Abstract
Transformation has become a major topic of sustainability research. This opens up new perspectives, but at the same time, runs the danger to convert into a new critical orthodoxy which narrows down analytical perspectives. Most research is committed towards a political-strategic approach towards transformation. This focus, however, clashes with ongoing transformation processes towards un-sustainability. The paper presents cornerstones of an integrative approach to social-ecological transformations (SET), which builds upon empirical work and conceptual considerations from Social Ecology and Political Ecology. We argue that a critical understanding of the challenges for societal transformations can be advanced by focusing on the interdependencies between societies and the natural environment. This starting point provides a more realistic understanding of the societal and biophysical constraints of sustainability transformations by emphasising the crisis-driven and contested character of the appropriation of nature and the power relations involved. Moreover, it pursues a transdisciplinary mode of research, decisive for adequately understanding any strategy for transformations towards sustainability. Such a conceptual approach of SET is supposed to better integrate the analytical, normative and political-strategic dimension of transformation research. We use the examples of global land use patterns, neo-extractivism in Latin America and the global water crisis to clarify our approach.
Highlights
Transformation has become a major topic of sustainability research
Drawing on the three-dimensioned sustainability discourse [17], we argue in this paper that a better integration of analytical perspectives on ongoing transformations of societal relations to nature and of normative considerations of what may constitute a desirable goal of global transformations towards sustainability is needed to improve the political-strategical aspirations of transformation research
We argue here that the ongoing transformation faces a variety of challenges and that an open, creative, and transdisciplinary research process is needed in order to shape this transformation in the sense of social-ecological transformations (SET)
Summary
Transformation has become a major topic of sustainability research. The terminology indicates a shift both in the focus of research and in the understanding of the real scale of the challenges contemporary societies are facing. Such a mode of research is decisive for adequately understanding any strategy for transformations towards sustainability (see Section 5) Taking advantage of these assets, the conceptual approach of social-ecological transformations is supposed to help investigate problematic and non-sustainable structures and processes (analytical dimension), to contribute to transformations towards sustainability on the level of action and decision-making processes (political-strategic dimension) and analysing what are societally desirable and at the same time achievable conditions and ends (normative dimension). What is largely missing in the current transformation debate are analyses that focus in more depth on the interactions between globalized societies and the natural environment, analysing resource use patterns and its social implications in terms of global inequalities as much as its impact on global ecosystems without denying local (including everyday), regional and national scales of problems and action (see below). The paper will not follow a “conventional” structure but it will mix up conceptual considerations with analytical discussions and empirical results
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