a capacity to act.
Knowledge and information: The substance of information primarily concerns the properties of products or outcomes while the stuff of knowledge refers to the qualities of process or inputs.
Post-industrial society: Innovation are increasingly derivative from research and development; there is a new relation between science and technology because of the centrality of theoretical knowledge, and the weight of the society—measured by a larger proportion of Gross National Product and a larger share of employment—is increasingly shifting toward the knowledge field.
Knowledge society: The foundation for the transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies is based on changes in the structure of the economies of advanced societies. The source of economic growth and value-adding activities—increasingly relies on knowledge. The significance of knowledge grows in all spheres of life and in all social institutions of modern society.
Common sense and scientific knowledge: The growing significance of science and its manifold social utility has led to its having a virtual monopoly on the production of new socially, economically and politically relevant knowledge in modern societies; knowledge that rarely can be contested by religion, nor by politics, and in particular not by daily experience. But this does not mean that ordinary citizens are now the slaves of scientific experts.
Stehr is one of the authors of the Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009. The Hartwell Paper arises from a meeting convened by Professor Gwyn Prins of the LSE in February 2010 to consider the implications of developments in climate policy in late 2009.
Climate policy, as it has been understood and practised by many governments of the world under the Kyoto Protocol approach, has failed to produce any discernible real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in fifteen years. The underlying reason for this is that the UNFCCC/Kyoto model was structurally flawed and doomed to fail because it systematically misunderstood the nature of climate change as a policy issue between 1985 and 2009. However, the currently dominant approach has acquired
immense political momentum because of the quantities of political capital sunk into it. But in any case the UNFCCC/Kyoto model of climate policy cannot continue because it crashed in late 2009. The Hartwell Paper sets and reviews this context; but doing so is
not its sole or primary purpose.
The Paper proposes that the organising principle of our effort should be the raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential
functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be. It explains radical and practical ways to reduce non-CO2 human forcing of climate. It argues that improved climate risk management is a valid policy goal, and is not simply congruent with carbon policy. It explains the political prerequisite of energy efficiency strategies as a first step and documents how this can achieve real emissions reductions. But, above all, it emphasises the primacy of accelerating decarbonisation of energysupply. This calls for very substantially increased investment in innovation in noncarbon energy sources in order to diversify energy supply technologies. The ultimate goal of doing this is to develop non-carbon energy supplies at unsubsidised costs less
than those using fossil fuels. The Hartwell Paper advocates funding this work by low hypothecated carbon taxes. It opens discussion on how to channel such money productively.

Research Topics

The Power of Scientific Knowledge: From Research to Public Policy The Power of Scientific Knowledge . From Research to Public Policy. ;

− COPYRIGHT Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann
It is often said that knowledge is power, but more often than not relevant knowledge is not used when political decisions are made. This book examines how political decisions relate to scientific knowledge and what factors determine the success of scientific research in influencing policy. The authors take a comparative and historical perspective and refer to well-known theoretical frameworks, but the focus of the book is on three case studies: the discourse of racism, Keynesianism and climate change. These cases cover a number of countries and different time periods. In all three the authors see a close link between 'knowledge producers' and political decision-makers, but show that the effectiveness of the policies varies dramatically. This book will be of interest to scientists, decision-makers and scholars alike.

Books