Introductory Remarks: What is it all about? Andrew Jamison PROCEED meeting, DTU, October 13, 2010.
Sustainability Science and Research: A Historical Introduction Andrew Jamison.
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Transcript of Sustainability Science and Research: A Historical Introduction Andrew Jamison.
Sustainability Science and Research:A Historical Introduction
Andrew Jamison
Based on:
The Making of Green Knowledge. Environmental Politics
and Cultural Transformation, by Andrew Jamison (Cambridge University Press 2001)
Hubris and Hybrids. A Cultural History of Technology and Science, by Mikael Hård and Andrew Jamison (Routledge 2005)
A Brief History of Green Knowledge
The romantic critique of industrial hubris (e.g. Mary Shelley)
An emerging environmental sensibility (e.g. Thoreau)
The socialist critique of technology (e.g. Morris)
Conservation and nature protection (e.g. Muir)
Regionalism and urban reform (e.g. Mumford)
Environmentalism and green politics (e.g. Carson)
mechanization
industrialization
modernization globalization
romanticismcooperation
socialismpopulism
anticolonialism fascism
environmentalismfeminism
1800 1850 1950 20001900
Phases of Social Movements
Long Waves of Industrialization
scientification
The First Wave
”the industrial revolution” (ca 1780-1830)
Iron, textile machines, and steam engines
Technologies of mechanization
The factory as an organizational innovation
Social and cultural movements:• ”machine-storming” and cooperation • romantic art and literature, e.g. Frankenstein
Mary Shelley:Challenging the hubris
”Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least
by my example, how dangerous is the
acquirement of knowledge, and how much
happier that man is who believed his native
town to be the world, than he who aspires to
become greater than his nature will allow...”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
• a ”romantic” scientist, author of Walden
• one of the founders of environmentalism
• also wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
Thoreau’s idea of science
”The true man of science will know nature better by
his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear,
feel better than other men. His will be a deeper and
finer experience. We do not learn by inference and
deduction, and the application of mathematics to
philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy...”
The Second Wave
”the age of capital” (ca 1830-1880)
Railroads, telegraph, and steel
Technologies of socialization
The rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp)
Social and cultural movements:• populism, communism and social-democracy • science fiction and arts and crafts
William Morris (1834-1896)
A romantic poet turned designer
Combined artistry and business
Mixed tradition and innovation
A utopian who was also practical
From ”Useful Work versus Useless Toil”
”The factories might be centres of intellectual activity also,
and work in them might well be varied very much: the tending
of the necessary machinery might to each individual be but a
short part of the day’s work. The other might vary from raising
food from the surrounding country to the study and practice
of art and science.... Science duly applied would enable them
to get rid of refuse, to minimize, if not wholly to destroy, all
the inconveniences which at present attend the use of
elaborate machinery, such as smoke, stench and noise; nor
would they endure that the buildings in which they worked or
lived should be ugly blots on the fair face of the earth.”
A major influence on…
Arts and crafts movements, garden cities
Interior and industrial design
Architecture: Wright, Gehry, Utzon
Art Nouveau and functionalism
Socialist politics and fantasy literature
The ”education of desire”
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club
with Theodore Roosevelt in 1903
“The tendency nowadays to wander in wilderness is
delightful to see. Thousands of tired, over-civilized
people are beginning to find out that going to the
mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity;
and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not
only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as
fountains of life.”
