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”)