Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences

Frances Fahy, Henrike Rau, Frances Fahy, Henrike Rau

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780857025227, 9780857025210
• eBook ISBN: 9781446290965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Sustainability is a key concept used by social scientists interested in interactions between human society and the environment. This text offers a systematic and critical review of established and emerging methodological approaches, as well as tools for the integrated investigation of sustainability questions. Recognising the significance of scale for sustainability efforts and measurement, its scope ranges from the local to the global. Divided into five sections:

• Part I: examines the key challenges inherent to social scientific sustainability research, focusing in particular on methodological questions that arise from recent efforts towards greater disciplinary integration.
• Part II: discusses methodologies aimed at the investigation of attitudes and behaviour observable at the local level - from families and households to individual organisations within communities.
• Part III: focuses on comparative sustainability research across different levels of socio-political organisation - from cities and regions to nation-states.
• Part IV: covers recent developments which recognise the significance of time for sustainability research and which offer innovative methodological approaches that focus on life events and long-term outcome.
• Part V: offers a critical assessment of current and future trends in social-scientific sustainability researc.

 Bringing together contributions from international social scientists, this is the resource for academics and practitioners interested in sustainability research. It will be a core teaching text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sustainability and sustainable development, geography, environmental sociology and the environmental sciences.

PART I

Measuring the Immeasurable?
The Challenges and Opportunities
of Sustainability Research in
the Social Sciences

1

Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences–Concepts, Methodologies and the Challenge of Interdisciplinarity

Henrike Rau and Frances Fahy

Introduction

The necessity to reconcile the needs and wants of human society with the limits of the global ecological system has resulted in proposals for alternative forms of development that prioritise human flourishing and well-being over materially intensive economic growth. Calls for development that is capable of sustaining more than seven billion people on a planet with finite resources and that ensures a good quality of life for current and future generations have shaped political agendas in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These practical and political sustainability issues are matched by equally daunting challenges with regard to its measurement. Who decides what counts as sustainable? How do we know if a new waste management policy or an initiative to encourage walking and cycling yield ‘sustainable outcomes’? What time frame is needed to assess the results of a policy that claims to enhance sustainability? Perhaps some outcomes will only emerge years after the sustainability assessment of a particular initiative has been completed. Finally, who are the ‘winners’ and who are the ‘losers’ of sustainability initiatives and policies, both now and in the future? These and other pressing questions are central to the sustainability project. However, they rarely receive adequate attention from politicians, practitioners and academics.

This edited collection aims to address some of these questions through a critical examination of new and established research methodologies and tools for social research that have found application in the investigation of sustainability problems. Its contributors can draw on extensive experience and expertise with regard to both the conceptualisation of society–environment relations and the empirical study of people and places. Key methods to be covered in this collection include well-established quantitative and qualitative tools for social research such as survey questionnaires and focus groups. In addition, there is a strong emphasis on new and innovative methodologies that try to capture short-and long-term changes in human behaviour, such as problem-centred interviewing that focuses on key life events and longitudinal designs for the evaluation of sustainability programmes and initiatives. Overall, the book aims to help close a significant gap in the literature by offering an accessible and comprehensive account of current trends in the theory and practice of social-scientific sustainability research.

In this introduction we will examine past developments and current trends in sustainability research in the social sciences, concentrating in particular on contributions from sociology, geography and political science as well as recent inter-and transdisciplinary efforts. Initially, the main focus will be on the relationship between theory and empirical data. Subsequently, we will explore the (political) relevance and practicability of key approaches to measuring sustainability and sustainable human development. Following on from this, we will turn our attention to recently emerging inter-and transdisciplinary approaches to social research methodology and practice that represent interesting departures from more conventional ways of viewing and doing science. Throughout this introduction we will touch on some epistemological and methodological chal lenges inherent to social-scientific sustainability research in general, and recent trends towards greater disciplinary integration in particular. This discussion will encompass the potential benefits and drawbacks involved in combining social and natural science research methods. The concluding section of this introductory chapter will outline the overall structure of this edited collection and make visible the connections between individual chapters.

Linking theory and data: sustainability concepts and their measurement

There is still great uncertainty about the use of the term ‘sustainable development’ (SD) and its precise meaning: people who use the term in conversation or public debate may not necessarily talk about the same thing at all. The concept of SD has also had many critics who have taken issue with both its normative and prescriptive nature and its definitional breadth. Some have even described it as a paradox or an oxymoron whose deployment in the context of public and political debates is likely to perpetuate the existing discursive and practical hegemony of progress and economic growth (Sachs, 1997; Latouche, 2007). This raises the question whether conceptual agreement can ever be reached, given the diversity of ideas and initiatives that are subsumed under the umbrella concept of sustainable development (see also Mebratu, 1998; Parris and Kates, 2003).

