Infrastructure, Sustainability and Commons research lab
Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam
How sustainable is extraction of the raw materials from which your possessions are made? The members of the Infrastructure, Sustainability and Commons (ISC) research lab at VU University’s Faculty of Social Sciences organise a variety of activities aimed at connecting up social citizenship discussions with scientific research on social and ecological crises.
One recent example is the Kennis is Goud Waard [Knowledge is Worth its Weight in Gold] citizenship project set up in cooperation with the Mondriaan Regional Training Centre and The Broker (a social enterprise). The researchers conduct workshops with vocational school students, who are asked to think about the sustainability of the raw materials sector by means of interactive working methods. In doing so, the researchers make use of their ethnographic research in Suriname, Colombia, and Greece. The emphasis is on the relationship between extraction of the raw materials elsewhere and their processing and consumption in the Netherlands. What social, economic, and ethical questions are involved? The lab’s researchers have also organised panels, worked on ethnographic films, written opinion pieces, and given interviews for national and international media.
The project (and videos about it) takes thinking and talking about global citizenship into the living environment of the vocational school students. The grant from the Rewarded! Fund will provide further support for the citizenship project, making it possible to continue to communicate information from the ISC Lab about infrastructure, use of resources, “commons”, and sustainability to a specific audience.
Websites:
Misc lab.com
Resilience Institute – Infrastructure sustainability and commons
Bijdrage aan etnografische film ‘Wasting the West’
Infrademos – Blog – Infra demos releases its first film wasting the west
Coordinator:
Marjo de Theije, hoogleraar
Other group members:
Dimitris Dalakoglou, hoogleraar
Jesse Jonkman, postdoctoral onderzoekers
