Societal Transformation Processes Research Articles

What Does Evolution of Law Mean?

Niklas Luhmann’s theory of evolution is focused on the internal complexity of a system which brings a lot of varieties of possibilities into play, although it is capable of avoiding the idea of an external causation with the consequence of adaptation to innovation. Such an assumption would not be compatible with the construction of the autopoiesis of systems. Upon the basis of this idea, disruptive processes of societal transformation are also supposed to be unable to impede the construction and preservation of useful complexity. The article develops the argument that the distinction of a centre (court decisions) and a periphery (e. g., contracts) of the legal system is no longer plausible if the transformation of legal practices is taken into consideration. The increasing importance of the periphery compels us to observe the impact of practices on evolutionary processes which have not always already been anticipated by the system.

German Students’ Perception of Bioeconomy – An Exploratory Study

In the present society, the concept of bioeconomy emerged due to the need for a sustainable and responsible change regarding the impact mitigation of several factors on the environment. The rising consumption and the resulting emission of pollutants are interconnected with both economic and population growth. Therefore, measures must be taken using new technologies and solutions, improvement of production methods and the necessary transformation of society through education. Several universities have aligned with the demands and needs of the present and future society regarding sustainability, called ‘transformative universities’. A high-quality education system is a prerequisite to sustainable and transformational efforts as well as transparent, participative processes and a close dialogue and cooperation between science, economy, politics and civil society. The purpose of this research is to bring more awareness, receptivity and responsiveness to the problems of society with a focus on bioeconomy. Therefore, this article is divided into three sections. The first part comprises a summary of bioeconomy related to education and the role of higher education institutions in societal transformation processes. The second part contains the quantitative and qualitative analysis and evaluation of the results of an explorative online survey about the perception of bioeconomy and sustainability of students exemplified by students from two German universities. The third part concludes the article with a summary of findings and prospects for further researches in this area. This research is useful especially for public and educational institutions, organisations that have a direct or indirect impact on the environment, and other stakeholders interested in environmental conservation.

The Politics of Selection: Towards a Transformative Model of Environmental Innovation

As a purposive sustainability transition requires environmental innovation and innovation policy, we discuss potentials and limitations of three dominant strands of literature in this field, namely the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP), the innovation systems approach (IS), and the long-wave theory of techno-economic paradigm shifts (LWT). All three are epistemologically rooted in an evolutionary understanding of socio-technical change. While these approaches are appropriate to understand market-driven processes of change, they may be deficient as analytical tools for exploring and designing processes of purposive societal transformation. In particular, we argue that the evolutionary mechanism of selection is the key to introducing the strong directionality required for purposive transformative change. In all three innovation theories, we find that the prime selection environment is constituted by the market and, thus, normative societal goals like sustainability are sidelined. Consequently, selection is depoliticised and neither strong directionality nor incumbent regime destabilisation are societally steered. Finally, we offer an analytical framework that builds upon a more political conception of selection and retention and calls for new political institutions to make normatively guided selections. Institutions for transformative innovation need to improve the capacities of complex societies to make binding decisions in politically contested fields.

Die Entdifferenzierung des Privaten. Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit unter den Bedingungen einer medial und funktional differenzierten Gesellschaft : The disintegration of privacy. Privacy and public sphere under conditions of a medially and functionally differentiated society

During the last 200 years media culture has changed dramatically and with it the participation and use of media by recipients. With a summary reconstruction of the medial and societal transformation processes in that period this paper aims to explain the observation of increasing self-expression, and the disintegration of the private and public spheres. It shall provide evidence, that this behaviour is used as a strategic one, which may enable individuals or users, respectively, to compensate for allegedly lost authenticity in their living environment.

Die Entdifferenzierung des Privaten. Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit unter den Bedingungen einer medial und funktional differenzierten Gesellschaft : The disintegration of privacy. Privacy and public sphere under conditions of a medially and functionally differentiated society

During the last 200 years media culture has changed dramatically and with it the participation and use of media by recipients. With a summary reconstruction of the medial and societal transformation processes in that period this paper aims to explain the observation of increasing self-expression, and the disintegration of the private and public spheres. It shall provide evidence, that this behaviour is used as a strategic one, which may enable individuals or users, respectively, to compensate for allegedly lost authenticity in their living environment.

Characteristics of urban/architectural developments in Tirana and Prishtina, during the last decade

Rapid urbanization as a process of societal transformation and intensive architectural developments in urban areas in Tirana and Prishtina, as capital cities of Countries in transition in sense of achievements for community living there and their urban qualitative life. Considering the planning process and role of different partners towards urban prosperity, the urban developments during the last ten years in both capital cities, based on research done and presented in this paper, using comparison methodology on some contextual bases: Policy context Physical space context Site landscape context With analyses aiming to explain which are effects of three-dimensional mentioned above “contexts” related with: urban space and its integration within public realm (open space, streets, urban greenery, social features…) and architectural values related to sustainability, in line within general objective-urban community satisfaction!

