Sustaining sustainability science: The role of established inter-disciplines

Ecological Economics 70 (2011) 835–843

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Ecological Economics j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

Analysis

Sustaining sustainability science: The role of established inter-disciplines Karen Kastenhofer a,⁎, Ulrike Bechtold a, Harald Wilfing b a b

Institute of Technology Assessment, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Strohg. 45/5, A-1030 Wien, Austria Dept. of Anthropology, Universität Wien, Althanstrasse 14, A-1091 Wien, Austria

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 27 July 2010 Received in revised form 8 December 2010 Accepted 8 December 2010 Available online 17 January 2011 Keywords: Sustainability science Technology assessment Ecological economics Science and technology studies Inter-disciplines

a b s t r a c t The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields such as ecological economics, human ecology or technology assessment can be interpreted as a logical consequence of striving for new sustainability sciences that address current global, multi-dimensional and multi-scale challenges. These set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere, between scientific analysis and societal action. This paper aims at re-assessing the contribution of established inter-disciplines to sustainable development. Journal articles of ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies are evaluated and compared along several proposed features of sustainability science. The results converge in two crucial aspects. (1) Concise societal or political recommendations are not part of present day ‘normal science’, be it a disciplinary or an explicitly interdisciplinary research context. (2) Participatory exercises are rarely applied as a socio-politically embedded practice, despite a high interest in such exercises as an object of study and discussion. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The term sustainability science has been established to denote innovative, problem driven research that aims at understanding the dynamics of coupled social–ecological systems (Kates et al., 2001; Perrings, 2007). As a child of the early 21st century, it takes up challenges and exhibits characteristics that have been emphasized from the 1990s onwards under headers such as ‘post-normal science’ and ‘mode 2’ research (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny et al., 2001): extended peer communities and participatory approaches, the acknowledgement of extended facts and a high level of systemic integration, interdisciplinary collaboration and normative sensitivity, as well as the production of societally robust and politically relevant knowledge via use-inspired basic research.1 As an ‘umbrella term’ (Rip and Voss, 2009), sustainability science delineates an ‘array of increasingly vibrant movements’ (Clark and Dickson, 2003), an emerging ‘transdisciplinary effort’ consisting ‘of a plethora of ideas and perspectives’ focussing on a joint goal (namely to obtain ‘the much-needed symbiosis between nature and culture’, Rapport, 2007:77), a ‘vibrant’ and ‘maturing field’ (Clark, 2007), a ‘not yet mature, applied science’ (Ostrom et al., 2007), a ‘dynamic and evolving field of inquiry’ or even an ‘emerging discipline’ (Komiyama and Takeuchi, 2006). The ambivalent relation between the existing

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 43 1 51581 6580; fax: + 43 1 7109883. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Kastenhofer). 1 Recently, sustainability research has also been discussed via eco-technologies and hence characterized as a ‘technoscience’, evoking a more critical perspective (Schwarz and Nordmann, 2010). 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.12.008

(disciplinary) structures and sustainability science has been voiced frequently. Perrings (2007:15179) exemplarily notes that although “the development of discipline based science has been the source of almost all scientific advances in the last century it has also limited the capacity of science to address problems that span multiple disciplines.” Following this line of characterizing sustainability science, some research fields that emerged earlier onwards, in the 1970s and 1980s, can be seen as its forerunners. The then newly established inter-disciplines human ecology, social ecology, ecological economics, and technology assessment already aimed at providing answers to the formulated challenges. In their origins, they clearly set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere in the context of sustainable development goals. Other interdisciplinary fields such as science and technology studies are not yet perceived as prominent contributions to sustainability science, but might also be drawn upon more consciously in the future. In the light of the newly formulated paradigm of sustainability science it seems appropriate to (re-)assess the contribution of these (less elusive) inter-disciplines to sustainability science.2 The main aim of this paper therefore is to characterize established inter-disciplines along characteristics that have been put forward for sustainability science during the recent years and – upon this basis – to address their role within a comprehensive sustainability science agenda. 2 Kajikawa (2008) aims at directly analysing sustainability science via a study of three closely related journals. As a result, diverse definitions, ten different thematic research domains (forestry, climate, health, biodiversity, etc.) and seven basic research components (goal setting, indicator setting, indicator measurement, causal chain analysis, forecasting, backcasting, and problem–solution chain analysis) of sustainability science are identified and discussed. Other than in this paper, Kajikawa (2008) does not assess whether the prescriptive definitions and outlines are actually realized within the research activities presented.

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To achieve this goal, the more general characteristics ascribed to sustainability science are translated into concrete, observable parameters. Scientific papers stemming from three different established inter-disciplines, namely ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies, are analysed along these parameters. The results are presented, implications for the status of the three fields as inter- and transdisciplinary endeavours are discussed and their role in the context of establishing a sustainable science is addressed.

2. The Cases of Three Established Inter-Disciplines During the second half of the last century, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, a couple of new academic fields with a clearly interdisciplinary background and a more or less loose connection to societal issues and movements of this time emerged.3 Some of these inter-disciplines represent established areas of research today. In the following section, three examples are introduced, including their interdisciplinary background, their issue-oriented character and their specific connection to the agenda of sustainable development.

