The first typical charge leveled by socialists is that capitalism features the exploitation of wage workers by their capitalist employers. Exploitation has been characterized in two ways. To maximize the profit resulting from the sale of what the workers produce, capitalists have an incentive to keep wages low.
This descriptive characterization, which focuses on the flow of surplus labor from workers to capitalists, differs from another common, normative characterization of exploitation, according to which exploitation involves taking unfair, wrongful, or unjust advantage of the productive efforts of others.
An obvious question is when, if ever, incidents of exploitation in the technical sense involve exploitation in the normative sense. When is the transfer of surplus labor from workers to capitalists such that it involves wrongful advantage taking of the former by the latter? Socialists have provided at least four answers to this question. For critical surveys see Arnsperger and Van Parijs ch.
III; Vrousalis ; Wolff The first answer is offered by the unequal exchange account , according to which A exploits B if and only if in their exchange A gets more than B does. This account effectively collapses the normative sense of exploitation into the technical one.
But critics have argued that this account fails to provide sufficient conditions for exploitation in the normative sense. Not every unequal exchange is wrongful: it would not be wrong to transfer resources from workers to people who perhaps through no choice or fault of their own are unable to work. A second proposal is to say that A exploits B if and only if A gets surplus labor from B in a way that is coerced or forced.
This labor entitlement account Holmstrom ; Reiman relies on the view that workers are entitled to the product of their labor, and that capitalists wrongly deprive them of it. In a capitalist economy, workers are compelled to transfer surplus labor to capitalists on pain of severe poverty.
This is a result of the coercively enforced system of private property rights in the means of production. Since they do not control means of production to secure their own subsistence, workers have no reasonable alternative to selling their labor power to capitalists and to toil on the terms favored by the latter. Critics of this approach have argued that it, like the previous account, fails to provide sufficient conditions for wrongful exploitation because it would counterintuitively have to condemn transfers from workers to destitute people unable to work.
Furthermore, it has been argued that the account fails to provide necessary conditions for the occurrence of exploitation. Problematic transfers of surplus labor can occur without coercion. For example, A may have sophisticated means of production, not obtained from others through coercion, and hire B to work on them at a perhaps unfairly low wage, which B voluntarily accepts despite having acceptable, although less advantageous, alternatives Roemer b: ch.
The third, unfair distribution of productive endowments account suggests that the core problem with capitalist exploitation and with other forms of exploitation in class-divided social systems is that it proceeds against a background distribution of initial access to productive assets that is inegalitarian.
This account relies on a luck-egalitarian principle of equality of opportunity. According to luck-egalitarianism, no one should be made worse-off than others due to circumstances beyond their control.
Critics have argued that, because of that, it fails to provide necessary conditions for wrongful exploitation. If A finds B stuck in a pit, it would be wrong for A to offer B rescue only if B signs a sweatshop contract with A —even if B happened to have fallen into the pit after voluntarily taking the risk to go hiking in an area well known to be dotted with such perilous obstacles Vrousalis , Other critics worry that this account neglects the centrality of relations of power or dominance between exploiters and exploited Veneziani A fourth approach directly focuses on the fact that exploitation typically arises when there is a significant power asymmetry between the parties involved.
The more powerful instrumentalize and take advantage of the vulnerability of the less powerful to benefit from this asymmetry in positions Goodin A specific version of this view, the domination for self-enrichment account Vrousalis , , says that A exploits B if A benefits from a transaction in which A dominates B.
Capitalist property rights, with the resulting unequal access to the means of production, put propertyless workers at the mercy of capitalists, who use their superior power over them to extract surplus labor.
A worry about this approach is that it does not explain when the more powerful party is taking too much from the less powerful party. For example, take a situation where A and B start with equal assets, but A chooses to work hard while B chooses to spend more time at leisure, so that at a later time A controls the means of production, while B has only their own labor power. We imagine that A offers B employment, and then ask, in light of their ex ante equal position, at what level of wage for B and profit for A would the transaction involve wrongful exploitation?
To come to a settled view on this question, it might be necessary to combine reliance on a principle of freedom as non-domination with appeal to additional socialist principles addressing just distribution—such as some version of the principles of equality and solidarity mentioned above in section 4.
