Pub Date : 2021-06-11DOI: 10.1177/05390184211018123
J. Schneider, S. Horbach, K. Aagaard
With this commentary we respond to Olof Hallonsten’s recent plea to stop evaluating science. In particular, we challenge two central premises of Hallonsten’s argument, regarding both the scope of his argument and the claim that ‘exogenous’ metric evaluation of science on its own explains failures of the current scientific enterprise to produce certified knowledge. Even though we acknowledge that ‘external’ evaluation mechanisms of science likely amplify problematic practices within science, they do not suffice to explain the crisis situation sketched out by Hallonsten and others. Instead, we make a plea to the academic community to introspect on its own practices. We argue that, to an overwhelmingly degree, these research practices shape the reward and quality assurance system of science. Discussing the formal and informal quality assurance mechanisms of science, we conclude that the apparent crisis in science is cultural and organizational, deeply internally rooted, and inseparable from researchers’ daily practices and personal responsibility. Most importantly, this concerns the central role of the academic community in controlling and evaluating how science is practiced, how merit is defined, and how decisions of promotion and rewards are made.
{"title":"Stop blaming external factors: A historical-sociological argument","authors":"J. Schneider, S. Horbach, K. Aagaard","doi":"10.1177/05390184211018123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211018123","url":null,"abstract":"With this commentary we respond to Olof Hallonsten’s recent plea to stop evaluating science. In particular, we challenge two central premises of Hallonsten’s argument, regarding both the scope of his argument and the claim that ‘exogenous’ metric evaluation of science on its own explains failures of the current scientific enterprise to produce certified knowledge. Even though we acknowledge that ‘external’ evaluation mechanisms of science likely amplify problematic practices within science, they do not suffice to explain the crisis situation sketched out by Hallonsten and others. Instead, we make a plea to the academic community to introspect on its own practices. We argue that, to an overwhelmingly degree, these research practices shape the reward and quality assurance system of science. Discussing the formal and informal quality assurance mechanisms of science, we conclude that the apparent crisis in science is cultural and organizational, deeply internally rooted, and inseparable from researchers’ daily practices and personal responsibility. Most importantly, this concerns the central role of the academic community in controlling and evaluating how science is practiced, how merit is defined, and how decisions of promotion and rewards are made.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"329 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211018123","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45217401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-11DOI: 10.1177/05390184211022101
M. Khomyakov
This article discusses different approaches to the evaluation of science and higher education. The author distinguishes three types of research assessment: one where substantial evaluation is an integral part of the research itself, a moral one, which implies ethical assessment of the research procedures and its implications, and a utilitarian assessment, which refers to the weighting of the research costs and benefits for society. It is this third type of evaluation that the article discusses in details. The author demonstrates that instead of evaluating costs and benefits per se, utilitarian evaluation today is based upon bibliometric indicators, which provide false expectations of objectivity and quantifiability and about the democratic nature of such research assessment. Bibliometric research indicators form also the basis of the institutional assessment of higher education organizations in the framework of world university rankings. The article problematizes the simplified concept of research university, in correspondence to which higher education institutions are evaluated according to the conducted research. The author claims that quantitative evaluation motivates individuals and organizations to adopt a certain type of opportunistic behavior, harmful for the organic development of research.
{"title":"Should science be evaluated?","authors":"M. Khomyakov","doi":"10.1177/05390184211022101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211022101","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses different approaches to the evaluation of science and higher education. The author distinguishes three types of research assessment: one where substantial evaluation is an integral part of the research itself, a moral one, which implies ethical assessment of the research procedures and its implications, and a utilitarian assessment, which refers to the weighting of the research costs and benefits for society. It is this third type of evaluation that the article discusses in details. The author demonstrates that instead of evaluating costs and benefits per se, utilitarian evaluation today is based upon bibliometric indicators, which provide false expectations of objectivity and quantifiability and about the democratic nature of such research assessment. Bibliometric research indicators form also the basis of the institutional assessment of higher education organizations in the framework of world university rankings. The article problematizes the simplified concept of research university, in correspondence to which higher education institutions are evaluated according to the conducted research. The author claims that quantitative evaluation motivates individuals and organizations to adopt a certain type of opportunistic behavior, harmful for the organic development of research.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"308 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211022101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43330035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-15DOI: 10.1177/05390184211012179
Sarah Lenz
Starting from the framework of the ‘futures of sustainability’ this article asks whether or not digital technologies are discursively framed in such a way that they can offer a solution to socio-ecological problems. The initial observation is that the mediation and interactions of digitalization and sustainability have recently been the subject of political debates. Using the mapping procedure of situational analysis, the discourses around digital technologies as they emerge in the ideal-typical paths of sustainability – modernization, transformation and control – are identified and presented. The results show that similar technologies provoke varying discourses in the three possibility spaces of future sustainability, which can also be attributed to different normative foundations.
