The Grand Concepts of Environmental Studies Boundary objects between disciplines and policymakers

Abstract

Inter-and transdisciplinary collaboration is necessary in order to take on the environmental challenges facing humanity. Different disciplines, stakeholders, and policymakers need to work together to produce the knowledge necessary to create effective and just courses of action to counteract environmental problems. Recently, the notion of 'boundary objects' has been increasingly used within environmental studies to explain how some objects facilitate communication across the boundaries between different groups of actors. Due to their vague use in common contexts and specific use in each group, these objects let groups retain their own understanding while still communicating successfully with others. Novel concepts like 'resilience', 'ecosystem services', and 'sustainability' are due to their interpretive flexibility commonly described as boundary objects. However, in order to implement these concepts in concrete policy, some amount of standardization is needed. This presents a tension with the vagueness required for the facilitation of communication. This paper explicates whether and how novel concepts in environmental studies can be usefully understood as boundary objects. I review how boundary objects have been applied in the literature surrounding inter-and transdisciplinary collaborations, focusing especially on instances where concepts were considered to be boundary objects. I suggest that novel concepts in environmental studies can be understood as both 'grand concepts' in their most widespread use and as 'hubs and spokes' in local contexts. This allows for both vagueness at the macro level and standardization at the local level. I also explore how models, frameworks, and data have been successfully used as boundary objects.

Visualizing stakeholders’ willingness for collective action in participatory scenario planning

“…As a single case study, we are aware that the context-specific design of the visual tool might be considered a constraint for replicability. It is widely recognized as an inherent challenge that certain social science-based approaches and tools can be successful in a specific context and scale, but not in another (Star 2010, Lundgren 2021). To overcome this challenge, we have set out a detailed methodology that provides a practical orientation to be easily adapted to different contexts, processes, and formats (e.g., in-person workshops).…”

The role of a boundary object in legitimacy-making strategies for food waste innovation: the perspective of emergent circular supply chains

“…In recent years, the boundary object lens has gained fertile ground in environmental studies, where interdisciplinary works from a diverse set of stakeholders in both scientific and non-scientific worlds are prevalent (Levesque et al , 2019). Using boundary objects as a theoretical lens, scholars are interested in unravelling the instances where a particular object can operate as a boundary object to enable knowledge integrations and interdisciplinary collaborations (Lundgren, 2021). However, the majority of these studies treat the boundary object as a peace-making tool with the mere aim of reconciling disparate viewpoints and managing tensions (Hanson et al , 2020).…”

Examining S-T-E-M Teachers’ Design of Integrated STEM Lesson Plans

“…concepts, methods/techniques, artefacts or questions/justifications that have a dual and 'unspecified' nature: on the one hand they enact the boundaries by addressing and articulating meanings and perspectives (multivoicedness) of various intersecting worlds, and on the other hand these objects move beyond the boundary in that they have an unspecified quality of their own (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011;Barelli et al, 2022). Boundary objects have been implemented in a wide variety of contexts (Lundgren, 2021). Some examples are modelling and graphs, complexity in climate change, parabolic motion, coding/decoding in cryptography (Nipyrakis et al, 2023), sustainability and resilience in environmental studies (Lundgren, 2021).…”