Configuring Light/Staging the Social: Dialogues between the social sciences and lighting practices

光是我们组织社会空间的物质；光是日常现代生活的基础设施，如果没有它，我们做的许多事情和认为理所当然的事情都不可能发生：例如，如果我们只有自然光，夜间活动将不可避免地严重减少，对可持续的社会生活形式产生重大影响。我们对人造光的技术操纵的好处是巨大的：当代城市的经济严重依赖于它，遗产和创意产业需要它(例如，大型公共建筑的照明是城市品牌的重要组成部分)，构成城市民事治理(犯罪、安全和安保)的大部分内容都将光作为基本要求。此外，照明作为创意产业、制造和维护的一部分，是一个主要的经济部门。与此同时，随着新的照明技术和欧盟法规试图创造可持续能源，我们的能源消费的生态成本也受到了激烈的辩论，并因此被纳入政治话语和公共政策的框架。此外，光(及其缺失的黑暗)对我们的健康至关重要，例如对睡眠、情绪和健康的调节，如果没有适当的调节，可能会引起重大的健康反应(如SAD的情况和对光污染的日益关注)。这些辩论和问题是我们系列研讨会的更广泛的社会背景，该系列研讨会的目的是建立社会科学、设计、建筑和城市规划之间的综合对话，专注于社会生活的这一最基本特征。令人惊讶的是，鉴于光的重要性如上所述，很少有人对光进行综合思考和研究。虽然它是技术人员、建筑师、工程师或设计师以及一些政策制定者的核心关切，但在社会科学领域，它在很大程度上被忽视或几乎没有研究。虽然提请学术界注意这一最重要的社会材料似乎很重要，但从业者的技术和设计知识也将受益于对其实践的社会和文化方面及其影响的更严格的理解。然而，到目前为止，这些不同学科之间以及学术界和实践者之间的对话很少。我们的系列研讨会旨在解决社会科学关于光的知识差距，并将其坚定地列入社会学、地理学和人类学等学科的学术议程；同时，弥合学术知识与光工程师、建筑师、设计师和城市规划师的技术和设计知识之间的鸿沟。社会科学和实践者之间的这种对话应该会产生相当大的影响：我们的目标是产生知识和方法，以便更好地研究光是如何配置的，以及它在构建社会生活中所起的作用，预计这些与光有关的新思维和工作方式将直接影响到工业和城市规划方面的从业者。

Light is a material through which we organize social space; light is the infrastructure of everyday modern life and without it much of what we do and take for granted would not be possible:for example, if we only had natural light, invevitably nightime activities would be severely reduced with a significant impact on the forms of social life that can be sustained. The benefits of our technological manipulation of artificial light are immense: the contemporary city's economy critically depends upon it, heritage and creative industries require it (the lighting of great public buildings an important part of city branding, for example) and much of what constitutes the civil governance of cities (crime, safety and security) takes light as the fundemental basic requirement. Moreover, as part of creative industry, manufacture and maintenance, lighting is a major economic sector. At the same time, the ecological costs of our energy consumption are also hotly debated and are consequently framed within political discourse and public policy, as new lighting technologies and EU regulations attempt to create sustainable energies. In addition, light (and its absence - darkness) are critical to our health, as for example in the regulation of sleep, mood and well-being and can entail significant health reactions if not properly regulated (as highlighted by the case of SAD and by increasing concerns with light pollution. These debates and issues are the broader social context for our seminar series, 'Configuring Light/Staging the Social', which aims to forge an intergrated dialogue between social sciences, design, architecture and urban planning focused on this most fundamental feature of social life. Surprising, given the importance of light as outlined above, there has been little integrated thinking and research on light. While it is a central concern to technicians, architects, engineers or designers and some policy makers, it has largely been ignored or little researched within the social sciences. While it would be seem important to draw academic attention to this most critical social material, practitioners' technical and design knowledge would also benefit from a more rigorous understanding of the social and cultural aspects and impact of their practice. However, thus far, little dialogue has taken place across these different disciplines and between academics and practitioners. Our seminar series aims to both address the gap in social science knowledge about light and put if firmly on the academic agenda within disciplines such as sociology, geography and anthropology, for example; while at the same time to bridge the divide between academic knolwedge and the technical and design knowledge of light engineers, architects and designers and urban planners. This dialogue between social science and practitioners should have considerable impact: our aim is to produce both knowledges and methodologies for better researching the ways in which light is configured and the roles it plays in structuring social life and it is envisaged that these new ways of thinking and working with light will directly impact on those practitioners in indusry and urban planning.