TY - JOUR
T1 - Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research in Practice
T2 - Between imaginaries of collective experimentation and entrenched academic value orders
AU - Felt, Ulrike
AU - Igelsböck, Judith
AU - Schikowitz, Andrea
AU - Völker, Thomas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2016.
PY - 2016/7
Y1 - 2016/7
N2 - Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science-society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get (dis-)entangled. This article discusses (1) the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, (2) the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, (3) the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and (4) how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place.
AB - Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science-society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get (dis-)entangled. This article discusses (1) the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, (2) the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, (3) the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and (4) how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place.
KW - INNOVATION
KW - SCIENCE
KW - collective experimentation
KW - engagement
KW - science and society
KW - sustainability
KW - technopolitical cultures
KW - transdisciplinarity
KW - Science and society
KW - Transdisciplinarity
KW - Technopolitical cultures
KW - Engagement
KW - Collective experimentation
KW - Sustainability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84977134190&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0162243915626989
DO - 10.1177/0162243915626989
M3 - Article
VL - 41
SP - 732
EP - 761
JO - Science, Technology & Human Values
JF - Science, Technology & Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 4
ER -