2.1. Ecological Economics Ecological Economics (EE) can be defined as the study of relationships between human housekeeping and nature's housekeeping (Common and Stagl, 2005). The general research focus of EE is to address the interdependence of societal economies and natural ecosystems over time and space (Costanza et al., 1997). Contrary to mainstream economics, in EE natural capital is added to the typical asset analysis of land, labour and financial capital (Røpke, 2004). EE emphasizes the fact that our physical world has a limited carrying capacity and that natural capital is finite. Contrary to environmental economics, EE treats the societal economy as a subsystem of the ecosystem and emphasizes the preservation of natural capital. Seeking for commonly perceived roots of EE, two different origins can be detected: one pathway derives from natural sciences, especially from ecology, and the other one leads back to classical economics. Costanza (2003) dates back the first contemporary efforts in bridging the gap between economics and ecology to the 1960s when Kenneth E. Boulding published his essay: “The economics of the coming spaceship Earth” (Boulding, 1966) and Herman E. Daly made a contribution entitled: “On Economics as a life cycle” (Daly, 1968). Also the workings of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, which were coined as “Bioeconomics” by Gowdy and Mesner (1998), can be seen as direction giving. From these beginnings it took quite a time until regular scientific activities in EE were initiated. In 1982 Ann-Mari Jansson organized the symposium entitled: “Integrating Ecology and Economics” in Sweden (Jansson, 1984). This event can be considered as one of the first opportunities where ecologists and environmental economists tried to find a common language (Costanza, 2003). In 1987, two participants of the Swedish meeting, Robert Costanza and Herman E. Daly, edited a special issue of the Journal Ecological Modelling on the topic of EE (Costanza and Daly, 1987). This special issue produced sufficiently enthusiastic responses (Costanza, 2003) and therefore encouraged further activities. In 1988 the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) was founded and in February 1989 the first Volume 3 Interdisciplinarity takes different forms (for the U.S. context, see Klein, 1990). It is institutionalised temporarily in the form of interdisciplinary projects or, on a longterm basis, as interdisciplinary communities and centres. It is represented by multi- or interdisciplinary research teams or researchers with a multi- or interdisciplinary affiliation, aiming at interdisciplinary objectives and modes of research (based upon interdisciplinary research rationales, scopes, objects, ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies and methods). For a detailed literature review, an elaborate framework and empirical analysis of interdisciplinary research, see Huutoniemi et al. (2010). Unlike our study, Huutoniemi et al. (2010) analyse a broad range of (national) research proposals, not research papers within specific research fields.

of Ecological Economics, the “Transdisciplinary Journal of the ISEE”, was published. Presently EE can be seen as a well established scientific community with all its characteristic activities. But the identity of EE as a field of research has been described as still rather diverse. No generally accepted theoretical framework and no clearly defined knowledge structure exist (Faber, 2008). According to Faber (2008), EE can be defined by its focus on nature, justice and time. Issues of EE like intergenerational equity, characteristics of environmental change and uncertainty of long-term processes can also be subsumed under the term sustainability science (Funtowicz and O'Connor, 1999). Both, EE and sustainability science can therefore be seen as reactions of the concerned scientific community to coupled economic and ecological challenges, which were increasingly framed as problems of an (un) sustainable development. Both approaches try to develop strategies to cope with the uncertainties of the dynamics of socio-ecological systems (Berkes et al., 2003; Anderies et al., 2007). 2.2. Technology Assessment Technology Assessment (TA) was established in the 70s of the last century, a time when society was facing large technologies (nuclear power, space technology, etc.) and related new risks. It was the overarching aim of TA to comprehensively assess future impacts and options (benefits and risks) connected to (large) technologies in order to provide well balanced advice for policy makers. The US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (1972–1995) was the first TA institute to be established and the only one to be closed down again. A predominantly expert driven TA, indirectly also involving stakeholders and interest groups especially in the beginning of research and in the review process was coined. Following the US example, European TA institutions such as the German Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (founded 1976) were established. In the late 1980s, TA institutions with a close link to the parliaments were also founded.4 Since 2004, the Network TA (NTA) provides a platform for the German speaking TA community including a biannual TA conference. Joint projects (as reported in TAMI 2004; Decker and Ladikas, 2004; and Joss and Bellucci, 2002) show a close collaboration of the European TA community as well as sustained work on a common understanding of TA itself and related core concepts and terms (Decker, 2008). In the last decades, TA has extended its original goal of providing exante assessments of technologies towards complex learning processes and providing an arena to broaden the knowledge base on which societal decisions are based (Rodemeyer, 2005). This goes along with the transition of TA as a “watchdog” in terms of an early alerter to contemporary TA as a “tracker” as Smits et al. (2008:3) put it.5 Approaches like constructive TA (Rip et al., 1995) and real-time TA aim at directly integrating TA into technological research and development and strengthening its impact (Sarewitz, 2005; Guston and Sarewitz, 2002). In rapidly evolving areas such as converging technologies, TA is even attributed the role of an active player, contributing to processes of shaping the (emerging) technologies at stake. A shift from technology-driven approaches to problem-driven or sustainability-oriented approaches can also be observed. Technologies are no longer studied in isolation but as a part of social(–ecological) systems (Grunwald, 2002:247-265). TA deploys the insights of diverse disciplines and involves a broad range of experts as well as actors. Participatory methods gained increasing importance since the 1990s to foster the democratization of technology policy and to facilitate public deliberation. “Upstream engagement” is, according to Wilsdon (2005), a promising way to provide arenas for the development of visions and the discussion of ends and purposes of science and technology, thereby overcoming a linear model of technology 4 E.g. in Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, France or at the European level. 5 Referring to Smits et al. (1991).

