•The scientific discourse of cultural sustainability explored.•Seven storylines and four policy contexts identified.•The multi-interpretability of cultural sustainability revealed.•Three main roles ...for culture in sustainable development identified.
There has been growing interest in policy and among scholars to consider culture as an aspect of sustainable development and even as a fourth pillar. However, until recently, the understanding of culture within the framework of sustainable development has remained vague. In this study, we investigate the scientific discourse on cultural sustainability by analyzing the diverse meanings that are applied to the concept in scientific publications. The analysis shows that the scientific discourse on cultural sustainability is organized around seven storylines: heritage, vitality, economic viability, diversity, locality, eco-cultural resilience, and eco-cultural civilization. These storylines are partly interlinked and overlapping, but they differ in terms of some contextualized aspects. They are related to four political and ideological contexts, conservative, neoliberal, communitarian, and environmentalist, which provide interesting perspectives on the political ideologies and policy arenas to which cultural sustainability may refer. Some of the story lines establish the fourth pillar of sustainability, whereas others can be seen as instrumental, contributing to the achievement of social, economic, or ecological goals of sustainability. The eco-cultural civilization story line suggests culture as a necessary foundation for the transition to a truly sustainable society.
Sense of place and values are concepts that have been defined in a multiplicity of ways by a variety of disciplines and seldom approached in combination within studies of place-based sustainability. ...In recent years, the debate on sustainability, and particularly on sustainability transformation, has started to recognise the central importance of the “inner dimension” in achieving sustainable futures. This brings to the fore individual and cultural immaterial aspects, such as values and sense of place. The aim of this article is to explore the role of sense of place and place values in the context of sustainable place-shaping and propose a framework to operationalise them in research. Three central questions guided and structured our work: (a) how can place-shaping contribute to sustainability transformations? (b) what is the role of the inner dimension of transformation in processes of sustainable place-shaping? (c) how to include the inner dimension—specifically sense of place and its underlying values—into place-shaping practice and discourse? Through the article, we argue that there is scope for a broader understanding of how sense of place contributes to sustainability transformations through place-shaping. The article ends with the introduction of an analytical tool for the study of sense of place and place values as potential drivers of place-based transformation. The conclusion of the article summarises the contribution of the inner dimension of place to place-shaping and, more in general, sustainability transformation.
Among scholars in sustainability science, there is an increasing recognition of the potential of place-based research in the context of transformative change towards sustainability. In this research, ...researchers may have a variety of roles; these are determined by the researcher’s engagement with the subject, the inherent theoretical, normative and methodological choices he or she makes, the researcher’s ambitions in contributing to change, and ethical issues. This article explores the varied roles of research fellows within the European Marie Curie ITN research program on sustainable place-shaping (SUSPLACE). By analysing 15 SUSPLACE projects and reflecting on the roles of researchers identified by Wittmayer and Schäpke (Sustain Sci 9(4):483–496, 2014) we describe how the fellows’ theoretical positionality, methods applied, and engagement in places led to different research roles. The methodology used for the paper is based on an interactive process, co-producing knowledge with Early Stage Researchers (fellows) of the SUSPLACE consortium. The results show a range of place meanings applied by the fellows. Varied methods are used to give voice to participants in research and to bring them together for joint reflection on values, networks and understandings, co-creating knowledge. Multiple conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ were used, reflecting different normative viewpoints. These choices and viewpoints resulted in fellows each engaging in multiple roles, exploring various routes of sustainable place-shaping, and influencing place-relations. Based on our findings we introduce a framework for the ‘embodied researcher’: a researcher who is engaged in research with their ‘brain, heart, hands and feet’ and who integrates different roles during the research process.
Sustainability science is an emerging, free-standing scientific discipline. It has introduced a new approach to both sustainability research and educational programmes, while evoking novel ...perspectives to stronger societal contextualization. Among several other areas of sustainability research, competencies for sustainability have become a focal topic of sustainability education research. This research explores the educational programmes and the representation of the theory-based key competencies for sustainability. Through a qualitative content study of 45 master programmes associated with sustainability science, we aim to understand what kind of sustainability competencies can be found in sustainability science master’s programmes and how they reflect the current discussions of the discipline of sustainability science and possibly drive the future education in the field. The study reveals that commonly suggested competencies including systems thinking, anticipatory, strategic, interpersonal, and normative competencies were frequently mentioned as content and learning outcomes in the curricula and are firmly present and widely employed in sustainability education. Additionally, this study identified three other clusters of competencies: diverse modes of thinking, methodological plurality, and competencies for autonomy. In addition to the contribution to education in the field by suggesting three emerged competencies for sustainability science specifically, we aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the discipline by suggesting a process-oriented framing of sustainability science.