Socialism would allegedly depress that freedom by prohibiting or limiting capitalist activities such as setting up a private firm, hiring wage workers, and keeping, investing, or spending profits.
Socialists generally acknowledge that a socialist economy would severely constrain some such freedoms. But they point out that capitalist property rights also involve interference. Workers could and would be coercively interfered with if they tried to use means of production possessed by capitalists, to walk away with the products of their labor in capitalist firms, or to access consumption goods they do not have enough money to buy.
In fact, every economic system opens some zones of non-interference while closing others. Hence the appropriate question is not whether capitalism or socialism involve interference—they both do—but whether either of them involves more net interference, or more troubling forms of interference, than the other.
And the answer to that question is far from obvious. It could very well be that most agents in a socialist society face less troublesome interference as they pursue their projects of production and consumption than agents in a capitalist society G. Cohen chs. Capitalist economic relations are often defended by saying that they are the result of free choices by consenting adults.
Wage workers are not slaves or serfs—they have the legal right to refuse to work for capitalists. But socialists reply that the relationship between capitalists and workers actually involves domination. Workers are inappropriately subject to the will of capitalists in the shaping of the terms on which they work both in the spheres of exchange and production, and within the broader political process. Because of their deprivation 2 , workers have no reasonable alternative to using their entitlement 1 to sell their labor power to the capitalists—who do own the means of production Marx [ —3].
Through labor-saving technical innovations spurred by competition, capitalism also constantly produces unemployment, which weakens the bargaining power of individual workers further.
The silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker…. Marx [ , ]. Because of the deep background inequality of power resulting from their structural position within a capitalist economy, workers accept a pattern of economic transaction in which they submit to the direction of capitalists during the activities of production, and surrender to those same capitalists a disproportional share of the fruits of their labor. Although some individual workers might be able to escape their vulnerable condition by saving and starting a firm of their own, most would find this extremely difficult, and they could not all do it simultaneously within capitalism Elster —16; G.
Cohen ch. Socialists sometimes say that capitalism flouts an ideal of non-domination as freedom from being subject to rules one has systematically less power to shape than others Gourevitch ; Arnold ; Gilabert b: —7—on which this and the previous paragraph draw. The first, mentioned above, concerns the labor contract. Due to their lack of control of the means of production, workers must largely submit, on pain of starvation or severe poverty, to the terms capitalists offer them.
The second concerns interactions in the workplace. Capitalists and their managers rule the activities of workers by unilaterally deciding what and how the latter produce. Workers effectively spend many of their waking hours doing what others dictate them to do. Third, and finally, capitalists have a disproportionate impact on the legal and political process shaping the institutional structure of the society in which they exploit workers, with capitalist interests dominating the political processes which in turn set the contours of property and labor law.
Even if workers manage to obtain the legal right to vote and create their own trade unions and parties which labor movements achieved in some countries after much struggle , capitalists exert disproportionate influence via greater access to mass media, the funding of political parties, the threat of disinvestment and capital flight if governments reduce their profit margin, and the past and prospective recruitment of state officials in lucrative jobs in their firms and lobbying agencies Wright 81—4.
At the spheres of exchange, production, and in the broader political process, workers and capitalist have asymmetric structural power. Consequently, the former are significantly subject to the will of the latter in the shaping of the terms on which they work see further Wright []. The third point about domination mentioned above is also deployed by socialists to say that capitalism conflicts with democracy Wright 81—4; Arnold n.
Democracy requires that people have roughly equal power to affect the political process that structures their social life—or at least that inequalities do not reflect morally irrelevant features such as race, gender, and class. Socialists have made three points regarding the conflict between capitalism and democracy. The first concerns political democracy of the kind that is familiar today. Even in the presence of multi-party electoral systems, members of the capitalist class—despite being a minority of the population—have significantly more influence than members of the working class.
Governments have a tendency to adapt their agendas to the wishes of capitalists because they depend on their investment decisions to raise the taxes to fund public policies, as well as for the variety of other reasons outlined above.