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development. TA institutions employ natural and social scientists, engineers and philosophers. Although rooted in and referring to their original disciplines in the course of their work, TA-researchers do more of a meta-research and widen their perspectives. Therefore, it seems appropriate to conceive TA as an inter-discipline. The main intention of Technology Assessment (TA) is to provide policy makers with a solid, non-partisan information basis on consequences or yet invisible prospects of technologies and their applications. Transcending the claim to provide “neutral knowledge” (Bimber, 1996), TA institutions also act as “boundary institutions” (Guston, 2001), their work being tightly connected to the political agenda and the challenge to balance scientific independence with political relevance (Rodemeyer, 2005). Besides policy makers, the sciences and the public are important addressees of TA. This situation necessitates adequate communication on the levels of 1) a continuous real-world contextualization of research activities and 2) the communication of results or recommendations to the public and to policy actors.

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Table 1 General properties and parameters investigated. General properties

Parameters (categories) investigated

(i) Cross-dimensional integration (ii) Multi-level integration

Reference to the (a) social sphere, (b) cultural sphere, (c) ecological sphere Reference to (a) local, (b) regional/national, (c) global level Addressing change over time

(iii) Acknowledgement of time dimension (iv) Orientation towards the future (v) Extended peer community (vi) Orientation towards sociopolitical action/decisions

(vii) Cross-reference

Addressing the future Participatory methodology Recommendation (a) very broad/general in content, no explicit addressee; (b) very broad/ general in content, explicit addressee; (c) specific in content, no explicit addressee; (d) specific in content, explicit addressee Mentioning “sustainab*”, “ecological economics”, “technology assessment” and “social studies of science” or “science and technology studies”

2.3. Science and Technology Studies Science and Technology Studies (STS6) were institutionalised as an interdisciplinary field from the 1970s onwards. Two important societies, the America-based Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Society for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), were founded in 1975 and 1981. The origins of STS lie in the philosophy of science, in historical studies of science and the relatively younger sociology of science and sociology of technology. Further contributions to STS come from psychology, anthropology and cultural studies. The fields investigated within STS comprise the sciences and medicine, since the 1980s also technology, and most recently the humanities. In that way, STS bridge the gap between the natural and the social world in a specific way: societal aspects of our society's scientific approach to nature and its technoscientific culture are investigated by sociological, philosophical and/or historical means. Processes of de-construction and reflexive re-construction are initiated to enable a broader deliberation about science, society and STS themselves. Throughout their historical development, STS focussed on a variety of issues while addressing science, technology and medicine: After a lively debate on constructivism, relativism and empiricism had emerged throughout the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Gieryn, 1982), interests and norms and, from the 1990s onwards, politics and the political (e.g., Wynne 1992) were added as topics of analysis and discussion. The relationship between STS scholars and scientists also attracted attention in this period (cf. Fuller, 1994, or Labinger, 1995, and the ensuing discussions). Lately, the role of STS scholars as actors in specific arenas starts to be acknowledged and debated (cf. Collins and Evans 2002 and the ensuing discussion). Jung (2009) reports on a workshop the ETH Zürich organized in co-operation with the Swiss Association for STS that was dedicated on specifying and discussing the role of STS scholars and comes up with a list of possible roles and positions, like ironists, reformers, rebels, servants, advocates, midwifes, translators, observers, participants or experts. Still, a first glance over STS publications reveals that explicit political recommendations or references to normative standpoints are rare in scholarly journals like Social Studies of Science or Science, Technology, and Human Values. Herein STS differs from technology assessment, which has 6 STS is also used by some authors as an acronym for “science, technology and society”, a denotation referring mostly to the same scholarly field. In the following, STS is broadly defined, including the more specific approaches and/or different varieties or local schools, like SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge) and the strong program of the Edinburgh school, SCOT (social construction of technology) and SST (social shaping of technology) or the actor–network theory. The recent use of STS as an acronym for the “Science and Technology for Sustainability Program” launched by the US National Academies points at a possible convergence of science and technology studies with sustainability science. However, this meaning of STS is not adopted here.

otherwise, at the methodological and topical level, grown ever closer to STS in the past decade(s). The relationship of sustainability science and STS has not yet been addressed at all, neither by proponents of sustainability science nor by STS scholars. Indirect connections can be detected, e.g. in epistemological discussions in the wake of the post-normal science paradigm proposed by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) and the concept of Mode 2 research (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny et al., 2001). Another indirect link between sustainability science and STS can be seen in the (mostly implicit) political motivation of critical science and technology studies, the recent involvement of STS scholars in participatory exercises and decision making processes (especially in the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark) and the (increasingly explicit) references to the political in the STS literature. One direct link or even overlap between sustainability science, technology assessment (especially as constructive technology assessment) and STS exists in the sociological study of sustainable technologies (or socio-technical systems). 3. Materials and Methods The major question of the empirical part of this study is to what extent technology assessment, science and technology studies and ecological economics represent a contribution to sustainability science. To address this question, we have to consider the specific characteristics of (valid) sustainability science. In the literature (e.g., Kates et al., 2001; Clark and Dickson, 2003; Komiyama and Takeuchi, 2006; Clark, 2007; Perrings, 2007; Rapport, 2007; and Kajikawa, 2008), it is described as driven by societal problems, addressing coupled social–ecological systems, addressing complexity, uncertainty, cross scale (micro/macro) and multilevel interactions (local, regional, national and global), acknowledging change, evolution and dynamics (long term perspectives), providing prognosis, (re-)contextualizing research and results, addressing normativity (acknowledging and explicating values), engaging in a dialogue with practitioners, implementing participation (participatory methods, extended peer review), consciously defining and enacting its societal role by staying independent, communicating results to society and formulating policy advise.7 For the empirical analysis, this lengthy list of characteristics was translated into more specific properties and respective observable

7 Directly pointing at aspects and activities that transcend mere knowledge production (addressing uncertainties and norms, engaging in a dialogue or organizing participation) is clearly less popular, even on the more visionary discursive level and in the context of a mission-oriented sustainable science.

