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| == '''[[The Social Capital Foundation]]''' ==
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| ''by [[User:Koen Demol|Koen Demol]]
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| | ==Footnotes== |
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| '''The Social Capital Foundation''' (TSCF) is a non-profit, [[non-governmental organization]] (NGO) that pursues the promotion of [[social capital]] and [[social cohesion]]. Created in late 2002 by Dr [[Patrick Hunout]], it is based in [[Brussels]]. TSCF is international and focuses particularly on the current developments in the industrial countries. The profiles of its members are extremely diverse. Funded with membership, conference and expertise fees, it is an independent [[operating foundation]]. It is a not a [[grant-making foundation]].
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| Social capital is a key concept in [[political science]], [[sociology]], [[social psychology]], [[economics]], and organizational behavior. It has been theorized about by a long list of scholars, from Emile Durkheim to Ferdinand Tönnies, Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Putnam, Robert Bellah, Francis Fukuyama, Patrick Hunout and others. (See the entry on [[social capital]] for more detailed discussion).
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| == The Foundation's approach to social capital == | |
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| TSCF's approach to "social capital" is distinct from other, more socio-economic approaches in which the term "capital" approaches some of its conventional economic meanings. TSCF promotes social capital defined as a set of mental dispositions and attitudes favoring cooperative behaviors within society.
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| The first assumption on which this definition is based is that social capital must not be mixed up with its manifestations.
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| Thus, social capital does not consist primarily in the possession of social networks, but in a disposition to generate, maintain and develop congenial relationships. It is not good neighborhood, but the openness to pacific coexistence and reciprocity based on a concept of belonging. It does not consist in running negotiations, but in the shared compromise-readiness and sense of the common good that make them succeed. It is not solely observable trust, but the predictability and the good faith necessary to produce it. It is not reductible to factual civic engagement, but resides in the sense of community that gives you lust to get involved in public life. All these downstream manifestations cannot be fully and consistently explained without reference to the upstream mental patterns that make them possible, or not.
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| The second assumption is that this disposition is collectivistic. It is not my individual capacity to build networks that is the most important for creating social capital but a collective, shared and reciprocal disposition to welcome, create and maintain social connections - without which my individual efforts to create such connections may well remain vain.
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| In that sense, The Social Capital Foundation's definition of social capital can be regarded as a semantic equivalent to the spirit of community. TSCF's approach is close to the one developed by [[Amitai Etzioni]] and the [[Communitarian Network]], although the concerns raised by the erosion of the community trace back to diverse figures in early modern sociology such as [[Ferdinand Tönnies]], [[Georg Simmel]], [[Emile Durkheim]] or the [[Chicago School of Sociology]], while [[European ethnology]], [[culturalism]] and [[jungism]] also insisted on the existence of a common soul.
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| TSCF promotes social capital through socio-economic research, publications, and events. The Foundation sets up international conferences on a regular basis. While research and knowledge add verified facts to the debate, social interaction contributes to further dissemination and awareness around the Foundation's approach.
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| == Hunout and the tripartite model of societal change ==
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| [[Patrick Hunout]], a Franco-Belgian researcher and policymaker, created in 1999 The International Scope Review and in 2002 The Social Capital Foundation. His theoretical filiation is both in the sociology of [[Emile Durkheim]] and [[Ferdinand Tönnies]] and in the more recent contribution of [[social psychology]] and [[cognitive psychology]] research. A former stage of his work had shown that judicial decisionmaking is only possible to the extent where judges use, beyond the formal legal provisions, impersonal and universal values as decision principles -to name these, he coined the term of "global axiological space" (1985, 1990).
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| ''[[The Social Capital Foundation|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[The Social Capital Foundation#Bibliography|notes]]
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| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
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After decades of failure to slow the rising global consumption of coal, oil and gas,[1] many countries have proceeded as of 2024 to reconsider nuclear power in order to lower the demand for fossil fuels.[2] Wind and solar power alone, without large-scale storage for these intermittent sources, are unlikely to meet the world's needs for reliable energy.[3][4][5] See Figures 1 and 2 on the magnitude of the world energy challenge.
Nuclear power plants that use nuclear reactors to create electricity could provide the abundant, zero-carbon, dispatchable[6] energy needed for a low-carbon future, but not by simply building more of what we already have. New innovative designs for nuclear reactors are needed to avoid the problems of the past.
(CC) Image: Geoff Russell Fig.1 Electricity consumption may soon double, mostly from coal-fired power plants in the developing world.
[7] Issues Confronting the Nuclear Industry
New reactor designers have sought to address issues that have prevented the acceptance of nuclear power, including safety, waste management, weapons proliferation, and cost. This article will summarize the questions that have been raised and the criteria that have been established for evaluating these designs. Answers to these questions will be provided by the designers of these reactors in the articles on their designs. Further debate will be provided in the Discussion and the Debate Guide pages of those articles.
- ↑ Global Energy Growth by Our World In Data
- ↑ Public figures who have reconsidered their stance on nuclear power are listed on the External Links tab of this article.
- ↑ Pumped storage is currently the most economical way to store electricity, but it requires a large reservoir on a nearby hill or in an abandoned mine. Li-ion battery systems at $500 per KWh are not practical for utility-scale storage. See Energy Storage for a summary of other alternatives.
- ↑ Utilities that include wind and solar power in their grid must have non-intermittent generating capacity (typically fossil fuels) to handle maximum demand for several days. They can save on fuel, but the cost of the plant is the same with or without intermittent sources.
- ↑ Mark Jacobson believes that long-distance transmission lines can provide an alternative to costly storage. See the bibliography for more on this proposal and the critique by Christopher Clack.
- ↑ "Load following" is the term used by utilities, and is important when there is a lot of wind and solar on the grid. Some reactors are not able to do this.
- ↑ Fig.1.3 in Devanney "Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop"
