World Social Science Report 2013
Changing Global Environments
Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO, and published by the OECD, the 2013 World Social Science Report represents a comprehensive overview of the field gathering the thoughts and expertise of hundreds of social scientists from around the world.
This edition focuses on the transformative role of the social sciences in confronting climate and broader processes of environmental change, and in addressing priority problems from energy and water, biodiversity and land use, to urbanisation, migration and education.
The report includes 100 articles written by 150 authors from 41 countries all over the world. Authors represent some 24 disciplines, mainly in the social sciences.
The contributions highlight the central importance of social science knowledge for environmental change research, as a means of understanding changing environments in terms of social processes and as framework for finding concrete solutions towards sustainability.
A functional risk society? Progressing from management to governance while learning from disasters
The intensive use of technology, accelerated urbanisation, and use of natural resources and ecosystems services that disregard the dynamics of extreme natural processes are leading to recurrent and increasingly costly disasters. These need to be understood as the result of past decisions combining multiple interests, the consequences of exposure in hazard-prone areas, and of vulnerability in human settlements and activity. The concept of risk society provides a framework for understanding the complex links between contemporary society and risk.