SCI Seminar Series - Professor Frank Boons - Retracing narratives: How a bio-based chemical industry is emerging in The Netherlands
| Dates: | 4 March 2015 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 16:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Sustainable Consumption Institute |
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| Speaker: | Professor Frank Boons |
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Abstract
The ecological impact of chemical products throughout their life cycle has been a contentious topic for decades, leading to public protest as well as substantive legislative efforts. Underneath this dominant narrative an alternative storyline is unfolding: that of the emergence of production processes based on renewable resources.
In this seminar, the development of innovative practices seeking to create a bio-based economy is analysed in the Dutch chemical industry from 1990 – 2012, seeking to uncover how this process unfolds as a self-organizing phenomenon for which the boundary conditions are created by firms, governmental agencies, knowledge institutes, and the wider public. Simultaneously, explicit attention is given to the methodological questions that are raised when the emergence of new industry practices become the topic of study.
Speaker
Professor Frank Boons
Role: Professor of Innovation & Sustainability
Organisation: Sustainable Consumption Institute
Biography: Frank Boons is Professor of Innovation and Sustainability at the SCI and MBS, University of Manchester. His research seeks to analyse the unfolding processes in which interacting producers and consumers seek to improve the sustainability of their practices. As an economic sociologist he has published widely in the interdisciplinary field of environmental science. He is currently associate editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology and subject editor Governance of Material and Energy Flows for the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
10.05
Harold Hankins Building
