Description du projet
Étudier les transformations passées et en cours de la durabilité
Les transformations en matière de durabilité jouent un rôle essentiel dans la résolution des problèmes environnementaux les plus urgents et des conséquences du changement planétaire. Cependant, malgré leur importance, les processus de changement transformateur demeurent mal compris et très peu étudiés en détails. Ce manque de compréhension implique souvent des difficultés à mettre en œuvre et à tirer les leçons des échecs passés. Reconnaissant l’importance des transformations en matière de durabilité, le projet TRANSMOD, financé par le CER, se propose d’analyser les processus de transformation passés et en cours et de développer une théorie innovante susceptible d’éclairer les futures transformations. Le projet examinera les changements imputables aux variations de l’agencement et du processus de changement lui-même. Pour ce faire, il fera appel à des méthodologies interdisciplinaires et transdisciplinaires avancées pour permettre des simulations détaillées des processus de changement et étudier l’émergence et la stabilisation de nouvelles idées au sein des transformations en cours.
Objectif
While the need for sustainability transformations is ubiquitous, understanding why and how they succeed or fail is limited. Explanations often focus on either agency-related or systemic factors. Understanding the complex dynamics of transformations, however, requires approaches that bridge perspectives, and recognize the interdependent personal, political, social and ecological dynamics at play.
TRANSMOD addresses this gap through interdisciplinary analysis of transformative change in the context of natural resource governance and food systems across the Global South and North. It focuses on how novel ideas and practices emerge and take root in response to crises, such as resource decline or Covid-19, and in interaction with existing structures and processes, such as dominant narratives, power relations and biophysical dynamics.
The project will reach its objectives through an approach that transcends a focus on systemic processes versus agency by analysing change or lack thereof as emerging from their relations. It will achieve this through two methodological advancements: i) combining simulation modelling with empirical research of past transformations, which allows analysing key material and immaterial social and social-ecological processes through in-depth case studies and testing their effect on emergent system dynamics through modelling, and ii) making sense of the complexities of change through engaging in ongoing change-making processes. Together, these activities will serve the development of complexity-aware theories of transformation.
The project will open up new opportunities for sustainability science by establishing the conceptual and methodological foundations for research that goes beyond natural-social divides with the help of building applying a next generation of social-ecological models. This will enable new ways of theorising that account for the complexity of cross-scale and interconnected social-ecological dynamics of the Anthropocene.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
10691 Stockholm
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