Lippert, Ingmar | Germany

Lippert, Ingmar | Germany

Ingmar Lippert is undertaking a PhD on Agents of Ecological Modernisation supervised by the Chair for Sociology of Augsburg University (Germany). He completed his undergraduate studies at Brandenburg University of Technology (Germany) and Bosporus University (Turkey) and graduated in Environmental and Resource Management. During this degree his interest shifted from the management issue (choosing and optimising the `right' tools) towards a critical investigation of the societal conditions of the management paradigm and the construction of choices and norms which environmental managers act on. Institutionally this shift has urged him to study social scientific perspectives and, therefore, he moved on to postgraduate studies in Environment, Culture and Society at the Centre for Study of Environmental Change, Sociology Department, Lancaster University (UK).

In this context he started to conceptualise environmental managers as agents of ecological modernisation, problematised using various critical takes in and beyond social theory: Bourdieu, Critical Realism, Autonomist Thought and Actor-Network Theory. From this vantage point he investigates workers who are supposedly bringing about the `greening' of their corporation. He focuses on their knowledge practices and how implicit and explicit norms are used as resources as well as limit and channel their agency.

Ingmar was research fellow at the IAS-STS in 2007-2008 being the first winner of the Manfred-Heindler-grant and joined IAS-STS again in 2009 as a visiting scholar for a month.



Project at IAS-STS: Ecological Modernisation Practices Conceptualised Through Science and Technology Studies Perspectives

Ecological modernisation theory conceptualises how capitalist societies try to become green. A prime actor to green capitalist societies are corporations. Within corporations specific staff are responsible to engage with corporate greening. They are supposed to develop and implement measures for environmental protection based on scientific rationality, i.e. neutral and objective. At IAS-STS I will focus on the practices of agents of ecological modernisation, i.e. corporate environmental managers. Consequently I will start thinking through possible STS takes on these - assumably - objective and neutral practices. My work is based on an ongoing ethnography in a multinational insurance corporation, which engages with greening its processes.

 

Selected Publications

Lippert 2007. “Wissen” für emanzipatorische Bildungspolitik. fzs:magazin, (2):41–43

Lippert and Wolf 2005. Hochschulen auf dem Weg zur Nachhaltigkeit: Möglichkeiten studentischer Partizipation in Umweltmanagementsystemen. In: Umweltmanagement an Hochschulen: Nachhaltigkeitsperspektiven Filho and Delakowitz (eds). Peter Lang Verlag: Frankfurt am Main

Lippert 2005. Map-Making for ERM-Studies (ERM: Environmental and Resource Management). Bachelor Thesis. Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus