Social fields and natural systems: integrating knowledge about society and nature

Lennart Olsson,Anne Jerneck

doi:10.5751/es-10333-230326

Abstract

Sustainability science is a wide and integrative scientific field. It embraces both complementary and contradictory approaches and perspectives for dealing with newer sustainability challenges in the context of old and persistent social problems. In this article we suggest a combined approach called social fields and natural systems. It builds on field theory and systems thinking and can assist sustainability scientists and others in integrating the best available knowledge from the natural sciences with that from the social sciences. The approach is preferable, we argue, to the various scientific efforts to integrate theories and frameworks that are rooted in incompatible ontologies and epistemologies. In that respect, this article is a critique of approaches that take the integration of the social and natural sciences for granted. At the same time it is an attempt to build a promising alternative. The theoretical and methodological pluralism that we suggest here, holistic pluralism, is one way to overcome incommensurability between the natural and the social sciences while avoiding functionalism, technological and environmental determinism, and over-reliance on rational choice theory. In addition, it is a basis for generating better understandings and problem solving capacity for sustainability challenges. We make three contributions. First, we identify important reasons for the incommensurability between the social and natural sciences, and propose remedies for overcoming some of the difficulties in integrative research. Second, we show how sustainability science will benefit from drawing more deeply on—and thus more adequately incorporate—social science understandings of society and the social, including field theory. Third, we illustrate the suggested approach of social fields and natural systems in two examples that are highly relevant for both sustainability science and sustainability itself, one on climate change adaptation and one on geoengineering. (Less)

Highlights

THE NEED FOR INTEGRATION The fact that sustainability science is “dealing with interconnected problems” (Kauffman and Arico 2014:413) requires that researchers in the field take a comprehensive, integrated, and participatory approach to science and reality (Sala et al 2013)
It builds on field theory and systems thinking and can assist sustainability scientists and others in integrating the best available knowledge from the natural sciences with that from the social sciences
Rather than merging or unifying the actual disciplines or their theories and methods into integrated frameworks, we argue that pluralism is the best way forward for dealing with sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, land use change, water scarcity, and ill health

Summary

INTRODUCTION

THE NEED FOR INTEGRATION The fact that sustainability science is “dealing with interconnected problems” (Kauffman and Arico 2014:413) requires that researchers in the field take a comprehensive, integrated, and participatory approach to science and reality (Sala et al 2013). Seeking to preserve complexity while capturing a reasonable degree of specificity, constructivist and institutionalist scholars proceed with theory in close dialogue with data, including details, to piece together theoretically informed and empirically grounded historical narratives (Hay 2002) They suggest or establish the preconditions, conditions, and mechanisms of change by studying the interplay between ideas, institutions (including their values), and interests pursued by actors (Meadowcroft 2011). Holling claimed the following: If sustainability means anything, it has to do with the small set of critical self-organized variables and the transformations that can occur in them during the evolutionary process of societal development (Holling 2001:391) This may hold true for natural systems, but in social science research it is generally not advisable to select a few structural determinants of social continuity or change because that would “distort social complexity” (Mann 1986:4). Paul Crutzen was considered an environmental hero, as one of three scientists and

Under constant threat from CC science

CONCLUSIONS