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parameters (Table 1). The cross-dimensional integration equates a reference to the social, cultural and ecological sphere. Multi-level integration equates a reference to the local, regional/national and global level. To address development, change over time and a future horizon have to be included empirically and/or in the discussion. To guarantee an extended peer community and a diffusion of research results, a participatory methodology is pre-requisite. The orientation towards socio-political action and decisions can be assessed by the presence or absence of specific recommendation to specific actors. Finally, crossreference was measured by searching for specific terms in the journals' data bases. In a next step, one or two representative scholarly journals were selected for each inter-discipline. Of these, a random sample of papers published in 2008 was defined, amounting to around 30 papers per interdiscipline. Each paper was analysed following the pre-defined categories (Table 1), attributing a ‘0’, when the property was absent, a ‘1’ if partly present,8 and a ‘2’ if explicitly present. Finally, the cross-reference between the three inter-disciplines was measured by assessing the cross-reference within journal papers between 2001 and 2008. The journals selected for each field include the international journal “Ecological Economics” for ecological economics; the international journal “Poiesis & Praxis” as well as the German journal “Technikfolgenabschätzung — Theorie und Praxis” for technology assessment9; and for science and technology studies the two international journals “Social Studies of Science” and “Science, Technology and Human Values”. The journal “Ecological Economics” is the official journal of the ‘International Society of Ecological Economics’. The first volume was published in February 1989. Since then the journal has progressed from an initial 4 issues per year to 12 issues per year, with an impact factor of 2.422 (as of October 2010). As is announced on the journal homepage10 (www.elsevier.com), the journal is concerned with extending and integrating the study and management of “nature's household” (ecology) and “humankind's household” (economics). This integration is necessary because conceptual and professional isolation have led to economic and environmental policies which are mutually destructive rather than reinforcing in the long term. The journal is described as “transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open”. Currently the journal provides six different sections, ‘News and Views’, ‘Commentary’, ‘Surveys’, ‘Methodological and Ideological Options’, ‘Analysis’ and finally ‘Book Reviews’. The articles of these sections have various limitations of space and their numbers differ from issue to issue. Occasionally, special issues with a thematic focus are published. In the selected year, 2008, 336 articles were published. 38 papers refer to the editorial sections (e.g. news and views, book reviews). 298 papers can be characterized as original papers. Of this sample, for the presented analysis 33 papers (11%) were selected randomly (with a representative amount of each type of original paper: 23 analysis, 5 methods, 2 commentary and 3 introduction papers). The quarterly Journal “Technikfolgenabschätzung — Theorie und Praxis”11 (short: TATUP) is edited by the German Institute for 8 For categories (iii) and (iv): a ‘1’ when only included in the discussion, and a ‘2’ when also present in the empirical method applied. For category (v): ‘1’ equates expert participation, ‘2’ lay participation. 9 One anonymous reviewer challenges this choice of TA journals — a challenge we feel very sympathetic with. Like for sustainability science, it is very difficult if not impossible to select one or two journals to fully represent TA (cp. Clark 2007: “the most popular single journals carrying sustainability science articles capture no more than 5% of all the important papers published and even then tend to focus on a single discipline or pair of disciplines or a single issue area”). Given this sub-optimal situation, we opted for the two journals that carry TA in their titles and proved to be accepted as TA journals by our (admittedly German and Austrian) colleagues. The journal “Technological Forecasting and Social Change”, another likely candidate, we omitted because it was ranked by some TA practitioners as being rather STS than TA affiliated. Nevertheless, this difficulty and related losses in result validity have to be kept in mind. 10 See www.elsevier.com (last accessed 29 June 2009). 11 Available online at: http://www.itas.fzk.de/deu/tatup/inhalt.htm (last accessed 29 June 2009).

Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis since 1992. It is the only journal specifically dedicated to TA and is mostly written in German language. The core community of authors and readers may therefore be found within the European and German speaking TA community for which TATUP seems to provide a valuable platform of presentation, orientation and discussion. TATUP also aims to inform an interested public, a wider research community and political decision makers. Although it is not a strictly peer reviewed journal, contributions to the topical section (“Schwerpunktthemen”) are reviewed by invited guest editors.12 Sustainability is explicitly addressed within some articles published in TATUP and two issues have been specifically dedicated to methodological and evaluative aspects of sustainability since 2002 (issues 2/2005 and 3/2007). For the presented analysis, 16 TATUP articles were randomly selected from the reviewed topical sections and cover approximately 16% of the articles published within the three issues' topical sections released in 2008. The interdisciplinary Journal “Poiesis & Praxis: International Journal of Technology Assessment and Ethics of Science” (short P&P) was first published in 2001 and provides three to four peer reviewed issues per year in the English language. P&P aims to provide a “forum for reflection and deliberation on the scientific and technological future of our civilization” as indicated in the online description.13 Accordingly, P&P “includes investigations on the philosophy of science, law, sociology and economics; discussion of methods, ideas and processes of ethics of science and technology assessment; the relationship between technology assessment and ethics of science on one hand and politics and society on the other.” P&P is dedicated to readers from “the fields of philosophy, natural and engineering sciences, social and legal sciences, as well as in the medical disciplines.” Also decision-makers in the context of policy, business and industry are addressed. Although sustainable development has not been featured as a focus of a special issue yet, it is addressed in some of the articles and a considerable number of articles relate to aspects that are central to sustainability science (such as participatory TA approaches or normative and ethical implications of technologies). For the following analysis, 15 P&P articles were selected, corresponding to a full coverage of 2008 P&P original papers. The international, peer reviewed journals “Social Studies of Science” (SSS) and “Science, Technology and Human Values” (STHV) represent two central fora of scholarly communication within science and technology studies (cf. also Supper, 2007).14 STHV developed from a newsletter into a quarterly journal in the late 1970s and is published bimonthly since 2006. It is the official journal of the ‘Society for Social Studies of Science’ since 1988 and has a clear devotion not only to epistemic advances but also to societal issues. By self-definition, the journal is interdisciplinary, including political science, sociology, environmental studies, anthropology, literature, history, economics and philosophy.15 It covers “vital issues that arise” “as scientific advances improve our lives” and “complicate how we live and react to the new technologies”, when “human values come into conflict with scientific advancement as we deal with (…) nuclear power, environmental degradation and information technology” (ibid). Supper (2007: 36) notes that contrary to the first years of the journal, “perspectives and insights of practitioners and policymakers (…) were no longer explicitly put on the agenda (…) nor would the importance of bringing together those who study science with those who do or police science, which had played such a central role in the presentation and identity of the journal throughout much of the 1980s, be stressed in the editorials [after 1988].” STHV features mixed issues as well as special issues. In 2008, one issue was dedicated to participatory methods.