{"title":"Is digitalization a problem solver or a fire accelerator? Situating digital technologies in sustainability discourses","authors":"Sarah Lenz","doi":"10.1177/05390184211012179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211012179","url":null,"abstract":"Starting from the framework of the ‘futures of sustainability’ this article asks whether or not digital technologies are discursively framed in such a way that they can offer a solution to socio-ecological problems. The initial observation is that the mediation and interactions of digitalization and sustainability have recently been the subject of political debates. Using the mapping procedure of situational analysis, the discourses around digital technologies as they emerge in the ideal-typical paths of sustainability – modernization, transformation and control – are identified and presented. The results show that similar technologies provoke varying discourses in the three possibility spaces of future sustainability, which can also be attributed to different normative foundations.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"39 6","pages":"188 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211012179","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41302607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-15DOI: 10.1177/05390184211005964
K. Brand
One of the central problems of social-theoretical sustainability studies is their high degree of arbitrariness. To increase the transparency of these studies, this article outlines a frame of reference for a systematic comparison of theoretical sustainability approaches that intends to clarify their thematic focus, theoretical premises, implicit assumptions and blind spots. This frame of reference will then be applied to the research program ‘Futures of Sustainability: Modernization, Transformation, Control’ directed by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel at the University of Hamburg.
{"title":"Futures of a ‘halved sustainability’: Critical comments on Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel’s research program","authors":"K. Brand","doi":"10.1177/05390184211005964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211005964","url":null,"abstract":"One of the central problems of social-theoretical sustainability studies is their high degree of arbitrariness. To increase the transparency of these studies, this article outlines a frame of reference for a systematic comparison of theoretical sustainability approaches that intends to clarify their thematic focus, theoretical premises, implicit assumptions and blind spots. This frame of reference will then be applied to the research program ‘Futures of Sustainability: Modernization, Transformation, Control’ directed by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel at the University of Hamburg.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"272 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211005964","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42876424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-15DOI: 10.1177/05390184211011437
P. Degens
This article explores the relation between ownership and sustainability on a conceptual level. It specifically examines different imaginaries of sustainable property by asking how private property rights and their restrictions are conceptualized as instruments for sustainability. To do so, conflicting notions of property that underlie Western jurisprudence and political theory are contrasted. This brings us to the identification of two major traditions in property thought that build on atomist or relational conceptions of society and property, respectively. Property might be conceived as an owner’s exclusive control over an object, or as a ‘bundle of rights’ that comprises entitlements, restrictions, and obligations to various actors. Largely within the paradigm of modernization as a trajectory of sustainability, these two fundamental traditions in property theory relate to different approaches to encode sustainability into property law: i) propertization, i.e. the extension of private property forms, as in the case of carbon emissions trading schemes; ii) the acknowledgment of social and environmental obligations inherent to property, illustrated by the social obligation norm in German law.