Even if socialist parties win elections, as long as they do not change the fundamentals of the economic system, they must be congenial to the wishes of capitalists. Thus, socialists have argued that deep changes in the economic structure of society are needed to make electoral democracy fulfill its promise. Political power cannot be insulated from economic power. They also, secondly, think that such changes may be directly significant.
Therefore, most democratic socialists call for a solution to the problem of the conflict between democracy and capitalism by extending democratic principles into the economy Fleurbaey Exploring the parallel between the political and economic systems, socialists have argued that democratic principles should apply in the economic arena as they do in the political domain, as economic decisions, like political decisions, have dramatic consequences for the freedom and well-being of people.
A third strand of argument, finally, has explored the importance of socialist reforms for fulfilling the ideal of a deliberative democracy in which people participate as free and equal reasoners seeking to make decisions that actually cater for the common good of all J.
As mentioned above, socialists have included, in their affirmation of individual freedom, a specific concern with real or effective freedom to lead flourishing lives.
This freedom is often linked with a positive ideal of self-realization , which in turn motivates a critique of capitalism as generating alienation. By contrast, capitalism denies the majority of the population access to self-realization at work. Workers typically toil in tasks which are uninteresting and even stunting. They do not control how production unfolds or what is done with the outputs of production. And their relations with others is not one of fellowship, but rather of domination under their bosses and of competition against their fellow workers.
When alienated,. Marx [a: 74]. Recent scholarship has developed these ideas further. Elster has provided the most detailed discussion and development of the Marxian ideal of self-realization. Self-actualization involves a two-step process in which individuals develop their powers e. However, Elster says that this Marxian ideal must be reformulated to make it more realistic.
No one can develop all their powers fully, and no feasible economy would enable everyone always to get exactly their first-choice jobs and conduct them only in the ways they would most like.
Furthermore, self-realization for and with others and thus also the combination of self-realization with community may not always work smoothly, as producers entangled in large and complex societies may not feel strongly moved by the needs of distant others, and significant forms of division of labor will likely persist.
Still, Elster thinks the socialist ideal of self-realization remains worth pursuing, for example through the generation of opportunities to produce in worker cooperatives. For more discussion on alienation and self-realization, see Jaeggi ch.
Further scholarship explores recent changes in the organization of production. However, these new forms of work, although common especially in certain knowledge-intensive sectors, are not available to all workers, and they still operate under the ultimate control of capital owners and their profit maximizing strategies. They also operate in tandem with the elimination of the social security policies typical of the increasingly eroded welfare state. Other authors find in these new forms of work the seeds of future forms of economic organization—arguing that they provide evidence that workers can plan and control sophisticated processes of production on their own and that capitalists and their managers are largely redundant Negri The critique of alienation has also been recently developed further by Forst by exploring the relation between alienation and domination.
See also the general analysis of the concept of alienation in Leopold A traditional criticism of capitalism especially amongst Marxists is that it is inefficient. Capitalism is prone to cyclic crises in which wealth and human potential is destroyed and squandered. For example, to cut costs and maximize profits, firms choose work-saving technologies and lay off workers.
But at the aggregate level, this erodes the demand for their products, which forces firms to cut costs further by laying off even more workers or halting production. Socialism would, it has been argued, not be so prone to crises, as the rationale for production would not be profit maximization but need satisfaction. Although important, this line of criticism is less widespread amongst contemporary socialists.
Historically, capitalism has proved quite resilient, resurrecting itself after crises and expanding its productivity dramatically over time. In might very well be that capitalism is the best feasible regime if the only standard of assessment were productivity. Still, socialists point out that capitalism involves some significant inefficiencies.
Examples are the underproduction of public goods such as public transportation and education , the underpricing and overconsumption of natural resources such as fossil fuels and fishing stocks , negative externalities such as pollution , the costs of monitoring and enforcing market contracts and private property given that the exploited may not be so keen to work as hard as their profit-maximizing bosses require, and that the marginalized may be moved by desperation to steal , and certain defects of intellectual property rights such as blocking the diffusion of innovation, and alienating those who engage in creative activities because of their intrinsic appeal and because of the will to serve the public rather than maximize monetary reward Wright 55— Really existing capitalist societies have introduced regulations to counter some of these problems, at least to some extent.
