Abstract
The idea of ‘Sustainability as a Real Utopia’ elaborated on here adapts sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s emancipatory social science and is a heuristic informed by critical realism and social theory for interdisciplinary research on viable alternatives that move society towards achieving sustainability. Starting from the proposition that many environmental problems are rooted in how social structures and institutions interact with nature by shaping human agency, we argue for concretely situated analysis aimed at guiding human agency towards changing those root causes. Then, drawing on concrete examples from sustainability research, we elaborate on three central tasks: diagnosing and critiquing environmental problems, elaborating viable alternatives and proposing a theory of transformation. Finally, we discuss, and welcome dialogue around two central and interlinked challenges of our approach to transformative sustainability research: that of scales, and that of the distinction and relationship between reforms and transformation.
Highlights
In the face of multiple and intersecting ecological crises that impact human well-being, sustainability science has evolved over the past two decades into a theoretically, methodologically and empirically diverse academic field bound together by a shared ambition to conduct problem-driven and use-inspired research (Lang et al, 2017; Miller et al, 2014)
In this article, we build on prominent sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s (2010, 2012) work on Real Utopias to create a heuristic for useinspired interdisciplinary sustainability research firmly rooted in social theory, with the parallel aim to stimulate further engagement with it and associated work amongst researchers and students in sustainability science
Why is immanent criticism appealing for sustainability science? Siding with Boda and Faran (2018), we argue that this approach helps researchers deal with two interlinked challenges inherent to sustainability science: (1) normativity and (2) interdisciplinarity
Summary
In the face of multiple and intersecting ecological crises that impact human well-being, sustainability science has evolved over the past two decades into a theoretically, methodologically and empirically diverse academic field bound together by a shared ambition to conduct problem-driven and use-inspired research (Lang et al, 2017; Miller et al, 2014). Does it bring – to borrow the words of C Wright Mills – a much needed sociological imagination to sustainability research, it represents a critical approach that seeks to reveal the deeper drivers of environmental change while identifying and engaging with potential agents of change and the alternative configurations of nature–society relations they (could) propose.
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