12

Cp. correspondence with editor-in-chief, Peter Hocke-Bergler, 4 Nov. 2010. http://www.springer.com/philosophy/ethics/journal/10202 (last accessed 29 June 2009). 14 Impact factors: STHV (2007): 1.711, SSS (2007): 1.651. 15 See http://sth.sagepub.com/ (last accessed 29 June 2009). 13

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Fig. 1. Dimensions present in the papers of STS (N = 30), TA (N = 31) and EE (N = 33) in average percentages (deviations given in the text); dark grey: strong presence, light grey: weak presence, white: absence; unreliable data (see text for definition): shaded.28 28

“Unreliable” defined as: deviation between the two measurements higher than one third of the average.

SSS is also an international and peer-reviewed STS journal. It has been published under its current title since 1974. It is closely connected to the sociology of scientific knowledge, concentrates on the Anglo-American context and has a less problem-oriented or issue driven policy than STHV. It “has always clearly been a scholarly publication, with a focus on publishing original articles” (Supper, 2007:41). By self-definition, SSS is multidisciplinary (drawing upon more or less the same disciplines as STHV) and “is indispensable for anyone seriously concerned about understanding the place of science and technology in the modern world”.16 For the presented analysis, the first 15 papers of the year 2008 were selected, equating 54% of STHV papers and 44% of SSS papers published in this year (excluding book reviews and obituaries). The materials and methods applied in the presented study have been specifically selected to deliver contributions to the main research question. Nevertheless, they convey certain short-comings which have to be kept in mind: The original list of characteristics of sustainability science is not based upon one official consensus opinion within the scientific community, but had to be extracted from various sources for the purpose of this study (including influential papers such as Kates et al., 2001; Clark and Dickson, 2003; Komiyama and Takeuchi, 2006; Clark, 2007; Perrings, 2007; and Kajikawa, 2008). Moreover, its translation into specific categories goes hand in hand with a reductionist approach and an emphasis on individual aspects. The application of these categories throughout the empirical work also posed difficulties as the determination of the parameter values (0, 1, and 2) relies on the specification of joint reference definitions in qualitative and quantitative terms (e.g., to discern between “local” and “regional/ national” or between “announcing a correlation” and “formulating a political recommendation”) — definitions that can only be achieved to some extent. To cope with this difficulty, we organized two runs of categorisation: During a first run, we used individual papers to work on an inter-subjective standard and then proceeded individually, each author choosing the journals of the inter-discipline she or he was most familiar with. In a second run, the results were re-checked by another author. Differences between the two runs were used as indications of reliability levels and are stated in the result section; they are also indicated in the

16

See http://sss.sagepub.com/ (last accessed 29 June 2009).

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Fig. 2. Levels present in the papers of STS (N = 30), TA (N = 31) and EE (N = 33) in average percentages; patterns as in Fig. 1.

bar charts if the deviation is conspicuously high, i.e., if the mean value differs from the individual values to more than one third.17 Still, the assessment could be improved by a clearer definition of the different categories and rules for factor attribution. Such a clearer definition might also involve a (a probably very stimulating) deeper discussion concerning the individual parameters. Also, to take journal publications pars pro toto as representations of the inter-disciplines has its own flaws. Scientists do of course not only communicate via these journals, although they represent the most thoroughly peer reviewed type of publication. Finally, the sample size of papers per journal as well as the journal sample could be criticized as being too small to be representative. 4. Results The results of the analysis of about thirty randomly selected journal papers published in 2008 in the journals mentioned previously will now be presented in detail. To include the different possible interpretations of the categories (e.g., “social dimension” may include or exclude strictly economic aspects, “local” and “regional” may be discerned in slightly different ways), both, the results of the first run (factor attribution by a scholar from the analysed inter-discipline with punctual inter-subjective validation within the team) and the second run (re-assessment by scholars from the other inter-disciplines) are given. If the two values differ severely, the reliability of the factor attribution has to be questioned. Probable causes are given when identified. 4.1. Cross-Dimensional Integration: Reference to the Social, the Cultural and the Ecological Sphere The social sphere was a central part of the paper's thematic focus in about 52% (±3) of the EE publications, in 24% (±18) it was totally absent (Fig. 1).18 Similarly, cultural or normative aspects built a major part of the papers' focus in 45% (±6), missing in 29% (±2) of the cases.19 Ecological aspects proved central in 80% (±14) and were totally absent in only 5% (±2) of the EE papers. 17 The advantage of having two runs lies in a more transparent manifestation of estimator bias and level of data reliability. Another option would have been to have only one run in which all participated, allowing for even stronger inter-subjectivity but producing results that seem wrongly unequivocal. 18 This large span is due to defining ‘social’ either so as to exclude strictly economic aspects, or as to include them. 19 The distinction between the social and the cultural/normative dimension proved very difficult methodically.