Examples are taxes and constraints to limit economic activities with negative externalities, and public funding and subsidies to sustain activities with positive externalities which are not sufficiently supported by the market. But, socialists insist, such mechanisms are external to capitalism, as they limit property rights and the scope for profit maximization as the primary orientation in the organization of the economy.
The regulations involve the hybridization of the economic system by introducing some non-capitalist, and even socialist elements. It is the people who, in theory, rulers are aiming to represent and support. Plato is obviously not concerned with a representative form of rule, but nowadays it is necessary, though difficult, to ensure that all the ruled are represented, at least to a certain extent, by their rulers.
Plato also argues that a specific education, available to few, will allow these few to become philosophers, but again this would create a ruling class that is not representative of the ruled. Take the members of the Chamber of Commons, many of whom have attended elite schools such as Eton and Oxford: they are not representative of the population, but are those running the United Kingdom.
As Karl Popper argued, it is wrong to place political power in the hands of an elite. Nevertheless, it is also unrealistic to claim that an elite does not exist today, as, for instance, there are always several main political parties who take turns running governments. As Aristotle argued, man is a political animal and it is inevitable for us all, not just for an elite of old men, to be interested and have a say in politics, as it is a force which inevitably affects us all.
For this reason his argument is not only unpersuasive but is also unrealistic. Nichols, Mary P. Reeve, C. It is a matter of scholarly debate to what extent this progression in his thinking represented a substantive change in his position, or merely a shift in emphasis.
Of course, Marx was writing long before the development of an extensive service sector characteristic of late capitalism. Nevertheless, by tweaking some of the language, his general analysis can also be applied to service industries in capitalist economies.
It is just because of this that he is a species being. Tucker , p. Jaggar, Alison M. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader ed. Robert C. Second Edition.
New York: W. Schmitt, Richard. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Wolff, Jonathan. Edward N. Download this essay in PDF. Berlin, 63— Theorie und Praxis starker Nachhaltigkeit. Skorupinski, B. Moreover, the selection can be considered late recognition of the fact that the problems of sustainable development, no matter how they are conceived or understood, cannot be resolved in the normal course of operations of the scientific community, but that what is rather needed is a specific research approach adequate to the structure and quality of the problems.
In the academic discourse, this insight has for some time become increasingly accepted. But what is the book inside the cover of sustainability science? Is it about a new super- or supra-discipline sui generis, or about a new structure or means of orientation of the systems of knowledge production? The literature contains evidence of both perspectives. Theory of sustainability? The concept of sustainability science as a discipline in its own right has been the topic of numerous academic publications in recent years cf.
However, that means that no matter how broadly we define the frame today, we will tomorrow face problems which lie beyond its established boundaries — which will by then already have been fixed by tradition. That fact collides with the evidently essential normativity of a possible sustain- ability science cf. However, it is precisely this context dependency which prevents, or at least limits, the construction of a separate corpus of knowledge, a necessary constituent of any scientific discipline.
For knowledge about the sustainability, or lack thereof, of societal development has been recognized to encompass more than merely scientific knowledge; experiential, institutional and traditional knowledge, etc.
Hence, to put it in only slightly exaggerated terms, every society, be it at the national, regional or local level, will have to construct its own characteristic corpus of knowledge for dealing with its own specific sustainability problems.
Methodological knowledge, on the other hand, is different: even if methods may be context-specific, decon- textualization and systematization are possible here, as Bergmann and colleagues have shown. In the next section, I will come back to the question of the role of methods in determining what a suitable framework for handling problems of sustainable development might be. Farrell has argued, the engineering concept of problem-solving is misleading in the context of sustainable development.
Thompson Klein et al. However, it becomes understandable if we take into account the central epis- temic interest of a sustainability science which is explicitly stressed in virtu- ally all conceptions: the understanding of the interaction between social and ecological systems, or, to put it more succinctly, between society and nature.
I will enter into this aspect in greater detail in the section after the next. Instead of establishment or canonization, what is needed is a flexible research mode which will do justice to the dynamics, and to the temporal, spatial, social, cultural etc. That is an approach which can develop along with the systems for which it is drafting transformational perspectives, and of which it is itself a part.