The Normative Justification of Integrative Stakeholder Engagement: A Habermasian View on Responsible Leadership

ABSTRACT:The transition from modern to postmodern society leads to changing expectations about the purpose and responsibility of leadership. Habermas’s social theory provides a useful analytical tool for understanding current societal transition processes and exploring their implications for the responsibility of business vis-à-vis society. We argue that integrative responsible leadership, in particular, can contribute to the reconciliation of business with societal goals. Integrative responsible leadership understood in a Habermasian way is not only a strategic endeavor but also a communicative endeavor. An essential part of integrative responsible leadership in light of the current societal transformation processes is the facilitation of discourses about a shared base of norms and values. This is exemplified alongside current societal developments like the European migration crisis or the emerging nationalist and fundamentalist movements in some countries. We specify how and when leadership should resort to communicative action and discuss the implications for leadership.

Social class, symbolic domination, and Angst: The example of the Norwegian social space

Today, ‘fear’ in its diverse facets is a topic growing in relevance in the media discourse. However, apart from analyses of individual psychic pathologies or general macro-sociological diagnoses, it has been largely neglected in (empirical) social sciences. The increasingly influential works of Bourdieu are no exception here, even though the concept of habitus inherently transcends positive interests such as lifestyle preferences, as analyzed in La Distinction. This becomes explicitly clear in his late works, above all in La Misère du monde, where the dispositions of agents are described in terms of the fears and worries associated with their positions in the social space and societal transformation processes. In this article the authors show that concerns, fear, and worries are constitutive characteristics of the habitus by investigating the structure of ‘fear manifestations’ in relation to the social space. Following Bourdieu’s conception, they construct a model of the Norwegian social space by applying Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to survey data. They then investigate how questions on fears and concerns are related to the capital structure of the space. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings and a reflection of their implications for a sociology of symbolic domination.

Business model resilience – understanding the role of companies in societal transformation processes

Business model resilience (BMR) is introduced as a conceptual framework to better understand the systemic dimension of companies affected by and shaping sustainability transformations. It offers an interdisciplinary approach for management studies and a framework for orientation in management practice.

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Climate change places major transformational demands on modern societies. Transformations require the capacity to collectively envision and meaningfully debate realistic and desirable futures. Without such a collective imagination capacity and active deliberation processes, societies lack both the motivation for change and guidance for decision-making in a certain direction of change. Recent arguments that science fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes is not yet supported by theory or empirical evidence. Advancing the argument that fiction can support sustainability transformations, this paper makes four contributions. First, building on the imaginary concept, I introduce and define the idea of socio-climatic imaginaries. Second, I develop a theory of imagination as linked cognitive-social processes that enable the creation of collectively shared visions of future states of the world. This theory addresses the dynamics that bridge imagination processes in the individual mind and collective imagining that informs social and political decision-making. Third, emphasizing the political nature of creating and contesting imaginaries in a society, I introduce the role of power and agency in this theory of collective imagination. I argue that both ideational and structural power concepts are relevant for understanding the potential societal influence of climate fiction. Finally, the paper illuminates these different forms of transformational power and agency with two brief case studies: two climate fiction novels. I contrast a dystopian and utopian science fiction novel – Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Earth (2015). The two books are very similar in their power/agency profile, but the comparison provides initial insights into the different roles of optimistic and pessimistic future visions.

Exploring the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability

The notion of ‘transformations towards sustainability’ takes an increasingly central position in global sustainability research and policy discourse in recent years. Governance and politics are central to understanding and analysing transformations towards sustainability. However, despite receiving growing attention in recent years, the governance and politics aspects of transformations remain arguably under-developed in the global sustainability literature. A variety of conceptual approaches have been developed to understand and analyse societal transition or transformation processes, including: socio-technical transitions, social-ecological systems, sustainability pathways, and transformative adaptation. This paper critically surveys these four approaches, and reflects on them through the lens of the Earth System Governance framework (Biermann et al., 2009). This contributes to appreciating existing insights on transformations, and to identifying key research challenges and opportunities. Overall, the paper brings together diverse perspectives, that have so far remained largely fragmented, in order to strengthen the foundation for future research on transformations towards sustainability.

