Sustainability Transitions

Society has looked to technology to solve our problems, but like Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, this has not freed ourself from unsustainability, but further entrenched it. This intake course examines the core assumptions that have gotten us to a crisis point. We examine the social, psychological, and cultural components and blocks to sustainable transitions, and help students untangle their own assumptions  and inquire into their own mindsets around these issues. This will include field visits to dumps, climate change compromised dikes, and other scenes of civilizational contradictions. Students will be introduced also to the principles of design (materially as well as relationally) to critically assess social and built environment agreements and decisions.  

Sustainable Transitions require recalibrating what forms of knowledge we take to be most important. Grounded in philosophy of science and philosophy of social science, this course asks: What epistemic conditions are not fully disclosed in current justifications for our unsustainable systems? From a design perspective, what role did theologies, concepts of nature (and the accompanying fallacies), and historical power relations play in minting the current competitive industrial and nation-state models? What effects did the theories of thinkers such as Malthus, Descartes, Locke, and Hobbes have on assembling zero-sum games between human flourishing and the flourishing of other organisms? And finally, what is systems thinking, and how do the different waves of systems theory (such as cybernetics) offer tools which have been taken up by fields as diverse as psychology and management to provide methods to reexamine what we are doing as a society and individuals at every level, and choose differently?

This course is taught by the faculty members and associates of the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity Initiative, and focuses on three bundled themes, (a)  Sustainable Transitions in Finance, (b)  Sustainable Cities, and  (c) Sustainable Practices in Food and Medicine. As the most powerful sector currently, understanding how the financial sector drives unsustainability, and how unlikely partnerships between hedge fund managers and environmentalists can drive massive positive impact towards greater sustainability, deserves understanding. Urban systems and the choice of how to urbanize also drive (un)sustainability as more than half the world lives in cities, and currently the vast majority of natural resources get funneled to urban centers. Finally, how we get our food and what comprises our medicines is one of the most practical ways in which we address sustainability and interface with natural systems, and new EU laws (such as Farm2Fork) aim to allow more circular and ecological regional economies for these essential products. Lectures from practitioners will be bookended by group exercises and discussions of how these societal elements of sustainability transitions fit to form a larger template for social change. 

The methods of sustainability transitions are multiple, and mutually supportive. This course will introduce students to how to take multi-level perspectives, learn the fundamentals of transition management, gain facility with the “X-curve model” to determine where in particular transition one is, map out and take into account multi-actor perspectives, understand the process of how social (urban) experiments in social design get institutionalized, and how the “capacities model” of social change can focus on creating resilience. Students will have the opportunity to critically engage with the Chief Resiliency Officer of the City of Rotterdam, for example, and learn about the different problems (e.g., reform versus restructuring) and crucial opportunities governing sustainability transition encounters. During this course, students will be encouraged to form peer-learning groups of 4 students to participate in reflection and peer learning.