Overcoming neoliberal globalization: social-ecological transformation from a Polanyian perspective and beyond

Brand, Ulrich; Görg, Christoph; Wissen, Markus

doi:10.1080/14747731.2019.1644708

Cited by 58 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Due to the lack of progress and limited time remaining to prevent severe damage and death, a growing portion of the global policymaking and scientific worlds, and general public, are calling for rapid transformational change [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. That dramatic and rapid change may now be necessary implies a failure by societies to protect human health and the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part I: Worldview

Boik

2020

Sustainability

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Humanity faces serious social and environmental problems, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Increasingly, scientists, global policy experts, and the general public conclude that incremental approaches to reduce risk are insufficient and transformative change is needed across all sectors of society. However, the meaning of transformation is still unsettled in the literature, as is the proper role of science in fostering it. This paper is the first in a three-part series that adds to the discussion by proposing a novel science-driven research-and-development program aimed at societal transformation. More than a proposal, it offers a perspective and conceptual framework from which societal transformation might be approached. As part of this, it advances a formal mechanics with which to model and understand self-organizing societies of individuals. While acknowledging the necessity of reform to existing societal systems (e.g., governance, economic, and financial systems), the focus of the series is on transformation understood as systems change or systems migration—the de novo development of and migration to new societal systems. The series provides definitions, aims, reasoning, worldview, and a theory of change, and discusses fitness metrics and design principles for new systems. This first paper proposes a worldview, built using ideas from evolutionary biology, complex systems science, cognitive sciences, and information theory, which is intended to serve as the foundation for the R&D program. Subsequent papers in the series build on the worldview to address fitness metrics, system design, and other topics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part I: Worldview

Boik

2020

Sustainability

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“…The demands for ecological protection and economic growth are supposed to be conflicting [22]. It is claimed to be an everlasting competition by some, whereas, others highlight a potential win-win situation [23,24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Are the Implications of Globalization on Sustainability?—A Comprehensive Study

et al. 2020

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It is becoming more and more certain that globalization is not just purely an economical phenomenon; it is exhibiting itself on a worldwide level. Amid globalization’s observable appearances, the most obvious are the larger international mobility of goods and services, flows of finance capital, data and information and most importantly people. On top of that, there are technological progresses and more international cultural interactions, which are facilitated by the enhancement of free trade of large quantities of more differentiated goods and also through immigration and tourism. The political changes and ecological concerns play an important part in this regard. In the current study, sustainability Indices are linked with the KOF Globalization Index to understand if more globalized countries are performing better in terms of sustainable development and its dimensions, especially environmental sustainability. Sustainability indices such as Human Development Index (HDI) and Environmental Performance Index (EPI) showed a stronger relation with different levels of globalization while others (Red List Index (RLI), Environment Sustainability Index (ESI)) did not. The results reveal that globalization has a positive implication on sustainability in the overall perspective.

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“…The latter is historically specific and closely linked to a shift in the functioning of the state (see, for example, the change from a Fordist welfare state to a neoliberal competition state: Jessop, 2002). This correlation is very important for the current discussion on social-ecological transformations as it enables a distinction between different kinds of transformation, between smaller, larger and a possible Great Transformation (Brand et al, 2019; see below).…”

Section: Global Resource Use Dynamics In a Historical And Societal Pementioning

confidence: 99%

“…From Social Ecology, we gain a socio-metabolic approach to dynamic society-nature relations (Haberl et al, 2019), as operationalized by the environmental accounting tool of Material and Energy Flow Accounting (MEFA). From RT, we gain insights into different phases and regional expressions of capitalist development, provided by an institutional analysis of interlinked economic, political and cultural dimensions (Brand et al, 2019). This integration allows us to scrutinize the Great Acceleration of resource use as one major explanation for the Anthropocene.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scrutinizing the Great Acceleration: The Anthropocene and its analytic challenges for social-ecological transformations

Görg

Plank

Wiedenhofer

et al. 2019

The Anthropocene Review

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Despite considerable advancements over the last couple of years, research on the Anthropocene still faces at least two challenges: (1) integrating different approaches from natural, social and cultural sciences, and (2) clarifying the political relevance of this concept. To address these challenges, we propose an interdisciplinary approach from Social Ecology and Political Economy which combines research on social metabolism with a historical approach to capitalist development. We argue that such an interdisciplinary approach can help to better understand the Great Acceleration of production and consumption and the related surge in global resource flows. The observation of such an acceleration in the physical growth of societies, in turn, is perceived as the most convincing argument to explain fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth system, the Anthropocene. Our approach emphasizes that the Great Acceleration was not homogeneous, neither in space nor in time. Instead, spatial varieties and different historical trajectories must be considered which allow for the differentiation of two phases of accelerated resource use, taking place in different world regions. In this article, we propose an integrated research framework for the study of the Great Acceleration, illustrate the insights to which its application leads and discuss the political relevance of the Anthropocene for further research on social-ecological transformations.

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Overcoming neoliberal globalization: social-ecological transformation from a Polanyian perspective and beyond

Cited by 58 publications

References 49 publications

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part I: Worldview

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part I: Worldview

What Are the Implications of Globalization on Sustainability?—A Comprehensive Study

Scrutinizing the Great Acceleration: The Anthropocene and its analytic challenges for social-ecological transformations

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