Changing Frames of Reconciliation

In this article, we examine reconciliation as a category of political practice. More particularly, we explore the ways in which the term reconciliation has been employed and invested with meaning in the recent legal, social, and political discussions on transitional justice and EU accession in the former Yugoslavia. Much of the literature on the former Yugoslavia highlights the need for reconciliation and envisages it as the ultimate goal of a process of societal and political transformation. But what does reconciliation mean? Our assertion is that reconciliation is a dynamic term; its meaning varies across discursive fields and according to the implicit assumptions associated with it. This article investigates a number of ways in which the term reconciliation has been given meaning in the former Yugoslavia through an exploratory analysis of three related fields of political discussion: (1) transitional justice, in particular the arena of discursive interaction surrounding the completion of the activities of the ICTY in The Hague; (2) the human rights and enlargement agenda of the EU; and (3) local and regional civil society initiatives, including the RECOM initiative, which calls for the establishment of a mechanism for truth-telling and reconciliation across all the countries of the former Yugoslavia. On the basis of an analysis of public statements by politicians and activists, as well as some interviews with key actors in these three fields, we show that reconciliation is mobilized in varying and often conflicting ways.

Enacting Care

Over the last few decades, the ethics of care and, from a different perspective, the enactive approach in cognitive science, have put forward a strong criticism of traditional individualistic and rationalistic accounts of autonomy, cognition and agency. Both approaches have suggested a revision of these notions in terms of a relational ontology with an emphasis on the embodied and situated nature of cognition and agency. In academia, however, there has not yet been any attempt to focus on theoretical affinities between these two approaches or to consider the prospective consequences of merging their perspective. The paper aims at filling this gap by sketching possible theoretical intersections of both approaches and by demonstrating the significance of the affinities at the level of practical implications. I argue that enactivism and the ethics of care can be mutually informative particularly in conceptualization of the processes of societal transformation and in grounding the strategies of addressing the exclusion and discrimination of people who are stigmatized as ‘different’ on the basis of their various disabilities.

From “Food from Nowhere” to “Food from Here:” changing producer–consumer relations in Austria

The notion of a “third food regime” implies simultaneous processes of further global concentration and integration and at the same time resistance through new emerging producer–consumer relations. This paper examines these processes by looking at Austria over the last 30 years. While direct producer–consumer cooperatives established at an early point, today forms of community supported agriculture (CSA) are rare. This paper explains this by identifying a shift of the entire food system from “food from nowhere” to “food from here.” The account follows the early emergence of alternative food networks through the political appeal to consumer patriotism in connection with Austria joining the EU, to a sustained positioning of retail chains with regional and national food products. The paper argues that this satisfies the needs of a large proportion of consumers and discourages the emergence of new food initiatives. The paper follows the development of different approaches and their transformations until today. Thus a picture evolves of changing, and partly progressing consumer–producer relations in response to wider societal and political transformation processes. The results explain why the movement towards CSA is currently weak in Austria, but demonstrate at the same time how alternative food networks may contribute to a transformation of the food system.

Public funding of culture in the Czech Republic since the fall of the iron curtain: contemporary dilemmas

The article deals with explicit cultural policy and its outcomes in the post-communist Czech Republic. In the first part, the authors look at the organisational and conceptual impact on culture of the transition from a centrally managed economy to a pluralist parliamentary democracy following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The cultural sector experienced privatisation, property restitution, commercialisation, globalisation, decentralisation and devolution, as well as the emergence of the private sector and the non-governmental non-profit sector (NGO). Although the process of societal transformation is now complete, certain key issues of cultural policy remain unresolved. The authors focus on three contemporary issues in theatre, namely: political intervention in the management of public cultural institutions, the persistent debate on funding through grant systems and the lack of trust culture professionals have in the creators of cultural policy. As a result, even though after 1989 it was expected that the private or NGO sector would dominate in the area of culture, there still exists a relatively dense network of public cultural institutions (contributory organisations) characterised by a resistance to proposed organisational and funding changes.

Rol de los egresados de la Facultad de Odontología de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos en Instituciones Odontológicas

El egresado de odontologia en su desempeño profesional, realiza labores no solamente en el ámbito exclusivo del tratamiento de las enfermedades orales, también, como portador de la identidad profesional, lidera los procesos de transformación de la sociedad y del desarrollo de la profesión, ejerciendo cargos en Instituciones Educativas Universitarias, en Instituciones Odontológicas profesionales científicas y gremiales. Los modelos que acreditan carreras universitarias reconocen al egresado y su desempeño social como factor importante para la emisión del Juicio de Calidad de la carrera en mención. El objetivo de este trabajo es evidenciar la presencia de los egresados de odontología de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos en las instituciones profesionales a través del tiempo, y motivar a los miembros de la comunidad odontológica sanmarquina sobre el rol a desempeñar en el desarrollo de la Odontología Peruana, analizando el rol de los egresados sanmarquinos de odontología que participan liderando instituciones gremiales y científicas de nuestro país. El estudio realizado es descriptivo, transversal a nivel exploratorio. Se recolectó información de los archivos de las instituciones mediante una ficha. La muestra fue no probabilística intencional. Los resultados confirman que los egresados, en los últimos 20 años han venido liderando las diferentes Instituciones Odontológicas con una participación de 65%, en las instituciones odontológicas nacionales.