{"title":"Towards sustainable property? Exploring the entanglement of ownership and sustainability","authors":"P. Degens","doi":"10.1177/05390184211011437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211011437","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relation between ownership and sustainability on a conceptual level. It specifically examines different imaginaries of sustainable property by asking how private property rights and their restrictions are conceptualized as instruments for sustainability. To do so, conflicting notions of property that underlie Western jurisprudence and political theory are contrasted. This brings us to the identification of two major traditions in property thought that build on atomist or relational conceptions of society and property, respectively. Property might be conceived as an owner’s exclusive control over an object, or as a ‘bundle of rights’ that comprises entitlements, restrictions, and obligations to various actors. Largely within the paradigm of modernization as a trajectory of sustainability, these two fundamental traditions in property theory relate to different approaches to encode sustainability into property law: i) propertization, i.e. the extension of private property forms, as in the case of carbon emissions trading schemes; ii) the acknowledgment of social and environmental obligations inherent to property, illustrated by the social obligation norm in German law.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"209 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211011437","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45647873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-05DOI: 10.1177/05390184211007107
Benno Fladvad
How do societies respond to ‘super wicked’ problems that often occur at very large spatial and temporal scales? On the one hand, there exists a tendency to conceive of liberal democracy as inconvenient, inflexible and as incapable of dealing with complex and elusive issues such as climate change or questions of environmental injustice. On the other, these issues have given rise to manifold ‘emerging public spheres’ inside and outside existing democratic institutions. Since both of these tendencies refer to the idea of sustainability, this contribution discusses the relationships between different future trajectories of sustainability and democracy in particular with regards to their inherent spatialities. Building on this, and following the works of contemporary political theorists and human geographers, it suggests conceptualizing democracy from a pragmatist point of view as coined by the North American philosopher John Dewey. In doing so, it becomes possible to reframe democracy in the Anthropocene and to conceive of it as an ever-evolving phenomenon of problem-solving communities that convene around different issues of shared concern. This perspective allows thinking beyond theorizations of global democracy, in favor of a democratic model that shows openness for social complexity and uncertainty and which accepts that the spaces of democratic action are not given from the outset but that they are brought into being by the emerging publics themselves.
{"title":"Rethinking democracy in times of crises: Towards a pragmatist approach to the geographies of emerging publics","authors":"Benno Fladvad","doi":"10.1177/05390184211007107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211007107","url":null,"abstract":"How do societies respond to ‘super wicked’ problems that often occur at very large spatial and temporal scales? On the one hand, there exists a tendency to conceive of liberal democracy as inconvenient, inflexible and as incapable of dealing with complex and elusive issues such as climate change or questions of environmental injustice. On the other, these issues have given rise to manifold ‘emerging public spheres’ inside and outside existing democratic institutions. Since both of these tendencies refer to the idea of sustainability, this contribution discusses the relationships between different future trajectories of sustainability and democracy in particular with regards to their inherent spatialities. Building on this, and following the works of contemporary political theorists and human geographers, it suggests conceptualizing democracy from a pragmatist point of view as coined by the North American philosopher John Dewey. In doing so, it becomes possible to reframe democracy in the Anthropocene and to conceive of it as an ever-evolving phenomenon of problem-solving communities that convene around different issues of shared concern. This perspective allows thinking beyond theorizations of global democracy, in favor of a democratic model that shows openness for social complexity and uncertainty and which accepts that the spaces of democratic action are not given from the outset but that they are brought into being by the emerging publics themselves.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"230 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/05390184211007107","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49218442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-08DOI: 10.1177/0539018421996264
Sighard Neckel, Martina Hasenfratz
The public debate on climate change and environmental destruction belongs to those social conflicts that are carried out with an especially great emotional intension. In these disputes, the facet of emotions ranges from negative feelings such as shame, guilt and grief, to positive ones such as hope and compassion. In our paper, we put a focus on these feelings, drawing a conceptual map of emotions triggered by ecological crises. In doing so, our aim is to highlight the ambivalences of the intense emotionality of climate change and its societal effects. The great attention and the reflexivity accorded to ‘climate emotions’, however, should not obscure the view towards those emotional dynamics that are responsible for concealing and denying ecological problems. Based on ethnographic and other empirical studies from social sciences we outline that it is precisely these little-illuminated aspects of emotional re-framing and public emotional silence, which often turn out to be particularly consequential moments in politics. Hence, the emotional motives behind the scene should not go unnoticed in sociological research on emotions within the ecological crises.
