Thaddeus Miller: Reconstructing Sustainability Science: Knowledge and Action for a Sustainable Future

Abstract

Sustainability science is a dynamic and growing field of research and practice. Emerging from a sense of frustration with the shortcomings of traditional disciplinary approaches to the complex challenges of sustainable development, and armed with new understandings about the nature of complexity in social and ecological systems, sustainability science has taken hold as a recognised academic domain (Clark 2007). Yet from its earliest inception, it has not only been formulated in academic terms, but also as a strategic effort to connect science with practical decision-making and implementation (Board on Sustainable Development, National Academy of Sciences 1999). The implications of these re-orientations towards inter(or trans-) disciplinary practice and embedded use or user needs are substantial as foundational epistemic structures of science such as disciplinary framings and boundaries, and independence and objectivity have been downplayed or cast aside—to be replaced by ... what? There are few straightforward answers to this question, with many different views and efforts jostling for credibility and experimenting with new approaches. At least one of the replacements has been a solid dose of reflexivity. Looking inwards as well as outwards, sustainability scientists have maintained an ability to ask questions of their own practice as they strive to formulate a rigorous and robust field, without reproducing the constraints and barriers that drove sustainability science in the first place. In doing so, researchers have developed a plethora of frameworks, constructs, approaches and principles that are diverse and often appear impenetrable. In this book, Thad Miller takes an overarching view of the field of sustainability science and casts a reflective light back to that research community. Drawing on 28 interviews with leading sustainability science researchers, as well as written material, he explores this contested and challenging terrain. In doing so, over the first three chapters he successfully synthesises the complexity and diversity of the field of sustainability science in practical and insightful ways. In examining the ways in which researchers view the relations between science and society, he categorises the responses into a bifurcated field, where universalist, Bknowledge-first^ approaches to coupled systems sit alongside procedural, process-oriented research geared towards social change. These categories point to key differences in the ways researchers understand and argue for science to have a place at the table in decision-making for sustainability. Chapter 4 expands on these differences as representing key tensions in sustainability science: the tension between science and the normative nature of sustainability, where science can both enable or constrain social discourse about sustainability challenges; and the tensions between knowledge and action, where science is only one contributor to complex sociopolitical decisions and actions. In the second part of the book, Miller proposes these tensions stem from insufficient appreciation of, and engagement with, Bthe social, moral and political dimensions of sustainability^ (p.67). He describes epistemic and normative limitations in the scientific framing, where the very nature of scientific knowledge and limited recognition of the values it brings * Lorrae van Kerkhoff lorrae.vankerkhoff@anu.edu.au