Securitisation, economisation and the political constitution of temporary migration: the making of the Austrian seasonal workers scheme

Temporary migration has recently received considerable attention from migration researchers. This article shifts the analytic focus from migration practices to migration politics and enquires into the logics and processes underlying the formulation of temporary migration programmes. Based on Foucault’s analysis of liberal governmentality and Jessop’s strategic-relational approach, it is argued that the governing of temporary labour migration by nation-states requires sophisticated political technologies. These technologies entail the differentiated deprivation of fundamental rights and are therefore neither unproblematic nor self-evident. Developing and establishing the necessary legal categorisations along skill levels, nationality, employment status, and so on, requires a complex interplay of two political rationalities that are often conceived of as contradictory: the securitisation and the economisation of migration. Once established, differentiations and measures introduced under securitised conditions can be invested in utilitarian migration policies. The interplay of these two rationalities depends on and is mediated by wider political-economic and societal transformation processes. This general argument is illustrated by the example of the Austrian Seasonal Worker Scheme, which shows significant parallels to policies introduced in other nation-states over the past two decades.

Developing capacity building: reflections on Chicago's Field Museum, USA

This article explores one aspect of the debate concerning the role of museums in contemporary society. From dusty storage facilities for ancient artefacts that are considered important by a handful of scholars, museums have become ‘social agents’, able not only to assume social responsibility, but also to trigger changes by developing capacity building. This idea is an evolution and an active expression of the school of thought known as ‘New Museology’ that emerged between the 1960s and 1970s. New museology focused on how museums might assist disadvantaged communities and boost processes of societal, cultural and environmental transformation. In order to discuss, how museums are changing their role in the contemporary society and are tackling new challenges, an analysis of the Cultural Connection Programme implemented in 1998 by The Field Museum (Chicago, IL, USA) and the Chicago Cultural Alliance consortium is presented.

Soziale Verwundbarkeit gegenüber Hochwasser: Lehren aus der Elbeflut 2002Social Vulnerability to Flooding: Lessons Learned from the Elbe Flood 2002

Compared to the well-established concept “vulnerability”, there has been less research on “social vulnerability”, particularly with respect to highly developed welfare states. Conducting an in-depth study on the consequences of the 2002 Elbe flood in three German communities, the paper tests the applicability of the concept of social vulnerability in a European context. The research was based on the assumption that it is an expression of social inequality. Yet, socially vulnerable groups were not clearly distinguishable. This does not suggest, however, that social vulnerability is not relevant in the European context. Rather, it is the outcome of a complex web of drivers that are of both social and contextual origin. Three implications are outlined for future studies: the need to integrate top-down and bottom-up oriented approaches to assess social vulnerability, to embed our understanding of social vulnerability better in overall societal transformation processes, and to consider existing governance and management systems and their interrelations as well as their consequences for social vulnerability.

MORE – Modeling for Resilience Thinking and Ecosystem Stewardship

Dynamic modeling has long been a valuable tool to support the analysis of ecological and economic systems, particularly their equilibrium properties and responses to internal or external forcing. Few studies so far, however, use modeling to address processes of change over time in coupled socialecological systems. In this contribution we explore the potential of dynamic modeling to support research and governance for adaptation and transformation in social-ecological systems (SES). We focus our assessment on resilience thinking (RT) and ecosystem stewardship (ES) as two perspectives that emphasize the need to understand and manage change in social-ecological systems. Modeling in resilience research has so far mainly been used to analyze resilience properties and regime shifts in ecological systems using generic models. Experiences from other fields such as ecology, social simulation and participatory research, however, indicate a much larger potential of modeling to support problem solving in real world contexts. We review model types and applications from these fields and align them with different tasks of RT and ES aimed at (1) enhancing understanding of SES dynamics, (2) fostering inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration and (3) supporting processes of societal transformation. We organize the different roles of modeling in the reference scheme MORE along the two main dimensions of developing a conceptually sound understanding of SES based in real-world contexts and facilitating processes of social learning. MORE provides guidance for the use of multiple methods to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of socialecological systems. We argue that modeling can enhance policy making and governance in complex SES by providing approaches that are conceptually sound, based in real-world problem contexts and take multiple values and knowledge systems into account.