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The Contribution of Established Inter-Disciplines to Sustainability Science

Journal article published in 2015 by Karen Kastenhofer, Ulrike Bechtold, Harald Wilfing
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Question mark in circle
Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

The term 'sustainability science' has been established to denote an innovative field of research which is problem driven and aims at understanding the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems. Sustainability science as a child of the early 21st century takes up challenges that have been formulated under the headers of post-normal science and Mode 2 research. Especially, the ambivalent relation between existing disciplinary structures and sustainability science has been emphasized frequently. The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields, such as human ecology, ecological economics, or technology assessment, can be interpreted as a logical consequence. But do these new inter- disciplines provide solutions to the formulated challenges? In their origins, they set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere, between scientific analysis and societal action in the context of sustainable development goals. Other interdisciplinary fields such as the science and technology studies are not yet perceived as prominent contributions to sustainability science, but might be drawn upon more consciously in the future. In the light of the newly formulated paradigm of sustainability science it seems appropriate to assess the contribution of current inter-disciplines to sustainable development, which is the main aim of this paper. Along several proposed features of sustainability science, journal papers of ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies are evaluated and compared. The results converge in one shared characteristic: Concise societal or political recommendations are not part of present day 'normal science', be it a disciplinary or an explicitly interdisciplinary research context.