Transdisciplinarity is such a research mode. The ensuing dis- cussion around these two approaches, which has in many respects remained controversial to this day, has lent new momentum to the discourse about transdisciplinarity, which goes back to the s. It soon became clear that an essential area of application of this mode of research would be problems of sustainable development cf. Gibbons et al. However, how can this linkage be conceptualized?
In this context, criticism as a fundamental attitude means first of all a reference to the major ecological crisis phenomena, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, land degradation or the overuse of natural resources.
Changes can emerge in marginal or general functional conditions of systems, or else as disturbances, often with systemic posi- tive feedbacks.
Here, the primary scientific challenges lie in the context of sustainable develop- ment, because these patterns and relationships fundamentally refer to inter- actions between nature and society see Section 4. For this purpose, it is important to distinguish the lev- els which structure that sustainability discourse.
They are empirically difficult to keep apart; analytically, however, they can and must be kept separate. They are the normative, the operative and the descriptive levels cf. Every concept of sustainable develop- ment contains normative settings for what is societally desirable, and for the scopes of action and of decision-making processes oriented towards that end. These include such examples as: inter- and intra-generational justice, the preservation of the natural foundations of life, or the intelligent regulation of supply systems.
At this level of discourse, orientation knowledge is neces- sary for the evaluation of goals, the distinction between non-desirable and desirable developments and conditions, etc. At issue are moral principles and their interpretations, as well as criteria and indicators for sustainable development in the three inseparably linked sustainability dimensions.
At this level, the key question is: How can a process be designed in the course of which a consensus regarding what is desirable will emerge, and which role will scientific knowledge have in that process keywords: inclusivity, legiti- macy and fairness?
Sustainability always implies a strong reference to operative, strategic activity, and to concrete, controllable and affordable solutions to specific problems in various fields of activity and sec- tors of society with the familiar problems of scale and of generalization. Here, action or transformation knowledge is necessary. The integration of scientific and practical — political, institutional, business, etc. The important thing is useful and practically implementable concepts, i.
At the descriptive or analytical level, the question is: Which developments are possible at all? That presupposes knowledge about system dynamics system knowledge , and begins with the analysis of non-sustainable development directions and conditions. The methodologically guided integration of primarily scientific knowledge for a better understanding of complex effective contexts is the main characteristic at this level of discourse. Transdisciplinarity We propose transdisciplinarity as a research mode for a critical science which would take sustainable development as a normative Leitbild Jahn The key points of this basic understanding can briefly be outlined as follows: transdis- ciplinarity is a research practice which processes complex, real-life problems by means of methodological, guided cooperation between disciplines, and between researchers and practical actors, in order to enable common learning processes between the scientific community and society.
In that context, integration is a central cognitive challenge for the research process. At the ISOE, we are working with the general model of transdisciplinarity which we developed several years ago, and have since been testing and refining it in numerous research projects Jahn ; Bergmann et al.
We cannot enter into the details of the model here for a detailed explanation, see Jahn , pp. Its point of departure is the only apparently self-evident assumption that the handling of societal problems requires that they be linked to gaps in scientific knowledge, i. This assumption enables the contributions to societal and scientific progress to be viewed as the epistemic goal of a single research dynamic.
Moreover, this approach links the two fundamental concepts of transdisciplinarity, which are still distinguished in academic discourse: the real-life approach, in which soci- ety employs science in order to design practical solutions to concrete problems; and the internal-scientific approach, in which science basically pursues its own fundamental goals — the production of new knowledge, methods, models and theories — albeit with reference to societal problems.
Figure 4. We are adopting it from a scheme developed by the US Committee of Scientists , p. It distinguishes four problem types, according to their strength of consensus regarding knowledge and values. If the forms of knowl- edge characteristic for the problems of sustainable development are entered into the four fields of this matrix see Section 3. The participation of actors from the practical sphere is to be recommended in this case e.
