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SUMMARY:From Society to Social Strata: Energy Transitions as a Window into
  Past and Future Human Adaptations (by Alexandre Martinez)
DTSTART:20260528T090000Z
DTEND:20260528T100000Z
DTSTAMP:20260504T082512Z
UID:presentation-188.series-10
DESCRIPTION:The transition toward low-carbon economies is one of the defin
 ing challenges of our time. Yet\, human societies have navigated successiv
 e energy transitions throughout history\, each reshaping their relationshi
 p with the environment. The framework of Energy Regimes (ERs) offers a fun
 ctional\, time-independent lens through which these transitions can be ide
 ntified\, compared\, and learned from.\nMy doctoral research (VU Amsterdam
 \, 2025) applied the ER framework for the first time to a concrete archaeo
 logical case study\, reconstructing the succession of Foraging and Agraria
 n regimes in Cantabrian Spain from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Industr
 ial Revolution. Integrating archaeological\, palaeoenvironmental\, and pal
 aeoclimatic proxies\, I documented the key processes driving ER transition
 s and the societal responses they triggered. However\, this analysis opera
 ted at the level of whole societies\, leaving the internal social dimensio
 n largely unaddressed.\nThis gap is where my postdoctoral research project
  takes over. Using the IPAT analysis within a spatially explicit geographi
 c information system\, I propose to reconstruct and compare the societal a
 nd social dynamics of Austria spanning the development of capitalism and i
 ndustrialisation\, between 1500 and 2025 CE. By decomposing IPAT parameter
 s (i.e. anthropogenic impact\, human population\, affluence in terms of pe
 r capita consumption of energy\, and technology) across agrarian and indus
 trial regimes and stratifying them by social strata using Gini-type inequa
 lity coefficients\, the project aims to produce the first quantitative\, s
 patially resolved account of how energy transitions shaped the lives of di
 fferent social strata in contrasting ways.\nTogether\, these two projects 
 trace a continuous arc: from deep-time societal reconstruction\, to a hist
 orically grounded\, socially stratified analysis of how energy transitions
  were lived differently depending on one's place in the social order.
LOCATION:SR Wegener Center\, Brandhofgasse 5\, 1st floor
ORGANIZER;CN="Douglas Maraun";ROLE=CHAIR:MAILTO:douglas.maraun@uni-graz.at
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