Muir’s idea of conservation
The Third Wave
”the age of empire” (ca 1880-1930)
Electricity, automobiles, chemicals and airplanes
Technologies of modernization
Research becomes a business (Edison, DuPont)
Social and cultural movements:
• anticolonialism and fascism
• modernism and human ecology
The Urban Reform Tradition
Ebenezer Howard: Garden Cities, 1898
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, 1906
Jane Addams: Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910
Patrick Geddes: Cities in Evolution, 1915
Robert Park, et al: The City, 1925
Lewis Mumford: The Culture of Cities, 1938
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)
American writer and social critic
a founder of urban planning
one of the last ”public intellectuals”
one of the first ”human ecologists”
a cultural perspective on technology
active in regional planning movements
”Today we begin to see that the improvement of cities is
no matter for one-sided reforms: the task of city design
involves the vaster task of rebuilding our civilization. We
must alter the parasitic and predatory modes of life that
now play so large a part, and we must create...an effective
symbiosis, or co-operative living together. ”
From The Culture of Cities
The Fourth Wave
the coming of technoscience (ca 1930-1980)
Atomic energy, genetics, and computers
Technologies of scientification
The rise of transnational corporations (IBM, Sony)
Social and cultural movements:
• civil rights and ”ban the bomb”
• environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism
Phases of Environmental Politics
1. awakening public education, local protests pre-1968
2. ”age of ecology” organizational and policy development1969-1974
3. politicization social movements in relation to energy policy1975-1979
4. differentiation professionalization and party politics1980-1986
5. internationalization global orientation, sustainable development1987-1993
6. integration Agenda 21, green business/critical ecology1994-2000
7. contention globalization and climate change conflicts2000s
Awakening
public education and debate
protests about air and water pollution
part of critique of consumer society
”internal” critique within science
Rachel Carson (1907-64)
”The road we have long been
traveling is deceptively easy, a
smooth superhighway om which
we progress with great speed,
but at its end lies disaster.”
• a biologist turned nature writer
• combined science and politics
• inspired environmental movement
The Age of Ecology
new activist and expert organizations
national and international agencies
programmatic ambitions: political ecology
pollution control policy orientation
Politicization
broad-based alliances
media become central sites of debate
organized information campaigns
focus on energy production and use
Interest in alternative and ”utopian” technologies
Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy
The New Alchemy Institute Ark
Differentiation
political parties, professional activism
beginnings of environmental management
lobbying, expertise, research
wide range of issue areas
emergence of anti-environmentalism
The Risk Society Thesis
a variant of post-industrialism
outgrowth of nuclear energy and biotech debates
from production of ”goods” to ”bads”
the ”manufacturing of uncertainties”
need for ”reflexivity”, risk assessment
Internationalization
transnational networks and alliances
key sites: intergovernmental meetings
link to socio-economic development
emphasis on global issues
sustainable development new policy doctrine
Integration
appropriation by other actors
market becomes key political arena
importance of discursive, or cultural politics
green business versus critical ecology
Dialectics of Sustainable Development
Green business Critical ecology
”Ecological modernization” ”Environmental justice”
Instrumental rationality Communicative
rationality
Technological innovation Appropriate technology
Commercial orientation Community emphasis
Expert solutions Public engagement
The Growth of Green Business
environmental economics and policy
sustainable development
Environmental awareness, or consciousness
environ- mental management
ecological economics corporate social responsibility
ecoefficiency
natural capitalism
pollution prevention,cleaner technologies
pollution control,”end-of pipe”
environmental impactassessment
appropriate technology,renewable energy
green growth
Science and Green Business
Environmental issues and, more recently, climate change seen as
providing new opportunities for scientists and engineers
A transdisciplinary and transnational approach to research
An emphasis on commercial networks, or systems of innovation: the
”triple helix”
A tendency toward hubris: the myth of science-based progress and the
technical fix
Contention
other issues become important
regime shift in US, Denmark and other countries
the coming of environmental skepticism, e.g. Lomborg
increasing emphasis on global warming
media – and internet - as key political sites
Environmental Skepticism
outgrowth of neo-conservative, neo-nationalist movements
supported financially by ”big oil” and agro-business
skeptical about importance of environmental problems
an organized opposition to green business
mobilizing traditional modernist and nationalist values
The Broader Context:Changing Modes of Knowledge Making
“Little Science” “Big Science” “Controversy” “Globalization”
Before WWII 1940s-50s 1960s-70s 1980s-
main orientation industrial atomic societal commercial
type of disciplinary multidisciplinary interdisciplinary transdisciplinaryknowledge
ideal, orvalues academic bureaucratic collective entrepreneurial
The Age of ”Big Science”,1940s and 1950s
expansion in size, scale and resources
atomic orientation, both military and ”civilian”
university-government collaboration
bureaucratic norm, or value system
new role for the state and multistate alliances
The Age of Controversy,1960s and 1970s
critiques of militarization and ”big science”
public debates esp. about atomic energy
interest in student-centered forms of education
”grass-roots” engineering (e.g. OVE)
emergence of technology assessment
The Age of Globalization,from 1980s
change in range and scope
market orientation, ”privatization”
university-industry collaboration
entrepreneurial norm, or value system
the state as strategist: innovation policy
from assessment to promotion: ”foresight”
The Coming of Technoscience
blurring discursive boundaries between science (episteme) and technology (techne)
breaking down institutional borders between public and private, economic and academic
transgressing cognitive barriers between academic disciplines and societal domains
The Cultural Appropriation of Technoscience
The dominant , or hegemonic strategy (mode 2):
commercialization, entrepreneurship, transdisciplinarity
The residual, or traditionalist strategy (mode 1):
academicization, expertise, multidisciplinarity
An emerging, or sustainable strategy (mode 3):
hybridization, empowerment, cross-disciplinarity
Transdisciplinarity, or ”mode 2”
”Knowledge which emerges from a particular
context of application with its own distinct
theoretical structures, research methods and
modes of practice but which may not be locatable
on the prevailing disciplinary map.”
