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Dilemmas of Sustainable Development

Dilemmas of Sustainable Development

The discourse on sustainable development has seen a dramatic increase in the number of objectives, criteria, interests and forms of knowledge connected with this concept. Which of the meta-criteria can actually be substantiated as being "sustainable" for the assessment of projects, programmes, initiatives?

To answer this question, an analytical sustainable development concept is needed that can be applied to different understandings of sustainable development, i.e. a concept that does not itself propound normative criteria. This project preconceives the notion of "sustainable development" on the assumption that there is a relationship between society and nature, that development has a temporal dimension and that knowledge is a resource with a transformative potential.

Relying on transdisciplinary cooperation between education, governance research, epistemology and social theory, the proposed project combines empirical and reflective approaches. The empirical study of the correlation between the understanding of sustainable development and operationalisation of sustainable development dilemmas in evaluation programmes (module 1) and sustainable development projects (module 2) are brought into relation with the study of epistemic knowledge fields (module 3) and change in knowledge regulation (module 4). The common point of reference is the development of specific sustainable development dilemmas that are generated from the current state of research as an initial heuristic and further developed throughout the project (module 0).

The question framing the project as a whole is thus: what are the dilemmas inherent in sustainable development and how do these relate to one another on an epistemic and strategic level? In pursuit of an answer, the individual modules will closely examine four lines of inquiry that are related to one another and pertain to the project's overarching interest.

These are:

1) How and to what extent are the dilemmas of sustainable development operationalised in sustainable development research programmes, perhaps in line with different understandings of sustainable development?;

2) Which dilemmas of sustainable development become apparent in individual sustainable development projects and to what extent do these, and any solution strategies developed, interrelate with the project's understanding of sustainable development?;

3) Which specific changes in perspective and epistemic configurations of the objects of knowledge determine the sciences that consider themselves to be sustainable development sciences?; and

4) To what extent does "sustainable development" involve a specific type of knowledge that raises new types of challenges for knowledge regulation?

Building on the answers to these research queries, the project will generate empirically and theoretically sound meta-criteria for sustainable development which can then be used to assess the evaluation criteria themselves. At the end, a pertinent guide will be presented. Overall, the project will contribute to the contextualisation of the sustainable development discourse in science and society and, based on this, provides deep orientative knowledge and concrete proposals for the development of benchmarks for the evaluation of sustainable development programmes, projects and research proposals.

 

Methodical approach (central methods):

The project's methodological core is the joint development of the initial heuristic of specific sustainable development dilemmas. In addition, the project combines evaluation research methods, including transdisciplinary methods, the methods of qualitative empirical social research and the reflexive methods of discourse and concept analysis with their emphasis on the philosophy of science and social theory.

Participants/positions:

Five cluster partners, consisting of four professorships and one working group, along with a non-university cluster partner (ISOE) and four 65% doctoral researcher posts, half of which are based at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and the other half at the Technische Universität Braunschweig in cooperation with the University of Passau.


Project-Website: https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/philosophie/dilemmata


Project participants:

  • Prof. Dr. Anna Henkel (head of project)
  • Prof. Dr. Matthias Bergmann (cluster partner)
  • Prof. Dr. Nicole C. Karafyllis (cluster partner)
  • Prof. Dr.  Bernd Siebenhüner (cluster partner)
  • Prof. Dr. Karsten Speck (cluster partner)

 

Principal Investigator(s) at the University Prof. Dr. Anna Henkel (Lehrstuhl für Soziologie mit Schwerpunkt Techniksoziologie und nachhaltige Entwicklung)
Project period 01.04.2019 - 30.09.2022
Website https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/philosophie/dilemmata
Source of funding
Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur
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