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Table 2 Cross-references in EE, STHV and P&P. Table 1: keywords and journal articles

Ecological Economicsa

Science, Technology and Human Valuesb

Poiesis & Praxisc

Keywords

N

%

N

%

N

%

Sustaina*d Technology assessment STS (Σ)f Ecological economics Σ articles published

2051 55 9 3267e 3267

62.8 1.7 0.3 100.0 100.0

72 49 160 4 243

29.6 20.2 65.8 1.6 100.0

24 139e 4 0 139

17.3 100.0 0.3 0.0 100.0

a

Ecological Economics: volumes 36–68 (2001–2008). Science, Technology and Human Values: volumes: 26–33 (2001–2008). Poiesis & Praxis: 1–6 (2001–2008). d Including the phrases sustaina[ble] and sustaina[bility]. e Due to the accordance between keyword and journal (sub-)title no further search was performed. f “Social Studies of Science” or “Science and Technology Studies”. b c

For TA papers, the social dimension was a central part of the analysis in 50% (±2) and totally absent in 15% (±2) of the papers. The cultural/ normative dimension in 35% (±6) and 24% (±11) respectively. The ecological or environmental dimension was much less often a central theme than in EE papers, namely in only 21% (±2), while it was absent in 66% (±2). The social sphere was a central part of the paper's thematic focus in about 67% (±10) of the STS publications, totally absent only in 3% (±0). Cultural or normative aspects were part of the papers' major focus in 87% (±7), missing in only 3% (±0) of the cases. Ecological aspects proved central only in 12% (±2) and were totally absent in 78% (±2) of the STS papers. Overall, STS papers showed the strongest orientation towards the cultural sphere, while EE papers showed the strongest orientation towards the ecological sphere and TA lay mostly in the middle between STS and EE. Parallel (weak or strong) reference to all three dimensions was present in 21% (±2) of the STS papers, in 18% (±8) of TA papers and 58% (±6) of EE papers. Hence, the highest level of integration across the three dimensions can be attributed to the EE publications. 4.2. Multi-Level Integration: Reference to the Local, the Regional/National and the Global Level As to the local, regional/national and the global level, numbers of papers including these levels are given in Fig. 2.20 All paper samples rather focus on the first two levels, while mostly ignoring the global level.21 All three levels are seldomly addressed in the same paper (twice in STS, once in TA and never in EE papers). 4.3. Addressing Change Over Time Change over time is included empirically in 49% (±0) of EE publications, in 31% (±8) of TA papers and in 43% (±7) of STS papers (Fig. 3). The leading position of EE in this category is connected to a high prevalence of modelling approaches in this field, which are very apt to encompass time series. TA and STS include change over time 20 Deviations from the mean values (for local absent/weak/strong; regional absent/ weak/strong, global absent/weak/strong): EE ± 6, 5, 2, 12, 8, 5, 3, 0, 3; TA ± 2, 2, 0, 3, 5, 2, 7, 11, 5; STS ± 2, 10, 12, 5, 7, 2, 0, 1, 0. 21 The attribution of a “global level” is again not unequivocal: the discussion of global issues such as the world wide web, information society or science and technology, may be categorised as a reference to the global level; but “addressing the global level” may also be restricted to explicitly addressing different geographic/cultural contexts and the global sphere. Here, we followed this more restrictive approach.

Fig. 3. Inclusion of changes over time (white = absent, light grey = included in discussion, dark grey = included empirically), future orientation (white = absent, light grey = included in discussion, dark grey = included empirically) and participatory methods (white = absent, light grey = experts included, dark grey = lay people included) in STS (N = 30), TA (N = 31) and EE (N = 33) papers in average percentages, unreliable data shaded.

more often in their introductory and discussion sections (47% ±2 and 32% ±5). 4.4. Addressing the Future A future horizon is empirically addressed in 39% (±6) of the EE papers, but only in 13% (±3) of the TA papers and never included in the empirical data of STS papers (Fig. 3). In introductions and discussions, the future horizon is referred to in another 23% (±11) of EE, 65% of TA (±0) and 42% (±2) of STS publications. Hence, both TA and STS rather draw on future aspects from a theoretical or interpretative perspective, extrapolating from their own or others' empirical results, while EE includes future developments via model scenarios and simulations. 4.5. Participatory Approaches Fig. 3 also gives the percentages of papers that report on a participatory exercise as main empirical method, whereby participatory exercise was defined in a conservative way.22 These percentages were surprisingly low for all three inter-disciplines,23 given the high importance attributed to participation in the all three fields in one or another way. Only between 2 and 6% (±3) in each field included lay participation. Another 2% (±2) in STS and 13% (±3) in TA included expert participation.24 On the other hand, participatory exercises were the main topic of research in six STS papers; they were also part of the topic in another three STS papers and two TA papers. This situation arises partly due to the fact that one of the STS issues investigated happens to be dedicated to participation, resulting in an overrepresentation of this issue in the overall sample of STS papers. But still, it is worth noting 22 Participatory observation (occurring five times in the total sample) and other qualitative methods (in-depth interviews, field studies) were not categorised as participatory exercises because their main aim lies in knowledge production; one might argue that they also establish transdisciplinary collaboration and might result in giving a voice to lay people's, users' and affected persons' opinions and perceptions. Although we see these possibilities, we want to strengthen the point that such effects are of secondary importance within such approaches and are not methodically monitored and assessed. For a more diligent discussion of this question, see Bechtold et al. (2010). 23 Compare also the much higher accounts reported by Paavola and Gouldson (2009). 24 The distinction between lay people and experts, as well as between reporting and undertaking participatory exercises proved ambiguous here and let to – if only slightly – different results.

