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1. Moral economies for water: A framework for analyzing norms of justice, economic behavior, and social enforcement in the contexts of water inequality

   https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1627  

   Beresford, Melissa ; Wutich, Amber ; Garrick, Dustin ; Drew, Georgina ( December 2022 , WIREs Water)

   Over the past two decades, scholars have invoked E. P. Thompson's and James Scott's concept of a “moral economy” to explain how people mobilize notions of justice to make claims to water. We draw together 20 years of literature to assess the state‐of‐the‐art present in research on moral economies for water. We trace the historical foundations of the moral economies concept and its relevance to water; define the three basic components of a moral economy for water—(1) shared understandings of justice, (2) normative economic practices, (3) social pressure mechanisms—and provide examples of how they manifest globally. We then discuss how moral economies for water can cycle through four basic states—balanced struggle, intensified reaction, mass revolt, and collapse and dissolution—at different scales. We also explore the implications of the moral economies framework for key areas of current research on water: water sharing, water commons, water markets, and biocultural outcomes, and discuss the ways in which the moral economies framework dovetails with recent advances in water research, especially the economics of water and development. We argue that the moral economies framework is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the relationships between ideas of water justice, economic behaviors, and mechanisms of social enforcement that complements other methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. We envision moral economies for water as a field that can facilitate a range of norm‐based analyses of economic behavior and water justice, including across scales—from local to global—and in broad, integrative, multiscalar, and cross‐disciplinary ways.

   This article is categorized under:

   Human Water > Water Governance

   Human Water > Value of Water

   Human Water > Rights to Water

    

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2. Defining and Assessing Systems Thinking in Diverse Engineering Populations

   Mosyjowski, E.A. ; Daly, S.R. ; Lattuca, L. ( January 2019 , Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Conference)

   Engineers are called to play an important role in addressing the complex problems of our global society, such as climate change and global health care. In order to adequately address these complex problems, engineers must be able to identify and incorporate into their decision making relevant aspects of systems in which their work is contextualized, a skill often referred to as systems thinking. However, within engineering, research on systems thinking tends to emphasize the ability to recognize potentially relevant constituent elements and parts of an engineering problem, rather than how these constituent elements and parts are embedded in broader economic, sociocultural, and temporal contexts and how all of these must inform decision making about problems and solutions. Additionally, some elements of systems thinking, such as an awareness of a particular sociocultural context or the coordination of work among members of a cross-disciplinary team, are not always recognized as core engineering skills, which alienates those whose strengths and passions are related to, for example, engineering systems that consider and impact social change. Studies show that women and minorities, groups underrepresented within engineering, are drawn to engineering in part for its potential to address important social issues. Emphasizing the importance of systems thinking and developing a more comprehensive definition of systems thinking that includes both constituent parts and contextual elements of a system will help students recognize the relevance and value of these other elements of engineering work and support full participation in engineering by a diverse group of students. We provide an overview of our study, in which we are examining systems thinking across a range of expertise to develop a scenario-based assessment tool that educators and researchers can use to evaluate engineering students’ systems thinking competence. Consistent with the aforementioned need to define and study systems thinking in a comprehensive, inclusive manner, we begin with a definition of systems thinking as a holistic approach to problem solving in which linkages and interactions of the immediate work with constituent parts, the larger sociocultural context, and potential impacts over time are identified and incorporated into decision making. In our study, we seek to address two key questions: 1) How do engineers of different levels of education and experience approach problems that require systems thinking? and 2) How do different types of life, educational, and work experiences relate to individuals’ demonstrated level of expertise in solving systems thinking problems? Our study is comprised of three phases. The first two phases include a semi-structured interview with engineering students and professionals about their experiences solving a problem requiring systems thinking and a think-aloud interview in which participants are asked to talk through how they would approach a given engineering scenario and later reflect on the experiences that inform their thinking. Data from these two phases will be used to develop a written assessment tool, which we will test by administering the written instrument to undergraduate and graduate engineering students in our third study phase. Our paper describes our study design and framing and includes preliminary findings from the first phase of our study. 

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3. Monitoring Sustainability and Targeting Interventions: Indicators, Planetary Boundaries, Benefits and Costs

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063181  

   Randall, Alan ( March 2021 , Sustainability)

   null (Ed.)

