In September 2019, a conference on transformation of sustainability was carried out in Ljubljana. The conference examined the meaning and relevance of sustainability in relation to contemporary socio-cultural, economic and environmental issues. The questions that contributors aimed to untangle were: 1. How do people experience and value sustainability as a global trend, personal attitude and survival strategy? 2. How does the lack of a common perspective on sustainability prevent future social and cultural transformations? 3. Can we define sustainability as a dominant concept for universal social development or do we need to transform its meaning and adapt it to new social, cultural, and economic dilemmas? 4. Can sustainable lifestyle and practices, such as recycling, organic food production, and responsible energy use, actually improve our health and subjective well-being? Special emphasis at the conference was placed on mobility, energy consumption, waste management, agriculture, and gardening, as well as other human activities and practices that have a significant impact on the planet and wellbeing of current and future societies. Co-organisers of the event: Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Organising committe included four project team members: D. Podjed, K. Polajnar Horvat, S. Babič and T. Bajuk Senčar. A result of the conference is a special issue of Traditiones journal (guest editors D. Podjed and L. Peternel).
B.01 Organiser of a scientific meeting
COBISS.SI-ID: 45101357This paper presented findings of a research on food waste in households, carried out in Slovenia. Authors of the study, K. Polajnar Horvat and D. Podjed, analysed what kind of relationships to waste do householders establish in their daily lives; On the basis of their findings, they explained how, when and why do people in the researched area “transform” food into waste. Finally, they proposed a design of a people-centred solution, which helps detecting and visualising the production of waste in households as well as promotes waste reduction.
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COBISS.SI-ID: 45008685D. Podjed, Principal Investigator of the Invisible Life of Waste project, is the initiator and from 2013 to 2018 the main organizer, and from 2019 the executive advisor of the international symposium Why the World Needs Anthropologists, which aims to promote applied anthropology and highlight interdisciplinary cooperation of anthropologists in different contexts (event website: www.applied-anthropology.com). The event is the main platform for presenting the results of the project, as it tackles the most relevant project topics: environmental protection, the relationship between people and technologies, the use of ethnographic approaches to design new solutions, etc. At the 6th symposium in Lisbon (October 26-28, 2018) with the thematic title Designing the Future, they announced the project and talked about the planned results. At the 7th symposium in Oslo (October 25-27, 2019) with the thematic title Sustaining Cities, they organized a workshop on waste, where they showed how ethnographic research can be used to design innovative solutions to improve waste management and promote sustainable practices.
B.01 Organiser of a scientific meeting
COBISS.SI-ID: 44142893