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841

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% EE TA STS rec a rec a rec a

EE TA STS rec b rec b rec b

EE TA STS rec c rec c rec c

EE TA STS rec d rec d rec d

Fig. 4. Recommendation types present in STS (N = 30), TA (N = 31) and EE (N = 33) papers in percentages; dark grey: strong presence, light grey: weak presence, white: absence.

that participation is (still) rather an issue than an applied method within STS, TA and EE, although its importance for epistemic as well as political reasons is frequently highlighted by the same research communities. 4.6. Orientation Towards Socio-Political Action/Decisions The orientation towards societal action and political decisions can be seen as one central feature of any research in the context of sustainable development perspectives. If taken seriously, it should result in the formulation of specific recommendations to specific actors. Unfortunately, such a step partly contradicts the established scientific norms and rules. Within scientific culture and practice, a clear separation of the epistemic undertakings of scientists and the political actions, normative positions and stakeholder interests within society is of paramount importance to constantly re-affirm the boundary between the search for objective truth and the everyday hustle for power and subjective interpretations. Presently, this friction between the world of science and society is still constitutive for both regimes, although the need to bridge the resulting gap if science is meant to become societally robust and politically relevant is also being acknowledged and emphasized. Against this background, it seems especially interesting to assess where on such a scale an interdiscipline positions itself in its core documents — the original scientific papers. To allow for such an assessment, the papers were searched for recommendations which are (a) very broad/general in content and mention no explicit addressee; (b) very broad/general in content and have an explicit addressee; (c) specific in content but have no explicit addressee; (d) specific in content and have an explicit addressee.25 The broadest category, equating the least specific recommendation type, was present to some extent (factor 1 or 2) in 60 to 70% of all 25 For this category, the second run was organized differently: we chose an empirically grounded approach and developed categories from the material itself. Results included the following: straight forward recommendations (3 times in total), clear recommendations to unspecified actors (6 times), suggestions for general societal improvements (5 times) the presentation of politically relevant interrelations (17 times), suggestions for better models, methods and understanding with societal relevance (16 times) and all these categories without explicit societal relevance (the rest of the 94 papers). Differences between the journals were hardly detectable for single categories. The overall percentages of categories including explicit reference to the policy context equated to 52% for EE, 74% for TA and 37% of STS papers.

papers (Fig. 4). A specific addressee was mentioned in 45% of TA, 15% of EE and 13% of STS papers to some extent (factor 1 or 2). The recommendation was specified in 42% of TA, 30% of EE and 13% of STS papers. Both, a specific content and a specific addressee were present in 32% of TA, 15% of EE and only 7% of STS papers, if adding weak and strong representations (factors 1 and 2). In comparison, technology assessment clearly delivers the most specific recommendations, as may be expected due to the remit of TA to inform society and advise politicians. But even here, the recommendations are more often of a rather general nature, than of a specific one. In ecological economics papers, general recommendations to an unspecified public are rather common, while specific advice is mostly absent. For science and technology studies papers, to give advice in an explicit way, seems to be rather exotic. This doesn't automatically mean that STS authors strive for societal irrelevance, but they seem to realize their commitment to societal issues in a more indirect way — at least in their scholarly journals. Within the paper abstracts and conclusion or discussion sections, one can find formulations like “The public debate (…) presented the ‘spare’ embryo as a biological fact (…). This paper tells a different story.” (Svendsen and Koch, 2008:93), “The global economy is, however, but one dimension of the bigger story.” (Löwy and Gaudillière, 2008:318), “The relationship between simulations and medical education is much richer than the deceptively simple idea that simulators can be a training environment for medical techniques.” (Johnson 2008: 73) or “In this study I have not only aimed to refigure the role of scientists' bodies in their work, I have also sought new ways of making sense of the objects of biological research.” (Myers 2008: 191). Here, the main aim seems to be to challenge widely held assumptions, to provide new interpretations and to influence the discourse and the collective perception of the objects and situations at hand. Rather than directly formulating political advice, societal actions are influenced indirectly by contributing to the processes of world making and sense making. Klemperer and colleagues (Klemperer et al. 2001) came forward with an interesting model that may be of explanatory value here. They distinguish between three stages in the policy process and attribute different functions of (scientific) knowledge to these three steps. According to their model, the first step is designing and it is shaped by an enlightenment function of knowledge, the second step is deciding, shaped by a political function of knowledge, and the third step is implementing, informed by a problem-solving function of knowledge (ibid.:201). If transferred to the context at hand, one could argue that STS concentrates on the first step, while EE and TA emphasize contributions useful during

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the second and the third step. In consequence, the interaction between the three inter-disciplines and societal action can be analysed in more depth. It can be argued, that although all three fields are motivated by societal problem situations, they aim at different aspects of decision making and therefore provide different kinds of expertise.