Sustainability research is characterized by a plurality of interests, actors, and research traditions. Sustainability is a widely used concept across multiple disciplines and often a cross-cutting ...theme in different research projects. However, there is a limited understanding of how researchers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds approach sustainability and position themselves in sustainability research as a part of their researcher identity. Previous studies among sustainability science experts have indicated diverse approaches and definitions of the socio-political, epistemic and normative dimensions of sustainability. In this study, we use semi-structured interviews with researchers (
N
= 7) and a survey distributed to two academic institutes in Finland (
N
= 376) to examine how researchers relate to sustainability research through the notions of identity as ‘being’ and ‘doing’ and how the differing ways to relate to sustainability research shape preferred definitions and approaches. The examination of perspectives among researchers enables the identification of diverse views related to sustainability and, consequently, sheds light on what kinds of ideas of sustainability get presented in the research. We conclude that understanding different identities is crucial for negotiating and implementing sustainability and developing sustainability research, requiring more attention to researchers’ positionality and reflexivity.
Environmental: Conceptualizing NBS as co-evolutionary technology implies a holistic approach that contextualizes single NBS in larger ecosystem settings, such as locating a green roof in the entire ...space of the urban ecosystem.Economic: Co-evolutionary technology suggests new forms of techno-economic design that harness the creative capacity of the biosphere in generating novelty.Social: Co-evolutionary technology adopts the normative principle of eco-semiotic justice when deploying co-creative and participatory mechanisms in design and implementation that ensure equal recognition of diverse ways of world-making.
The concept of NbS bridges between researchers and practitioners who search for innovative solutions to a wide range of societal problems and challenges, mostly related to ecological issues. Our conceptual paper aims at grounding the concept in theorizing NbS as a variant of ‘co-evolutionary technology’ CET, informed by ecological and institutional economics, and contextualized in recent Anthropocene research. This results in a new definition of NbS. NbS mediate between technosphere and biosphere evolution. We formulate four principles of CET, with the pivot of CET meeting both human needs and enhancing biospheric evolutionary potential, which feeds back on CET in co-creative design. The paper introduces core theoretical concepts, such as distributed agency and affordances, and proceeds in detailing CET along the standard tripartite view of technology, that is, design, production and use. We conclude in arguing that CET are inherently ethical since their design requires equal recognition of various human and non-human actors, both in terms of functions and ways of world-making.
Several individual scholars and international organizations have attempted to conceptualize "culture" in its different meanings in sustainability. Despite those efforts, a tangle of different ...approaches are being used, reflecting the various disciplines and policy aims. In this paper we propose an interdisciplinary framework for identifying the different roles of culture in sustainability in an attempt to guide the research and policy activities in this complex field. The framework is comprised of three representations defined by a literature review on "cultural sustainability", which are further explored through eight organizing dimensions that mark the similarities and differences between the three representations. The article reveals that the three representations are partly interlinked and that they also reveal gradients in the dynamics of the system, as well as in the human/nature interface.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) are mostly seen as engineering approaches to meeting challenges of human societies under ecological stress, while also nurturing biodiversity. We argue that given the ...accelerating speed of environmental change, NbS design for biodiversity recovery cannot be informed by past or current conditions but must create evolutionary potential for yet unknown future biodiversity. The objective of our paper is to reconceptualizing this creative role of NbS design as artwork, building on John Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics. We suggest that in emphasizing the aesthetic dimension of NbS, triggers, mechanisms and affordances can be harnessed that activate the co-creative potential of both humans and non-humans for cooperation, resilience, and future biodiversity. We build on recent developments, both practical and experimental, in interspecies art and design and locate these in the two dimensions of co-creation and co-evolution. As a result, we distinguish three categories of NbS as artwork, transformative art, interspecies art and exaptive art, present their main features and give some illustrations of how they may regenerate the current ways to approach and design NbS.
The question of the relationship between humans and their environment has been one of the geographers’ main challenges during this century. It has been approached from different geographical angles ...using various methodologies. Maps have always been present in geographical research and they constitute important means in research within other disciplines as well. Mapping and map-making, however, implies many theoretical questions, which have to be taken into account particularly when used in human landscape research.
This article reviews the ways in which drawn maps as a mode of analysis and representation have been exploited especially in human geography and discusses how mapping might bridge human and natural sciences into landscape research. The focus is on three geographical orientations, namely behaviourism, humanistic and cultural geography. Additionally, two mapping techniques, mental mapping and concept mapping, are presented.
So far, drawn maps, such as mental maps, have primarily been used in research on urban environments. Moreover, especially mental maps, which have been favoured by the behaviourists, have encountered severe critique by the representatives of humanistic and cultural geography due to the limited view on the relationship between humans and the environment. Still, I suggest there are many possibilities for the use of drawn maps in human landscape research to be further discussed and exploited in practice.
PDF
