Knowledge integration is a major challenge of interdisciplinary research. Substantially different stocks of knowledge based on different scientific backgrounds, uses of language, methodologies, and epistemologies must be integrated into the research process. Addressing this challenge, this paper exemplifies the process of interdisciplinary knowledge integration drawing on the example of the junior research group DynaMo—Mobility-Energy Dynamics in Urban Areas that deals with the sustainable transformation of urban mobility systems. This paper shows how we apply the boundary object concept in combination with the method of Constellation Analysis as vehicles for interdisciplinary knowledge integration. By innovatively combining the boundary object concept with Constellation Analysis we a) suggest a self-reflective tool for structuring the process of knowledge integration and b) further operationalize the boundary object with the help of core concepts. The approach is illustrated with the boundary object sustainable transformation of urban passenger mobility used by DynaMo. In doing so, the paper aims to add an instrument to the toolkit of inter- and transdisciplinary research and offers practical knowledge for its application.

EU environmental policies such as the Ambient Air Quality Directive 2008/50 are highly relevant in this age of the looming climate crisis and interconnected sustainable transitions. However, implementation efforts such as low-emission zones, road pricing, and driving bans affect citizens in heterogenous situations and in ways that evoke questions of socioecological justice. This has resulted in an increasingly polarized reluctance to respective governance across Europe. The EU policy implementation literature often omits these less clearly operationalized norms that EU policies transport and pays little attention to how stakeholders in cities discursively and practically translate EU directives. Constructivist norm research underlines the importance of ‘localizing’ by highlighting that justice does matter for norm translation. The environmental justice concept has, however, not been systematically introduced and referenced in the norm research literature. This article offers a heuristic to address this research gap by combining a translation perspective from International Relations norm research with an environmental justice lens. Following the journey of the Air Quality Directive 2008/50, we ask how urban implementation configures the Directive’s environmental justice dimension and why this is important for effective and sustainable EU governance. Empirically, we focus on action plans and participation processes regarding Directive 2008/50 in Brussels, Glasgow, and Hamburg. As a result, we show that EU environmental governance unfolds at the local level as a dynamic contestation of different distributive justice claims that then translate into concrete policies. The analysis indicates that those policies must procedurally integrate local knowledge and identity formation to enable comprehensively just sustainable transformations.

Historically, crises have been lauded for fostering European Union (EU) integration. Conversely, it has recently been predicted that the current ‘polycrisis’ will precipitate the EU's demise. However, this dichotomous perspective on crises is oversimplified. In this research note, we argue that a critical‐constructivist approach to norm contestation is uniquely placed to illuminate the shades of grey populating the continuum between these two extremes. As contestation effects may occur on both normative and institutional levels, a norm contestation approach has the potential to open the black box of crises by investigating the prerequisites, actors and processes of crisis and reminding us that these stages are linked in a circular way. Therefore, we argue that a conversation between EU studies and critical‐constructivist norm contestation research is crucial to advancing our understanding of the myriad effects crises have on the EU beyond the dichotomous distinction between integration and demise.

No abstract

This article explores the picture of sustainable mobility drawn by the world's biggest toy company, Lego, and how this picture is potentially received and consolidated by Lego players. The company has already attracted the attention of scholars and activists alike regarding their influence on attitudes toward gender and race. The question of their influence on sustainable development, however, has not yet been tackled, amidst the overdue socio-cultural transformation of sectors such as mobility. We combine research on discursive business power from the field of international political economy with insights into the rituals of play from social psychology as well as science and technology studies. The heuristic device of the re-signification process of discursive power aligns these perspectives and generates subquestions for the empirical investigation. As outlined in our methodology section, we deliver a qualitative-hermeneutic analysis of Lego building sets and commercials. In the results section we show, that playing with Lego products encourages children to re-signify the norms of unsustainable mobility, especially the dominance of the car. In the discussion and conclusion of our contribution we argue that the normalization of car-centered built environments and associated lifestyles, as well as omnipresent fossil-fuel dependency, hinder Lego's potential to deliver transformative stimuli that promote a more sustainable mobility sector.