{"title":"Climate emotions and emotional climates: The emotional map of ecological crises and the blind spots on our sociological landscapes","authors":"Sighard Neckel, Martina Hasenfratz","doi":"10.1177/0539018421996264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018421996264","url":null,"abstract":"The public debate on climate change and environmental destruction belongs to those social conflicts that are carried out with an especially great emotional intension. In these disputes, the facet of emotions ranges from negative feelings such as shame, guilt and grief, to positive ones such as hope and compassion. In our paper, we put a focus on these feelings, drawing a conceptual map of emotions triggered by ecological crises. In doing so, our aim is to highlight the ambivalences of the intense emotionality of climate change and its societal effects. The great attention and the reflexivity accorded to ‘climate emotions’, however, should not obscure the view towards those emotional dynamics that are responsible for concealing and denying ecological problems. Based on ethnographic and other empirical studies from social sciences we outline that it is precisely these little-illuminated aspects of emotional re-framing and public emotional silence, which often turn out to be particularly consequential moments in politics. Hence, the emotional motives behind the scene should not go unnoticed in sociological research on emotions within the ecological crises.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"253 - 271"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0539018421996264","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46581445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0539018421996266
Frank Adloff, Sighard Neckel
The increased awareness of the exploitation of resources, as well as the negative ecological consequences of the modern way of life, has made sustainability a central guiding concept of social change in the 21st century. Sustainability has taken the form of a largely undisputed normative model of development, behind which, however, very different conceptions of the future are concealed: from the attempt to initiate a major socio-ecological transformation, through modernization processes, to control practices in a state of emergency. This special issue aims at these practices but is not primarily concerned with sustainability as a normative guiding idea that can just be pursued. However, a sociology of sustainability has to ask which conflictual spaces of possibility for socioeconomic change open up when very different ideas of a sustainable future are in conflict with each other. Three ideal-typical trajectories or futures of sustainability emerge, which can be theoretically grasped with the terms modernization, transformation and control. These three concepts of a sustainable future can also be found in the ambivalent imaginations, practices and structures of various constellations of actors.
{"title":"Futures of sustainability: Trajectories and conflicts","authors":"Frank Adloff, Sighard Neckel","doi":"10.1177/0539018421996266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018421996266","url":null,"abstract":"The increased awareness of the exploitation of resources, as well as the negative ecological consequences of the modern way of life, has made sustainability a central guiding concept of social change in the 21st century. Sustainability has taken the form of a largely undisputed normative model of development, behind which, however, very different conceptions of the future are concealed: from the attempt to initiate a major socio-ecological transformation, through modernization processes, to control practices in a state of emergency. This special issue aims at these practices but is not primarily concerned with sustainability as a normative guiding idea that can just be pursued. However, a sociology of sustainability has to ask which conflictual spaces of possibility for socioeconomic change open up when very different ideas of a sustainable future are in conflict with each other. Three ideal-typical trajectories or futures of sustainability emerge, which can be theoretically grasped with the terms modernization, transformation and control. These three concepts of a sustainable future can also be found in the ambivalent imaginations, practices and structures of various constellations of actors.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"159 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0539018421996266","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48408801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0539018421999562
Gerard Delanty
This essay is a comment on the research program launched by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel. My comment is specifically focused on their research agenda as outlined in their trend-setting article, ‘Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation, and control: A conceptual framework’. The comment is also addressed more generally to the research program of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Futures of Sustainability’. I raise three issues: the first relates to the very idea of the future; the second concerns the notion of social imaginaries and the third question is focused on the idea of social transformation.
{"title":"Futures of sustainability: Perspectives on social imaginaries and social transformation. A comment on Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel’s research program","authors":"Gerard Delanty","doi":"10.1177/0539018421999562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018421999562","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is a comment on the research program launched by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel. My comment is specifically focused on their research agenda as outlined in their trend-setting article, ‘Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation, and control: A conceptual framework’. The comment is also addressed more generally to the research program of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Futures of Sustainability’. I raise three issues: the first relates to the very idea of the future; the second concerns the notion of social imaginaries and the third question is focused on the idea of social transformation.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"285 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0539018421999562","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65706867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-31DOI: 10.1177/0539018421998947
Frank Adloff, Iris Hilbrich
Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected.
{"title":"Practices of sustainability and the enactment of their natures/cultures: Ecosystem services, rights of nature, and geoengineering","authors":"Frank Adloff, Iris Hilbrich","doi":"10.1177/0539018421998947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018421998947","url":null,"abstract":"Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected.","PeriodicalId":47697,"journal":{"name":"Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales","volume":"60 1","pages":"168 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0539018421998947","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43794139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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