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Call
for Papers Knowledge
for the Sustainability Transition: 2002
Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change Berlin,
6-7 December 2002 The
Environmental Policy and Global Change Section of the German Political
Science Association (DVPW) invites papers for the 2002 Berlin
Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change,
to be held in Berlin on 6-7 December 2002. This year’s discussions
will address the theme “Knowledge for the Sustainability
Transition: The Challenge for Social Science”. The 2002
Berlin Conference has been endorsed by the Institutional Dimensions
of Global Environmental Change core project of the International
Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP),
and is organised by the Global Governance Project of the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in co-operation with
the Environmental Policy Research Unit of the Free University of
Berlin. What
Do We Know? Knowledge
for Sustainability: Three Research Questions Second,
and interrelated with the first point, we invite papers that view
knowledge as a factor that affects and influences political decision-making.
It has long been argued that not only power and interests, but also
ideas, discourses or belief systems influence the outcome of political
decision-making. We thus solicit papers that present cutting-edge
research on these questions and that analyse, in particular, the
ways in which existing knowledge - from scientific information to
more general ideas, discourses or belief systems - affects the ways
in which political actors respond to the global environmental crisis.
Are there dominant discourses and ideas that prevent us from reaching
a more sustainable development? Does ‘science’ and modern
technology in itself lead to unsustainable development paths - and
how can democratic political institutions manage to live with, for
example, the Genie of modern nuclear and molecular technologies? Third,
we invite papers from fellow social scientists that respond to the
challenges raised by recent thinkers who have argued for fundamental
changes in the way science is conducted - thinkers who have put
forward integrative concepts such as ‘earth system analysis’,
‘syndromes of global change’ or ‘sustainability science’.
It has been maintained, for example, that a new ‘sustainability
science’ must bridge the local-global divide and must include
interdisciplinary research that is concerned with multiple scales
and multiple actors - how would this affect social science, for
example the divide between scholars of international relations and
comparative environmental politics? Also, it has been suggested
that a sustainability science would require joint efforts of experts
and stakeholders from a variety of regions and backgrounds: does
the current practice of stakeholder involvement live up to the requirements
of sustainability science? In a similar vein, new initiatives strive
to better integrate colleagues from developing countries and to
build-up independent research capacities in the South - how will
this affect the way social science is conducted in the North? Sustainability
science, finally, is envisaged as inherently problem-driven in a
way that defines academic puzzles from the practitioners’ side,
not from the autonomous theory-building research process. How would
this affect social science? We welcome innovative and (self-)critical
papers on these questions, and hope to stir up debate within the
social science community. In addition, we intend to provide some
open space during the conference to engage in informal debate among
participants on these broader questions. How
to Participate Deadlines Financial
Support Further
Information >>
Frank Biermann, Chair, DVPW Environmental Policy and Global Change
Section [biermann@pik-potsdam.de], or |
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