This said, many actors involved in SD politics, research and practice have more or less explicitly adopted the definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), or variants thereof. The 1987 WCED report Our Common Future, also commonly referred to as the Brundtland report, is seen as a watershed moment in the history of sustainable development theory and practice. It defines sustainable development as development that ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987: 24). The Brundtland report recognises the various threats to society and environment that emanate from the over-consumption of resources and proposes measures to address this problem. While there is a strong focus on the role of the economy throughout the document, the role of politics in bringing about sustainable development is also explored in detail.

There are also proposals to substitute ‘sustainability’ for sustainable development to address (or perhaps avoid) some of the deep-seated conceptual uncertainties and ideological and moral tensions associated with the latter, many of which appear to resist any immediate resolution. We would argue here that concerns over sustainability can be traced back to pre-modern subsistence economies and traditional cultures but that by linking the issue of sustainability to modern growth and development logics, these older roots are frequently ignored. It is worth noting here that all of the contributors to this collection have adopted a nuanced and cautious approach to SD terminology which rejects the uncritical use of the word ‘sustainable’ but recognises the high importance of sustainability as a concept.

Regardless of the outcome of these conceptual debates, it is clear that sustainability research has gained huge momentum both in the social and the natural sciences, partly in response to the seriousness of social and environmental problems today. This raises important questions about the implications for social research of this ‘sustainability turn’. Surprisingly, this is hardly ever explicitly recognised. This lack of attention to fundamental methodological questions that arise from the growing influence of SD thinking more generally, and specific choices of sustainability concepts and terminology in particular, has been a key motivation for this edited collection and all chapters will cover these and related issues.

So what are the possible methodological implications of adopting either the Brundlandt definition itself or one of its variants? Firstly, to do so means to also think about the issue of intergenerational justice and how to operationalise and measure it. How can we capture trends in human development and resource consumption that stretch across multiple generations? Are commonly used cross-sectional research designs adequate for the measurement of long-term change? And how effective are conventional social science approaches to longitudinal data analysis for the study of society–environment relations? Ultimately, cross-sectional country data collected at regular intervals remain the dominant method for capturing and reporting social, economic and ecological change. At the same time, longitudinal data collection, that is, the recording of information over an extended period of time using the same sample (of people, households, organisations, etc.) continues to be the exception. This has significant implications for the analysis of social and ecological changes and how they occur.

Secondly, while the Brundlandt report and its various successors are explicitly global in focus, they nevertheless ascribe a significant role to the nation-state as a key administrative unit. While this clearly reflects the historical context of the WCED meeting in 1987, it has implications for the kinds of sustainability research that can be meaningfully conducted using this definition. National-level data continues to dominate mainstream sustainability research. While this focus on countries and their sustainability performance is useful on many levels, it cannot adequately capture many cross-national challenges to sustainability. As will be shown throughout this book, the growing complexity of global flows of people, goods, waste products and ideas and their capacity to transcend national boundaries cannot be ignored (cf. Rau, 2010). Importantly, this shift towards flows and mobilities brings to the fore wider issues about the adequate scale of social research as well as its generalisability, which will be central motives of this collection.

Comparative efforts are central to the investigation of sustainability, though there is great diversity with regard to the unit of analysis used. While classical comparative studies have often been cross-national in focus, there is now a much greater emphasis on ‘peer-group’ and regional approaches that group together individual nation-states. For example, Flynn’s (2007) recent comparative study of Ireland’s environmental performance adopted a peer-group approach that included three other countries: two that were seen as similar to Ireland (Portugal, Greece) and one that was judged to be different (Denmark). The many benefits of this innovative approach to sampling are evident throughout Flynn’s study and highlight the need to move beyond conventional frameworks for cross-national comparison.

Similarly, definitions of sustainability that deviate from or challenge mainstream SD concepts require alternative ways of thinking about and measuring sustainability. Many of the contributions to this collection will discuss alternative approaches to comparative research that differ from more traditional work in terms of scale, focus and choice of unit of analysis. For example, recent calls by academics and sustainability advocates for the (re) localisation of economic activity as a way of addressing social and ecological problems raise interesting questions about how to adequately measure the success (or otherwise) of small-scale initiatives such as Transition Towns. Similarly, prominent sustainability studies have focused on cities rather than nation-states, which is also reflective of a renewed interest among social scientists in urban life.¹