As in the first case, for this type of problem, too, a real-life approach is often sufficient. However, integration requirements increase, since con- flicts are to be expected in the process of negotiating research goals. The same is true for the evaluation of the relevance of results for societal prac- tice; for this reason, and for reasons of acceptance, the direct participation of practical actors is absolutely necessary, especially for the formulation of problems at the outset of the research process, and also in the integration and evaluation of the results.
For this reason, new system knowledge will be needed, together with transformation knowledge. This is the reverse of the first problem type: here, what is needed is rather an internal-scientific approach to transdisci- plinarity, and the integration requirements are high, especially for the inter- disciplinary production of new scientific knowledge. The participation of practical actors is, as in the first case, advisable, e.
Most problems of sustainable devel- opment fall into this class; here, specific knowledge in all three categories is necessary. Accordingly, the integration requirements are highest in this case; the real-life and internal-scientific transdisciplinarity approaches combine to form a single research dynamic. The participation of practical actors at all phases of the research process is urgent in this case. Transdisciplinarity is a research practice which continually develops further, together with the cross-disciplinary, historically contingent objects with which it deals.
This is true both of its methods and with regard to the forms of participa- tion of practical actors in the research process — i. For this reason, the distinctions established above must of course remain broad brush; the empiri- cal richness of transdisciplinary research lies in the spaces between these four types see Figure 4. In view of the growing impact of human activities upon the biosphere, the geosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, the Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term anthropocene to describe the mutual inter- dependence between natural and social processes on various spatial and temporal levels.
However, understanding these relationships between nature and society demands plenty in the way of preconditions, and raises the question as to how they can become the object of scientific investigation in the first place, i.
For it is patterns of relationships which will have to be observed, not isolatable single phenomena. Becker ; Becker et al. This analytical dis- tinction enables an expression of the materiality of natural conditions, and at the same time their embedding in symbolic orders, interpretive contexts and social constructs. The distinction between nature and society is applied to particular phenomenological contexts, such as transportation and mobility, land use and food, etc.
Societal relations to nature are seen as regulated, or at least as regulable and shape- able. The normative view here is that all interactions with nature which are identi- fied as basal will have to be designed and regulated in such a manner that societal life processes are intergeneratively continuable, so that societies will not collapse.
This presupposes concepts of successful regulation, reproduction and development — and thus places the concept of societal relations to nature in the horizon of sustainable development, i. For some time, attempts have been made to view societal relations to nature as systemic contexts, i. Berkes et al.
Conceived as SESs, interactive relationships between nature and society can be researched as a complex of relationships intrinsic to the system. If sustainability problems are reformulated within this concept, the question posed immediately changes: How can these interlinked systems — and not merely isolated subsystems — develop sustainably?
Criteria can then be developed to determine which system dynamics, in accordance with the above introduced corridor model, could be identified as sustainable, and which not. A significant task of a transdisciplinary research for sustainable development would first and foremost involve an analysis of the conditions for the preser- vation of the development capability of social-ecological systems under pres- sure to change.
The research goal would be the development of options for less non-sustainable regulation of these systems or system complexes — with a focus on sustainable transformations, the preservation of capabilities to develop, and openness for the future.
We have our doubts as to whether it is even useful or possible to formulate a theory or theories of sustainability as something conclusive, regardless of the specific processes or structures to which sustainability refers. We assume that the scientific interest in a better understanding of sustainability cannot be separated from the context of the societal discourses around sustain- able development — nor should it be.
It appears to us not particularly useful to rigidly fix that which should be in a theory of sustainability; moreover, it would yet have to be determined in reference to which understanding of theory this were being done. If there is to be a theory, it should, in my view, be a critical theory in accordance with the approach described herein which could describe and explain how, where and when transformations to sustainable development might be possible, and could help identify points of bifurcation and windows of opportunity.
However, as I would like to demonstrate in the following, a clear understanding will be necessary for a productive debate around new ways for handling the problems of sustainable development in a knowledgeable manner. They correctly point out that a transdisciplinary science which addresses issues of sus- tainable development will increasingly face a debate over quality as thorny as the issue it addresses.
The suitable and tested framework for that is that of the scientific disci- pline. However, in view of the fundamental problems addressed herein, the issue of quality cannot, in my view, suffice as an argument for the establishment of a separate discipline. Rather, the important debate about quality and also about evaluation has been conducted for years in the context of the discourse around transdisciplinarity cf.
