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The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors present a practical application of multidisciplinary research based on the experience of editing a book comprised of multidisciplinary cases and focusing on two chapter cases. There are many theoretical accounts of how one may approach multidisciplinary research, but here the authors aim to offer a practical account of how the theoretical goal of multidisciplinary research can play out in the ‘real world’. After addressing the current conceptual understanding of multidisciplinary versus interdisciplinary research, the authors will explain how useful these concepts, in fact, are when applied to the typical constraints that many academics face today in conducting joint research. The authors, who are both editors of the book, will provide lessons for future multidisciplinary collaboration and suggestions for developing methods of multidisciplinary research.
Political science does not offer a distinct subdiscipline to address the subject of energy. Insofar as political science has addressed energy, it has focused on issues often neglected by other disciplines, notably the role of geopolitics and international relations, and the domestic politics of resource-rich states. Apart from the different subfields, we examine different approaches including realism, constructivism, liberalism and Marxism. The rise and fall and rise again of academic articles on energy in leading political science journals is reviewed and linked to exogenous forces such as the price of oil. Two distinct energy topics which have received attention are nuclear power and the oil crises of 1973–79 because of their wider geopolitical ramifications. Perhaps the most prominent or consistent thread through studies of the politics of energy is the question of energy security or energy independence. Finally, in recent years, energy has increasingly emerged as a focus for study in environmental politics and climate change politics in particular.
This chapter is a multidisciplinary analysis and case study on one of Russia’s newest pipelines, the Power of Siberia, designed to deliver natural gas from Siberia to the Chinese market, connecting the two countries by pipeline. The authors conclude that the Power of Siberia project, although in its infancy, appears to have a mixed track record. On the one hand, it provides both Russia and China with important market and supply diversification. And although this contributes to greater energy security, the economic advantages look to be more one-sided, benefitting Russia in the short term but raising questions about the long-term viability of the project. The pipeline evades the scrutiny of international norms and legal frameworks, on which both countries seem to place less emphasis compared to similar pipelines connecting Russia to Europe. Related to this, the construction of the pipeline has not met the same international environmental standards of westbound pipelines, and this is adversely affecting indigenous communities in the Russian Far East. On a more global scale, however, the authors also raise the prospect of greater geopolitical instability in the region.
Energy policy making is complex, and policy makers have traditionally relied on evidence and assessments dominated by a handful of disciplines from the natural and physical sciences. These assessments have often focused on technological solutions with the implicit message that the answer to policy needs lies in identifying and developing the right technology. Historically, however, problems arise in the implementation process of new technologies. These obstacles may be better understood, and either alleviated or avoided, through a more holistic analysis of energy policy requirements that includes multidisciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities. This chapter introduces the main ideas of the book, including an overview of each chapter and the most important arguments of the book.
The final chapter presents responses to the content of the entire book by policy practitioners who have dealt with the realities of constructing and implementing policies. They include essays by Emily Shuckburgh, OBE, deputy head of the Polar Oceans Team at the British Antarctic Survey; John Deutch, currently Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Deputy Secretary of Energy in the United States; and Lord Ronald Oxburgh, who is a British parliamentarian, member of the House of Lords, a former chairman of Shell and himself a geologist and geophysicist. These ‘technologists’ offer three different perspectives on the topic of ‘good energy policy’. Finally the editors provide the main lessons learned from the book and offer suggestions for future directions of multidisciplinary research in energy policy.
In this chapter, we discuss the evolution of the field of ‘ethics of nuclear energy’, regarding its past, present and future. We will first review the history of this field in the previous four decades, focusing on new and emerging challenges of nuclear energy production and waste disposal, in light of several important developments. Four of the most pressing ethical challenges will be further reviewed in the chapter. First, what is a morally ‘acceptable’ nuclear energy production method, if we consider the existing and possible new technologies? Second, provided a new tendency to consider nuclear waste disposal with several countries, what would be the new ethical and governance challenges of these multinational collaborations? Third, how should we deal with the (safety) challenges of the new geographic distribution of nuclear energy, tilting towards emerging economies with less experience with nuclear technology? Fourth, nuclear energy projects engender highly emotional controversies. Neither ignoring the emotions of the public nor taking them as a reason to prohibit or restrict a technology – we call them technocratic populist pitfalls respectively – seem to be able to guide responsible policy making.
The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, the authors present a practical application of multidisciplinary research based on the experience of editing a book comprised of multidisciplinary cases and focusing on two chapter cases. There are many theoretical accounts of how one may approach multidisciplinary research, but here the authors aim to offer a practical account of how the theoretical goal of multidisciplinary research can play out in the ‘real world’. After addressing the current conceptual understanding of multidisciplinary versus interdisciplinary research, the authors will explain how useful these concepts, in fact, are when applied to the typical constraints that many academics face today in conducting joint research. The authors, who are both editors of the book, will provide lessons for future multidisciplinary collaboration and suggestions for developing methods of multidisciplinary research.
Drawing on political science, economics, philosophy, theology, social anthropology, history, management studies, law, and other subject areas, In Search of Good Energy Policy brings together leading academics from across the social sciences and humanities to offer an innovative look at why science and technology, and the type of quantification they champion, cannot alone meet the needs of energy policy making in the future. Featuring world-class researchers from the University of Cambridge and other leading universities around the world, this innovative book presents an interdisciplinary dialogue in which scientists and practitioners reach across institutional divides to offer their perspectives on the relevance of multi-disciplinary research for 'real world' application. This work should be read by anyone interested in understanding how multidisciplinary research and collaboration is essential to crafting good energy policy.
Let $\ell $ be a length function on a group $G$, and let ${{M}_{\ell }}$ denote the operator of pointwise multiplication by $\ell $ on ${{\ell }^{2}}\left( G \right)$. Following Connes, ${{M}_{\ell }}$ can be used as a “Dirac” operator for $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$. It defines a Lipschitz seminorm on $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$, which defines a metric on the state space of $C_{r}^{*}\left( G \right)$. We show that if $G$ is a hyperbolic group and if $\ell $ is a word-length function on $G$, then the topology from this metric coincides with the weak-$*$ topology (our definition of a “compact quantum metric space”). We show that a convenient framework is that of filtered ${{C}^{*}}$-algebras which satisfy a suitable “Haagerup-type” condition. We also use this framework to prove an analogous fact for certain reduced free products of ${{C}^{*}}$-algebras.
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