Abstract
Why is scientific knowledge about society essential to sustainability discourse and yet so little of it has found its way into it? In an examination of these questions, Jetzkowitz draw attention to the relationship of conceptual thinking, future expectation, and action by discussing Marx ’ and Engels ’ methodological approach to society and history. What becomes evident here is that it is crucial for sustainability discourse to consider knowledge as a social process which can encourage dynamic feedbacks. Furthermore, it is shown that while there is much talk about society in debates on sustainability , it is rarely made an object of research. Finally, he discusses why social scientists have failed to tackle this task and introduces the idea of an interdisciplinary science of coevolution.
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- 1.
It suggested itself to them naturally, for reasons of terminology alone. Their concept of “work”, the basic physical engagement of humans with the external world, includes the idea that man, who physically is part of nature, is “acting on the external world and changing it”, and thus, Marx wrote (1887, 127), “he at the same time changes his own nature.”
- 2.
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The same is true for how Marx and Engels saw Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. They both appreciated the disenchanting effect of Darwin’s theory of descent. But his conceptual and methodological arguments remained for the most part incomprehensible to them. Cf. Lucas (1964), Liedman (1998).
- 4.
Engels , for example, expected to see the revolution happen in the near future even shortly before his death. As late as 1892, he wrote to Laura Lafarque: “Of course, the next revolution which is preparing in Germany with a consistency and steadiness unequaled anywhere else, would come of itself in time, say 1898-1904” (Engels 1979, 545, translation Lawrence and Wishart 2010).
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To avoid a well-known misunderstanding (cf. e.g. White 1967), I would like to point out that to portray the Judeo-Christian religious tradition as the one root cause of the modern ecological crises is an undue simplification.
- 7.
This clarity is a result of the idea of sustainability as it was developed in German Forest Economics, drawing especially from the rule that a forest has to be managed in such a way as to allow for its regeneration (cf. von Carlowitz 2000). This particular aspect was not discussed by the Brundtland Commission (cf. Radkau 2011, 552) but with the word “sustainable” a concept limiting haphazard exploitation was introduced into the discussion of developmental perspectives for economy and society. In 1980, “sustainable development” emerged for the first time as a compromise formula in the international environmental movement. From its origins in the political struggles to end the global destruction of ecosystems and to preserve the biosphere, the formula was adopted into the complicated political process of negotiating a balance between the protection of nature and the environment on the one hand, and the fight against poverty and developmental efforts on the other (cf. Radkau 2011, 536–579; Grober 2010, 249–268).
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See this Monsanto website: http://www.monsantoglobal.com/global/au/whoweare/Pages/sustainable.aspx; last access on 17 January 2018.
- 10.
See this website of “Energie Baden-Württemberg AG”: https://www.enbw.com/unternehmen/konzern/ueber-uns/umweltschutz/umweltmanagement/; last access on 14 January 2018.
- 11.
Næss (1973, 96) describes the two principles like this: “Diversity enhances the potentialities of survival, the chances of new modes of life, the richness of forms. And the so-called struggle of life, and survival of the fittest, should be interpreted in the sense of ability to coexist and corporate in complex relationships, rather than ability to kill, exploit, and suppress. ‘Live and let live’ is a more powerful ecological principle than ‘Either you or me’.”
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Cf. p. 19f.
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Recent sustainability research experiments with the concept of “pathways” (cf. e.g. Geels and Schot 2007), in order to avoid deterministic interpretations. A pathway can be described as an exploratory movement of various actors on interlinked micro, meso, and macro levels. In hindsight, each pathway is reconstructed as the result of, on the one hand, intentionally planned efforts for change and, on the other hand, emergent properties of social processes. Whether this concept can actually provide an anti-deterministic approach in sustainability discourse depends, I think, in large part on its linkage to co-learning strategies for the shaping of the future (cf. e.g. Luederitz et al. 2016; Didham and Ofei-Manu 2015; Dyball et al. 2007).
- 14.
This is true for the large majority of sustainability science approaches, cf. Bettencourt and Kaur (2011).
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That it is possible to gain public attention in the role of a fundamental scepticist indicates that a new issue has been established in public discourse (cf. Jetzkowitz 2008, 104–109).
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Arguably demonstrated by the fact that Habermas (1995, 505) gives the relevant chapter in Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, 2000) the title “Reason and nature – a reconciliation at the cost of reenchantment?”
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- 20.
Similar to Habermas , the older Critical Theory devalues experiences in favor of theory, which is always considered paramount. Hence the opportunity is lost to systematically expedite the reevaluation of one’s own standards (cf. Horkheimer 1988, 212f.). Admittedly, there are passages when, for instance, nature is addressed as an independent and recalcitrant factor. But in general, it needs to be stated that both Adorno and Horkheimer share a deep unease about the fact that society is exposed to natural processes (cf. Görg 1999, 114–133, esp. 128f.).
- 21.
This explains, too, why the allegation that a specific sociological position uses naturalistic, biologistic, or metaphysical arguments—i.e. that it refers to non-social factors—is one the most severe allegations in social science debates.
- 22.
My version is based on the classical pragmatism and, as its concept of action is not sufficiently sophisticated, on functionalist action theory. This combination may seem unusual but both approaches complement each other very well, if the goal is to develop a concept of social sciences that takes into account the uniqueness of their research subject and can rival the scientific character of the “hard” natural sciences (cf. Jetzkowitz 2003).
- 23.
Here I address Horkheimer’s (1988) request that criteria of reason guide the goals of scientific research as much as the scientific process.
- 24.
Burger and Christen (2011) have a similar concern when they distil from sustainability discourse adequacy conditions for sustainability conceptions.
- 25.
Efforts towards a transdisciplinary science that puts a stronger emphasis on offering solutions for social problems (rather than homemade ones resulting from discourses of the science disciplines) also are provided with an orienting concept to assess cooperations between science and social practice.
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In this context connections between coevolutionary science to concepts of deliberative politics (cf. e.g. Habermas 2015) should be discussed.
- 27.
Gesa Lindemann (2009, 1; translation J.J.) defines this dimension of sociological theorizing as “social theory”: “The term social theory refers to those aspects of sociological theory that determine what is to be understood as a social phenomenon and what methodological principles are to be used in the collection and analysis of data.” I suggest a different definition of sociality and use a different terminology. But I agree with Lindemann that all theories in social sciences (and in fact all scientific theories) necessarily include assumptions about their research subject and how to approach it.
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Jetzkowitz, J. (2019). What Is the Problem?. In: Co-Evolution of Nature and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96652-6_1
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