Bergmann et al. Schellnhuber et al. Otherwise, it would not be possible to identify any problem which might be addressed with the aid of research. Relating the philos- ophy and practice of ecological economics: The role of concepts, models, and case stud- ies in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research.
Ecological Economics, 67 3 , — Becker, E. Social-Ecological Systems as Epistemic Objects. In: Glaser, M. London: Routledge, 37— Sustainability and the Social Sciences. Lon- don: Zed Books Ltd. Handbuch Umweltsoziologie. In: Becker, E. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, — Quality Criteria of Transdis- ciplinary Research. Methods for Transdisciplinary Research. A Primer for Practice. Berkes, F. Navigating Social-Ecological Systems. Build- ing Resilience for Complexity and Change. Cambridge: University Press.
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GAIA, 22 1 , 29— Transdisciplinarity: Between mainstreaming and marginalization. Ecological Economics, 79, 1— Jantsch, E. Towards Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity in Education and Innovation. In: CERI eds. Problems of Teaching and Research in Uni- versities. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 97— Kajikawa, Y. Research core and framework of sustainability science.
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Rittel, H. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, — Schellnhuber, H. Earth System Analysis for Sustainability. Cambridge: MIT Press. Schneidewind, U. An institutional reform agenda for the establishment of trans- disciplinary sustainability research. GAIA, 19 2 , — Learning ex-post: Towards a simple method and set of questions for the self-evaluation of transdisciplinary research. GAIA, 17 2 , — Steinfeld, J.
Education for sustainable development: The challenge of trans-disciplinarity. Sustainability Science, 4, 1—2. Thompson Klein, J. An Effective Way for Managing Complexity. US Committee of Scientists Washington, DC: U. Department of Agriculture. Designing trans-disciplinary research to support policy formulation for sustainable agricultural development.
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Ziegler, R. The quality of sustainability science — A philosophical perspec- tive. Funding by itself does not legitimize sustainability science. Rather, it calls for reflection on such scientific activities, their key features, and the reasons for them. There is also sustainability science in the sense that there are scientists who regard themselves as sustainability scientists and who claim to do such science.
However, neither funding nor a mere presumption to do science is sufficient to establish a scientific field. Sustainability science must continuously reflect on its practice and its key features, to avoid becoming unduly doctrinaire. To this end, we raise from a philosophical perspective four questions regarding key features of sustainability science.
How these questions are dealt with strongly influences the quality of sustainability science. Put briefly, these four features concern the explica- tion and articulation of values and principles normativity , addressing the tem- poral relation of the research to what is at stake urgency , the justified inclusion of nonscientists participation , and the joint research of natural and social sci- entists interdisciplinarity.
These features make sustainability science difficult to evaluate according to the standards of disciplinary science, especially of the natural sciences. The overall field of sustainability science, with its explicit inclusion of normative consider- ations, seems to rest on shaky ground by the standards of many other disciplinary approaches.
Philosophical considerations, in particular from the philos- ophy of science, can contribute to this task. As important as the development of indicators and tool sets for evaluation is the philosophical task of examining major presuppositions of sustainability science and their justifications. Our approach aims at deep and comprehensive questioning in sustainability science: depth with respect to each feature, comprehensiveness as covering all major features.
We first introduce a famous example to demonstrate that the philosophy of science plays a role by co-structuring the debate in sustainability science. Our illustration is the ongoing dispute between weak and strong sustainability. In addition, we demon- strate this to be an uptake of philosophy of science that leads to a conceptually problematic way of framing the debate.
Philosophy of science so conceived is enabling and its attempt to pose the relevant questions is one contribution to a critical self-understanding for sustainability scientists. Rather than uncritically stating certain features, we reexamine why and under what conditions features are justified, thereby improving the quality of the research. Finally, we draw some tentative conclusions for the emerging culture of sustain- ability science. Framing issues — The difficult heritage of philosophy of science The relevance of philosophy of science for the way questions are asked in sustain- ability science can be demonstrated via the discussion of weak and strong sustain- ability.
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