4.7. Cross-Reference Between Inter-Disciplines A last question we want to address in this paper is how frequently the three inter-disciplines explicitly refer to each other as well as to sustainable development. To get a rough impression, each journal was searched for appearance of sustaina* (as included in “sustainability” and “sustainable”) as well as for reference to the other two inter-disciplines in papers published between 2001 and 2008 (Table 2). In EE sustaina* occurred most frequently (in 63% of the articles), followed by STHV (30%) and P&P (17%). TA is mentioned in 20% of STHV papers, but only in 1.7% of EE papers. STS is mentioned in less than one percent of EE and P&P papers. Ecological economics is referred to in 1.6% of STHV papers and never in P&P. We conclude that sustainable development may represent a common point of reference (although the method applied may result in some false or debatable positives, e.g., when sustainability is mentioned only in the title of a reference), whereas direct cross-references between EE, TA and STS are negligibly rare with the only exemption of STS referring to TA in every fifth paper.

5. Conclusion Taking the program(s) put forward for sustainability science seriously, it seems important to reflect on its proposed characteristics and on the role of existing inter-disciplines within a sustainability science agenda. The aim of this paper was to exemplarily address these issues drawing on three different inter-disciplines, ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies, as well as on different characteristic features suggested for accomplishing a sustainability science research agenda. The most interesting results of this study – besides putting the possible features of a sustainability science and the likelihood and potential of such a scientific undertaking to debate – include the following: • the seeming reluctance of current STS (and, to some extent, of current TA) articles to include ecological/environmental aspects in their research and discussion (accompanied by a strong focus on biomedical issues); • a general blindness for the geographic scope of the presented research and a relative lack of global analyses as well as of case studies performed outside the European/American context in the STS, TA and EE journals26; • the ignorance of future horizons within the methods applied in the STS and TA papers27; • a high tendency to include changes over time and future horizons at least to some extent in the introductory and concluding sections of the publications in the selected TA and STS journals;

• the relatively rare application of participatory methods in all five interdisciplinary journals despite a high interest in such methods as an object of research and discussion; • the reluctance to formulate specific recommendations to specific actors in the wake of the research presented especially in the ecological economics and STS papers investigated; • the emphasis on deconstruction and reconstruction of the dominant discourses and world views within the STS articles; and • a detectable reference to sustainability in all three inter-disciplines, accompanied by a lack of cross-reference between the selected EE, TA and STS journals (with the one exception that STS papers do refer to technology assessment). What are the possible implications of these (admittedly preliminary) findings for the program of a sustainability science? On one hand, we conclude that one can really speak of inter-disciplines with a certain focus on societal problems when looking at ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies. But whether these fields should be labelled as sustainability sciences in their own right, whether they relate to such a joint research program in a specific, additive way, or whether their contribution in answering to societal challenges lies completely elsewhere, is not easy to assess. Nevertheless, our findings point towards the second option. For the ecological economics papers, the lack of concise recommendations and the high proportion of purely quantitative studies with a rather reductionist scope was surprising. That ecological economics might lately have undergone a period of ‘normalization’, losing any characteristics of a post-normal science (a concept originally closely related to this inter-discipline), has already been noted by Müller (2002). Alternative perspectives have been introduced since the initial formulation of the post-normal epistemology (e.g. Tacconi, 1998; Luks, 1998; and Baumgärtner et al., 2008), as have been critiques of the lack of engagement of ecological economics with political processes (Shi, 2003); but possibly, these inputs have scarcely been taken up in actual research. As for TA and STS, the observed disinterest in ecological issues is startling. In contrast, sustainability research has been accused of focusing too narrowly on environmental issues, ignoring societal, political and cultural aspects (especially in the German speaking context, cp. Burger and Kaufmann-Hayoz, 2007:5; Heinrichs 2003:10 with reference to the 1990s; Cohen at al., 1998 on the other hand discern Climate Change research and Sustainable Development research on the very ground that they see the former as being dominated by environmental science approaches while the latter is not). Hence, the emphasis of TA and STS on socio-political processes could be seen as a welcome complement. The focus on bodily (re-)configurations rather than environmental ones within STS might also serve as a useful addition to the more traditional focus of sustainability research (under the condition that mutual acknowledgement and exchange take place in the future). How participatory approaches are going to be integrated in future scientific research and how the boundary between scientific research, political decision making and societal agency will further evolve, is hard to predict. Lively debates about the necessity, adequacy and apt modes of bridging the science–society boundary, are underway, especially in the fields of STS and TA, but also in EE (cf. Shi, 2003), and will hopefully further unfold in both quantity and conceptual precision.

Acknowledgements 26 The latter “may be partly due to the fact that there are already journals devoted specifically to global level environmental issues (such as Global Environmental Change, International Environmental Agreements, Climatic Change) that attract those manuscripts with a global focus”, as one anonymous reviewer notes. She/he also raises the interesting question how the total landscape of journal agendas influences the evolution of the (inter)disciplinary agendas of particular journals in the field. 27 Admittedly, these results might be especially different if “Technological Forecasting and Social Change” was chosen as a journal representative of TA.

We want to thank Alexandra Supper (Universiteit Maastricht) for discussing the results of her diploma thesis (Supper, 2007) with us, Stephan Lingner (Eurpäische Akademie Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler), Renate Hüser (Springer), Michael Nentwich and Ulrich Fiedeler (Institute of Technology Assessment) for actively supporting our work as well as Georg Aichholzer (Institute of Technology Assessment) and Janne Hukkinen (University of Helsinki) for helpful comments.

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