How Can Humanities Interventions Promote Progress in the Environmental Sciences?

Abstract

Environmental humanists make compelling arguments about the importance of the environmental humanities (EH) for discovering new ways to conceptualize and address the urgent challenges of the environmental crisis now confronting the planet. Many environmental scientists in a variety of fields are also committed to incorporating socio-cultural analyses in their work. Despite such intentions and rhetoric, however, and some humanists' eagerness to incorporate science into their own work, "radical interdisciplinarity [across the humanities and sciences] is ... rare ... and does not have the impact one would hope for" (Holm et al. 2013, p. 32). This article discusses reasons for the gap between transdisciplinary intentions and the work being done in the environmental sciences. The article also describes a project designed to address that gap. Entitled "From Innovation to Progress: Addressing Hazards of the Sustainability Sciences", the project encourages humanities interventions in problem definition, before any solution or action is chosen. Progress offers strategies for promoting expanded stakeholder engagement, enhancing understanding of power struggles and inequities that underlie problems and over-determine solutions, and designing multiple future scenarios based on alternative values, cultural practices and beliefs, and perspectives on power distribution and entitlement.

Source Criticism as a Technology of Government in the Swedish Psychological Defence: The Impact of Humanistic Knowledge on Contemporary Security Policy

“…In recent years, however, the humanities have become a more obvious part of the policy discussion for responding to contemporary global challenges (Sörlin 2018). The article departs from how responding to pressing contemporary challenges requires a broad scientific base, which should also include the humanities (see Holm and Brennan 2018;Kitch 2017). This clearly deviates from a theme in the history of humanities underscoring a lack of impact or even crisis.…”

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“…In this sense, there could still be debates to define and use these terms or ignore other perspectives. In our opinion, it is important to break the disciplinary gap as a consequence of the complexity of fields such as health and sustainability, avoiding disciplinary tensions and unconnected, fragmented research based on stereotypes [51,52]. Thus, it is important to consider transdisciplinary approaches that can support research on drug candidates and zootherapeutic products in line with biodiversity and the "One Health" philosophy across multiple disciplines.…”

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“…Little concludes that grappling with this internal complexity serves to sharpen the focus on disciplinary strengths and weaknesses, and thus clarify the contribution that the humanities can make to societal challenges such as the transition to renewable energy sources to mitigate climate change. Holm et al (2013) join other scholars (e.g., Billing et al 2017;Brennan, forthcoming;Castree et al 2014;Kitch 2017;Nightingale 2014) in arguing for opening up the ways in which 'natural' environments are framed by acknowledging how human value systems, practices, imaginations and identities have shaped them. Yet, the dominant narrative in the environmental policy sphere tends to treat humans and nature as essentially separate by assuming that other-than-human nature can be defined separately from human culture (Billing et al 2017;Brechin et al 2002;Peterson et al 2010).…”

“…The Progress method, developed by Kitch (2017) and her colleagues (humanists, social scientists and natural scientists) at Arizona State University takes a practical approach to improving the quality of quantitative environmental science research by, for example, better articulating research questions that reflect multiple viewpoints and reshape scientific methods. The Progress method addresses the fundamental question of how, and by whom, the environmental challenges we face should be defined, and thus encourages a questioning of values that science and technology imperceptibly reproduce (Castree et al 2014).…”