The Oxford-Achilles Working Group
on Corporate Social Responsibility
Developing knowledge about CSR
Abstract: Conventional ideas about sustainability revolve around access to physical, economic and developmental resources. In this presentation Steve Rayner will draw upon the anthropology of Mary Douglas and the political science of Robert Putnam to propose a social organizational approach to sustainability as the capacity for complex strategy switching
Biography: Steve Rayner is James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization at the Saïd Business School and Director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society. He describes himself as an "undisciplined" scholar, committed to changing the world through social science, and was listed by Wired Magazine on the 2008 smart list as one of the 15 people the next President should listen to.
Rayner's research interests revolve around the relationship between nature and society as mediated by science and technology. He has contributed to the scholarly literatures on the perception and management of environmental and technological risk, the concept of global climatic and environmental change, the idea of sustainable development, and the governance of emerging technologies. Building on the work of his lifelong colleague, the late Dame Mary Douglas, he has contributed to the development of Cultural Theory. Recent publications have focused on theories and practice of public participation in scientific decision making, the role of technical expertise in democratic governance, and the use and non-use of climate forecasting technologies in the US water industry.
Among his current research projects, he is Principal Investigator on the Future of Cities programme, conducted jointly with the Environmental Change Institute. This project will also draw on the expertise of other members of the James Martin 21st Century School - the Institute of Ageing, the Transport Studies Unit, and the wider university.
From 2002-2008 he headed up the Economic and Social Research Council 'Science in Society' Programme. This £5.2 million national research programme was hosted by the Saïd Business School, and was designed to encourage and support research into the role of science in governance and the challenges facing the governance of science in a democracy.
Before coming to the University of Oxford in 2002, Rayner spent two decades in the United States developing and leading interdisciplinary research programmes spanning the social and natural sciences. His most recent position was Professor of Environment and Public Affairs and Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, where he directed the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy. He was also Chief Social Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction.
Prior to Columbia University, Steve Rayner held the rank of Chief Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Located in the Washington DC office, he led the Global Change Research Group from 1991 to 1996. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of the Global Environmental Studies Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was responsible for research in Policy, Energy and Human Systems. He has taught in interdisciplinary programmes at Virginia Tech, Cornell University, the University of Tennessee, the US Office of Personnel Management's Executive Seminar Center, and the University of London. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and Boston University's School of Public Health. Rayner is currently a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and was a lead author on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has served on various institutional, national and international bodies concerned with applied social research, risk management and the human dimensions of global change. He has advised various national global change research programmes throughout the world.
He has co-authored or edited numerous publications covering a broad field, including social and market impacts of technologies, technology acceptance, risk management, global and local environmental impacts and policy, economic recovery and development, land use, energy policy, industrial ecology, and public engagement with science.
Currently, he serves as Editor of the Science in Society Series from Earthscan, and recently co-edited the title Unnatural Selection: The Challenges of Engineering Tomorrow's People with Peter Healey.
He has received numerous awards, including the 25th Annual Homer N. Calver Award from the Environment Section of the American Public Health Association, the PNNL Laboratory Director's Award for R&D Excellence, and two Martin-Marietta Energy Systems Awards for groundbreaking work in risk analysis and global climate change policy analysis respectively. He is a Member of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC and is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Society for Applied Anthropology, and the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, specifically in recognition of "distinguished contributions to the fields of risk management, global change and sustainable development through the application of skills as a social anthropologist, multidisciplinary team leader and administrator."