It is likely that current and future challenges to the theory and practice of sustainable development will also change the measurement of sustainable outcomes. For example, it could be argued that a commitment to bid ‘farewell to growth’ (Latouche, 2010) would also imply a clear departure from established indicators and measurements of economic activity. In addition, certain topics that were previously confined to the margins of sustainability politics and research are now pushing through to the centre of debate, requiring the development of new indicators. For example, the impending threat of large-scale displacement of people both within and between countries due to climate change and associated environmental disasters can no longer be ignored. The implications of mass migration for global social and political stability, including the threat of social disintegration and the disappearance of indigenous cultures, have only recently received adequate attention from decision makers. In June 2011, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres urged countries to develop new approaches to climate-induced displacement of people. In his speech at the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century in Oslo he referred to climate-induced movement of people as the ‘defining challenge of our time’ and criticised the lack of political will to tackle climate change.² This clearly has significant implications for the kinds of sustainability research projects that are needed to inform policy and shape public discourse. For example, it now seems vitally important to connect information about local and regional environmental degradation with migration data. Similarly, there is a need for more reliable and detailed information about the relationship between violent conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as more nuanced analyses of such data (cf. Salehyan, 2008).

To conclude, while more conventional approaches to data collection and analysis such as large-scale surveys are likely to remain dominant, partly because existing research capacity and infrastructure depend on their continued use, novel approaches can be expected to emerge to compete for recognition and funding. These include the increased deployment of visualisation methods aided by developments in information and communication technology, more widespread use of participatory and collaborative methods for data collection and analysis and modifications to conventional methodological approaches and tools to capture hitherto neglected social and environmental phenomena. However, the task of translating sustainability concepts into meaningful empirical observations will remain the ultimate challenge in the field. All contributions to this edited collection capture current practices in relation to the operationalisation of theoretical concepts and explore potential future developments.

Sustainability and social research: Methodological challenges

The social-scientific measurement of sustainability throws up a range of questions to do with what to measure, why and how. Some of these questions relate to the nature of social research more generally, and have been central to methodological debates since the inception of many social science disciplines in the nineteenth century. These include methodological issues to do with objectivity and subjectivity or ways of assessing the quality of social inquiry. Broader questions to do with the nature of human knowledge, how people make sense of their social and physical environment and how they know what they know also continue to emerge in the context of social-scientific sustainability research, albeit often only as a subtext.

How we measure social and material conditions shapes and reflects how we think and talk about them. The rhetoric of measurability–the widely established idea that things do not matter (or perhaps do not even exist) if they cannot be measured–has influenced the sustainability debate in diverse ways. It seems important to remember here that the emergence of sustainability research in the late 1960s and early 1970s coincided with the rise of environmentalism and the re-emergence of Malthusian arguments with regard to population and resource consumption in many developed countries. Key research reports and academic publications such as Ehrlich and Ehrlich’s (1968/2009) The population bomb, the Limits to growth report (Meadows et al., 1972) and its 30-year update (Meadows et al., 2004), the Stern review on the economics of climate change (Stern, 2006) and the various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change assessment reports published since 1990 have fuelled and shaped the global sustainability debate.

What these publications have in common is a focus on quantifying and modelling the consequences of (un)sustainability. This methodological emphasis on quantification is also reflected in public debates that frequently revolve around directly measurable and numerically expressible aspects of environmental degradation. Predicted increases in global temperature as a result of climate change, or the anticipated rise in sea levels as a result of thawing pole caps and glaciers, have received significant media attention and have captured the public’s imagination. Al Gore’s popular documentary An inconvenient truth (2006) captures this type of sustainability discourse, which draws mostly on conventional large-scale quantitative data.

While there are countless benefits to using large-scale data and numeric indicators to investigate, represent and compare the sustainability performance of countries and regions, for example to draw attention to global inequalities, there is still considerable uncertainty about what indicators are most appropriate (see Khoo, Chapter 5 and Gaube et al. Chapter 6 in this volume). The measurement of human development has long been dominated by economistic ways of thinking which prioritised economic growth and its measurement using gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP). However, the dominance of economics has been challenged in recent years, in particular, following the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. Composite indicators of sustainability such as the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI) have emerged and gained in popularity. This new generation of indicators combine a focus on economic activity with measurements of ecological improvement or decline, and human well-being. These alternative indicators thus reflect new ways of thinking about development which recognise that a continued focus on economic growth will destroy vitally important ecosystems and threaten humanity.

How can this shift in sustainability research towards more integrated indicators be explained? Even as recently as 1995 Kaufmann and Cleveland argued that lack of agreement between natural and social scientists about indicators represents a major barrier to sound sustainability research and that much greater integration is needed. Much has happened with regard to integration since Kaufmann a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Measuring the Immeasurable? The Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences
• PART II: Researching Local Lives: Experiences of (Un)sustainability among Individuals, Households and Communities
• PART III: Comparative Research on the Sustainability Performance of Cities, Regions and Nation-states
• PART IV: Time in Focus
• PART V: Current Developments and Future Trends
• Index