 Sustaining sustainability science: The role of established inter-disciplinesKaren Kastenhofer, Ulrike Bechtold and Harald Wilfing Ecological Economics, 2011, vol. 70, issue 4, 835-843 Abstract: The establishment of new interdisciplinary fields such as ecological economics, human ecology or technology assessment can be interpreted as a logical consequence of striving for new sustainability sciences that address current global, multi-dimensional and multi-scale challenges. These set out to bridge the gap between the natural and the social sphere, between scientific analysis and societal action. This paper aims at re-assessing the contribution of established inter-disciplines to sustainable development. Journal articles of ecological economics, technology assessment and science and technology studies are evaluated and compared along several proposed features of sustainability science. The results converge in two crucial aspects. (1) Concise societal or political recommendations are not part of present day 'normal science', be it a disciplinary or an explicitly interdisciplinary research context. (2) Participatory exercises are rarely applied as a socio-politically embedded practice, despite a high interest in such exercises as an object of study and discussion. Keywords: Sustainability; science; Technology; assessment; Ecological; economics; Science; and; technology; studies; Inter-disciplines (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:70:y:2011:i:4:p:835-843 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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