   This article shows how sustainability indicators (SIs) which have proliferated, and downscaled planetary boundaries (DPBs) which have recently emerged, can be used to target remedial interventions. I offer an integrative analysis drawing upon the existing literature, challenging, clarifying, and amending it in some ways, and extending it with new insights. The exposition is couched in the example of pollution control, but the analysis also applies to resource management with only modest amendments. Key conclusions are summarized. (i) In a default case where damage is indifferent to location within the problem shed and transactions costs are trivial, minimizing abatement costs requires that all units face the same marginal price of emissions and can be implemented by price setting at the jurisdictional level or cap and trade in pollution reduction credits. Larger geographic scale tends to reduce the average cost of abatement, an argument for coordination at the problem-shed level. Deviations from the default policy may be appropriate for addressing large point sources and local hot spots where damage is concentrated. (ii) A framework winnowing the proliferation of SIs includes the following principles: for quantitative target setting, SIs should address sustainability in its long-term context; SIs should be measured in ratio scale, whereas ordinal-scale SIs are common; and SIs should be selected for their usefulness in mapping the relationships among emissions, ambient concentrations, and damage. (iii) Target setting requires science-based empirical relationships and social values to assess trade-offs between abatement and its opportunity costs and suggest upper limits on tolerable damage. (iv) PBs that address global public goods can usefully be downscaled to set abatement targets. The PBs are science based and, in their original form, propose replacing social values with imperatives: violating the PB will doom the planet, which is unacceptable given any plausible value system. Given that PB = ∑DPB over all jurisdictions, global trading of credits would minimize costs of honoring the PB. Trade among a willing subset of jurisdictions could minimize the costs of meeting its aggregate DPB. (v) In contrast to most SI approaches, a cost–benefit (CB) approach can deal with substitutability and complementarity among sustainability objectives and evaluate multi-component policies. Net benefits are maximized when the marginal cost of abatement equals the marginal benefit for all units in the problem shed. This can be attained by price setting at the jurisdictional level or trade in credits. (vi) A major advantage of the CB approach is its well-defined relationship to weak sustainability. However, its value measures over-weight the preferences of the well-off. Equity considerations suggest relief from strict CB criteria in the case of essentials such as human health and nutrition, and subsidization by rich countries of sustainability projects in low-income countries. 

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4. (2023, June). Moralizing Design Differences in the North: An Ethnographic Analysis. In 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.

   Nicewonger, T. E. ; Fritz, S. A. ; McNair, L. D. ( June 2023 , 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.)

   Addressing the 2023 theme of Global Responsibilities of Engineers, in particular the disproportionate impacts of climate change on communities in remote regions of Alaska, this paper tracks the “social life” of a prefabricated frame assembly system designed for constructing homes in emergency contexts in northern Alaska (Appadurai 1986). An Alaskan housing research center began using this prefabricated system over a decade ago, in a time of crisis caused by major spring flooding in an Alaskan riverine community that has long grappled with housing shortages. The destruction of these homes, along with the possessions of the people living in them, was a tremendous loss to this community. The region’s short building season and dependency on barge and aerial transportation services for shipping in building supplies further compounded these challenges. In response, local and federal agencies came together and decided on a housing design that uses an integrated wall and truss system that could be prefabricated off-site, shipped out, rapidly assembled by volunteer building crews in the affected site, and that facilitated a highly insulated energy efficient home. As a result, this design played a critical role in mediating further disaster. Fast-forward to the present, the housing research center continues to opt for this system for most remote designs, but builders and engineers have begun to debate whether its advantages outweigh some of its logistical challenges. Some argue that its value has been overstated, while others describe it as a practical and affordable method for building energy efficient homes in remote Alaskan communities. Still others have adapted its design to fit their needs, thus producing new variations of the design, while also showing how the design of this building system might be reimagined. A deep dive into this debate provides an opportunity to analyze how both knowledge building and moral stances inform the ways that engineers assume global responsibilities related to communities affected by climate change. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research among Alaskan engineers, builders, housing advocates, and community stakeholders, this case study reflects what design scholars describe) as the “moralization of technology” through engineering practices (Verbeek 2006: 269). From this perspective, engineering systems may take on multiple meanings and applications, including marking differences in thought, creativity, and moral affinity among experts who are working to addressing affordable housing needs in Alaska. Reflecting on these differences in perspective, this paper tracks the “cultural biography” of this engineered system across time, place, and institutional, cultural, and geographic settings to probe how debates about the efficacy of this prefabricated system come to index varying moral stances and value systems that are deeply qualitative but also very much a part of the technical and materializing processes of the building design (Kopytoff 1986). As a case study, this analysis also can serve as a teaching tool in engineering and interdisciplinary classrooms for examining the integrative nature of ethics and technology as related to a range of human impacts on the environment and marginalized communities. 

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5. Socio-technical Constraints and Affordances of Virtual Collaboration - A Study of Four Online Hackathons

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3555221  

   Mendes, Wendy ; Richard, Albert ; Tillo, Tähe-Kai ; Pinto, Gustavo ; Gama, Kiev ; Nolte, Alexander ( November 2022 , Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   Hackathons and similar time-bounded events have become a popular form of collaboration in various domains. They are commonly organized as in-person events during which teams engage in intense collaboration over a short period of time to complete a project that is of interest to them. Most research to date has thus consequently focused on studying how teams collaborate in a co-located setting, pointing towards the advantages of radical co-location. The global pandemic of 2020, however, has led to many hackathons moving online, which challenges our current understanding of how they function. In this paper, we address this gap by presenting findings from a multiple-case study of 10 hackathon teams that participated in 4 hackathon events across two continents. By analyzing the collected data, we found that teams merged synchronous and asynchronous means of communication to maintain a common understanding of work progress as well as to maintain awareness of each other's tasks. Task division was self-assigned based on individual skills or interests, while leaders emerged from different strategies (e.g., participant experience, the responsibility of registering the team in an event). Some of the affordances of in-person hackathons, such as the radical co-location of team members, could be partially reproduced in teams that kept open synchronous communication channels while working (i.e., shared audio territories), in a sort of "radical virtual co-location". However, others, such as interactions with other teams, easy access to mentors, and networking with other participants, decreased. In addition, the technical constraints of the different communication tools and platforms brought technical problems and were overwhelming to participants. Our work contributes to understanding the virtual collaboration of small teams in the context of online hackathons and how technologies and event structures proposed by organizers imply this collaboration. 

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