Michael Gibbons et al, The New Production of Knowledge (1994)
The Forces of Habit(us)
Sustainability science seen as a matter of restructuring or recombining established scientific and engineering fields
A kind of academicization strategy: subdisciplinary specialties in academic departments or multidisciplinary centers
A continuing belief in separating scientific
knowledge from politics
“A discipline is defined by possession of a collective capital
of specialized methods and concepts, mastery of which is
the tacit or implicit price of entry to the field. It produces a
‘historical transcendental,’ the disciplinary habitus, a
system of schemes of perception and appreciation (where
the incorporated discipline acts as a censorship).”
Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity (2004)
The Discipline as Habitus
A Need for a ”Mode 3”, or a Hybrid Imagination
At the discursive, or macro level Sustainability engineering: connecting science and
engineering to sustainable community development
At the institutional, or meso level Social responsibility: creating opportunities for
learning across faculties and social domains
At the personal, or micro level Technoscientific citizenship: combining scientific and
technical competence with socio-cultural understanding
For example:Fritjof Capra
• physicist-turned-environmentalist• author of many popular books• founder of Center for Ecoliteracy
“Since the outstanding
characteristic of the biosphere is
its inherent ability to sustain life,
a sustainable human community
must be designed in such a
manner that its technologies and
social institutions honor,
support, and cooperate with
nature's inherent ability to
sustain life.”
The Centre for Science and
Environment (CSE) is a public
interest research and advocacy
organisation based in New Delhi.
CSE researches into, lobbies for
and communicates the urgency of
development that is both
sustainable and equitable.
Anil Agarwal, the founder of CSE, shown at work with one of the six State
of India reports that the centre has put out since the 1980s.
For example:
The Alley Flat Initiative is a joint collaboration between the
University of Texas Center for Sustainable Development,
the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation,
and the Austin Community Design and Development
Center. The Alley Flat Initiative proposes a new sustainable,
green affordable housing alternative for Austin.
For example: The Alley Flat Initiative
The initial goal of the project was to build two prototype alley
flats (aka granny flats)- one for each of two families in East
Austin - that would showcase both the innovative design and
environmental sustainability features of the alley flat designs.
These prototypes will demonstrate how sustainable housing
can support growing communities by being affordable and
adaptable. The first of these prototypes celebrated its house
warming with the community in June of 2008, and the second
prototype is slated to begin construction in early 2009.
From the website:
The long-term objective of the Alley Flat Initiative is to create
an adaptive and self-perpetuating delivery system for
sustainable and affordable housing in Austin. The "delivery
system" would include not only efficient housing designs
constructed with sustainable technologies, but also
innovative methods of financing and home ownership that
benefit all neighborhoods in Austin.
http://www.thealleyflatinitiative.org/
Contending Modes of Sustainability Research
sustainability sustainability sustainability science management engineering
Forms of policy-driven commercial contextualactivity research innovation appropriation
Types of post-normal managerial/ situated/Knowledge interdisciplinary transdisciplinary cross-
disciplinary
Forms of traditional, professional, engaged,learning scholarly instrumental participatory
Researcher’s expert entrepreneur concerned citizen
role
Contexts of governments companies communities application (”state”) (”market”) (”civil society”)