No abstract

Reflexivity is arguably an important aspect of doing sustainability research. The inter-and transdisciplinary character of sustainability research, as well as its change-oriented agenda, require scholars to reflect on their role as researchers, their research focus and methodology, and its relation to academia and society. Using focus groups with 15 researchers at different stages in their academic career, we investigate three forms of reflexivity, i.e., personal, functional, and disciplinary, for sustainability researchers connected to the LUCID (Lund University Centre of Excellence for the Integration of the Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability) program experience. We further study similarities and differences in how the researchers experience reflexivity connected to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. We find that sustainability researchers experience all three forms of reflexivity. In particular, they are highly reflexive about how research on sustainability issues is dependent on theoretical pluralism; how research can contribute to the transformation of society; and how they, as inter-and transdisciplinary researchers, can construct a space for themselves within the academic system. We also find that transdisciplinary approaches make scholars add a layer of reflexivity to the three categories studied, concerning collaboration beyond academia. Finally, we find that reflexivity about these issues seems to be crucial for how sustainability researchers construct a space for themselves within the academic system. PhD graduates from the LUCID program are deeply reflexive about the function of academic boundaries. It is this awareness that enables them to construct an academic identity entirely beyond boundaries. This result has important implications for PhD programs focused toward sustainability issues, in terms of a need to provide opportunities for PhD students to develop reflexivity.

Sociological insights are often underutilized in sustainability science. To further strengthen its commitment to interdisciplinary problem-driven, solutions-oriented research, sustainability science can better incorporate fundamental sociological conceptions into its core. We highlight four aspects of sociological thought that we consider crucial for advancing sustainability science research: (1) social construction and critical realism, (2) structure and agency, (3) historical specificity, and (4) collective action. We draw on examples from sociology to support a dynamic understanding of how social relations interact with the bio-geo-physical world. This necessary integration of sociological insights, we argue, is critical to generate comprehensive assessments of the causes and consequences of human-induced environmental change, and tend to be overlooked or oversimplified within the field of sustainability science. Beyond that, it can stimulate the development and implementation of viable solutions to sustainability challenges.

The question whether a single extreme climate event, such as a hurricane or heatwave, can be attributed to human induced climate change has become a vibrant field of research and discussion in recent years. Proponents of the most common approach (probabilistic event attribution) argue for using single event attribution for advancing climate policy, not least in the context of loss and damages, while critics are raising concerns about inductive risks which may result in misguided policies. Here, we present six ethical predicaments, rooted in epistemic choices of single event attribution for policy making, with a focus on problems related to loss and damage. Our results show that probabilistic event attribution is particularly sensitive to these predicaments, rendering the choice of method value laden and hence political. Our review shows how the putatively apolitical approach becomes political and deeply problematic from a climate justice perspective. We also suggest that extreme event attribution (EEA) is becoming more and more irrelevant for projecting loss and damages as socio‐ecological systems are increasingly destabilized by climate change. We conclude by suggesting a more causality driven approach for understanding loss and damage, that is, less prone to the ethical predicaments of EEA.

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.