Loving the mess: navigating diversity and conflict in social values for sustainability

Abstract

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses.

Editorial overview: theoretical traditions in social values for sustainability

“…In search of values plurality, we, and others, have dedicated efforts toward clarifying the theoretical, conceptual and methodological basis of social values. We have presented conceptual frameworks that clarify social values across value dimensions and lenses (Kenter et al 2015(Kenter et al , 2019 and a special issue building on the UK National Ecosystem Assessment investigated the interrelations between social, shared, cultural and plural values (Kenter 2016a). We have developed empirical techniques for assessing the multiple levels or facets of value (van Riper et al 2018;Rawluk et al 2018b), critiqued the multiple assumptions that underpin different ways of aggregating social values for sustainability (Raymond et al 2014), and assessed the multiple pathways between these values and attitudes, beliefs and behaviours relevant to ecological management and conservation (Raymond et al 2011;Ives and Kendal 2014;Raymond and Kenter 2016).…”

Making intrinsic values work; integrating intrinsic values of the more-than-human world through the Life Framework of Values

“…In contrast, as discussed in Sect. 3, articulated intrinsic values are fundamentally contextual rather than transcendental, associated with specific objects of value (see Kenter et al 2015Kenter et al , 2019Raymond and Kenter 2016 for discussion of these terms); in this study, for example, gannets and limpets were seen to hold intrinsic value. In terms of epistemological assumptions, the post-normal approach that we ground articulated intrinsic values in assumes that, even whilst intrinsic values are associated with objective properties that can be studied using scientific methods, their articulation is ultimately subjective, and metric-based approaches are on their own insufficient to reflect them.…”

“…Democratic debate and decision-making entails weighing the often-conflicting values, interests and purposes of diverse stakeholders. The deliberative turn (Rodela 2012) and increased attention to post-normal approaches in ecosystem management (Ainscough et al 2018) has meant increased attention to justice with regard to whose values are considered and whose voice is heard (Kenter et al 2019). Articulating the interests of non-humans has a long history (e.g.…”

“…Here we focus on the predeliberative, qualitative work which focused on articulating intrinsic and relational values within the different Life Frames. Our motivation for the focus on intrinsic and relational values was firstly that within the overall valuation, instrumental values were well-represented by elaborate modelling approaches focused on instrumental values of ES, and secondly that while the difference between instrumental and intrinsic values is well-established, the relation between intrinsic and relational values is a matter of recent debate (Batavia and Nelson 2017;Stålhammar and Thorén 2019;Kenter et al 2019) and has seen little empirical investigation (Klain et al 2017).…”

“…Valuation of benefits provides policy makers with an understanding of the relative importance placed on different ecosystems. While this is sometimes crudely put as no price means no value and no value means no protection (De Groot et al 2012), at present the field of ES has vastly expanded beyond ecology and mainstream economics to include broader shared, plural, social, cultural and relational values of nature (Kenter et al 2011(Kenter et al , 2014(Kenter et al , 2015(Kenter et al , 2016b(Kenter et al , 2019Ives and Kendal 2014;Kenter 2016;Chan et al 2016Chan et al , 2018Costanza et al 2017;Braat 2018;Stålhammar and Thorén 2019). Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) introduced the term 'nature's contributions to people' (NCP) to more explicitly encompass relational values than associated with ES (Díaz et al 2018).…”