Pathways to Sustainability: Frameworks for a Great Transformation

One of the major questions in our course are which social actors contribute to a transformation towards sustainable development and how - and in what way this happens, which inertias and obstacles stand in the way and could be overcome? What has the German government done, what is the German parliament doing, what is the function of business, sciences or civil society organizations – what happens in Berlin? We want to consider the broadest possible spectrum of approaches, strategies and actors for a reflected change towards a Great Transformation in an exemplary manner, as well as thinking theory and practice together (in the sense of transformative science and shaping the future). Of course, we will consider and reflect different national, regional and cultural systems and backgrounds for all this. Specific examples which are part of the pathway to sustainability are green taxes, renewable energy projects, cooperative housing, car-free streets and places, urban farming, or even eco-villages.

In order to get closer to an understanding of those complex realities we will utilize concepts like path dependency (path management), Multi-Level Perspective – MLP, social innovation, models of change, change agents, MAP – movement action plan. Depending on student’s interest and motivation, we will relate some of our seminar’s aspects and questions to very relevant sociological theories, i.e. social systems theory, practice theory and real utopias. These will give basic insights into societal factors for stability as well as for change.

A new concept for our seminar comes from climate research, investigating specific patterns in complex processes and changes: tipping points. This has recently been used to analyze ways to accelerate a transformation towards sustainable development. That new concept is called “social tipping process / points” and is currently being tested and further developed. It is very demanding because it often involves the interweaving of social action with biological-physical-chemical-natural and technological processes (systemic-dynamic). A good definition is this:“A ‘social system’ can be described as a network consisting of social agents (or subsystems) embedded within a social-ecological ‘environment’. Such a social system is called a ‘social tipping element’ if under certain (‘critical’) conditions, small changes in the system or its environment can lead to a qualitative (macroscopic) change, typically via cascading network effects such as complex contagion and positive feedback mechanisms. Agency is involved in moving the system towards criticality, creating small disturbances and generating network effects. By this definition, near the critical condition the stability of the social tipping element is low. The resulting transient change process is called the ‘tipping process’. The time it takes for this change to manifest is the ‘manifestation time’.“ (Winkelmann et al. 2022: 6)

The course will in the end enable students to understand societal developments, its mainly short-minded actions and unintended consequences, and on the other hand also intended developments, labelled “Transformations”, often based on evidence-based decision-making.