Short abstract:

Ethnographic contributions to sustainability research, in this case sustainable groundwater management, can go beyond providing local know-how. Instead, they can study and shape transdisciplinary processes, provide co-used ethnographic data and interdisciplinarily challenge natural sciences.

Long abstract:

As part of the junior research group “regulate – regulation of groundwater in telecoupled social-ecological systems” ethnographic research was set out to contribute by studying local formal and informal institutions of groundwater use ethnographically. Over time, the roles and research lines of ethnography became part of interdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary stakeholder processes addressing sustainable groundwater management. In this contribution, the authors reflect on and discuss the multifaceted ethnographic roles as they unfolded differently in these processes. Ethnographic research lines included: First, ethnographic fieldwork with water utility companies and other relevant organizations and authorities of the water sector in Germany, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, tracing complexities of infrastructuring sustainable groundwater management. Second, ethnographic contributions to interdisciplinary research with physical geography and hydrology, ranging from co-using ethnographic data to generative conceptual tensions. Third, ethnographic contributions to transdisciplinary stakeholder workshop series for developing measures for sustainable groundwater management. These included conceptualizations of workshops from an STS-inspired perspective and formulating these workshops as a fieldwork site for participant observation. Additionally, some of the authors also contributed to collaboratively writing “guiding principles for sustainable groundwater management” with participating stakeholders for the county level and its political representatives. Moreover, we will illustrate how these research dynamics and ethnographic implications contribute to futuring visions for sustainable groundwater management.

This paper contextualizes these ethnographic research lines within the broader discussions on sustainability transformations by examining the ethnographic contributions as methodological experimentation in collaborations and concomitant potentials to generate co-laborative spaces that emerge in research on/for sustainable groundwater management.

Short abstract:

'Comparing with care' presents an alternative way of juxtaposition, one that works through contrasting the differences and tensions between various cases – allowing them to co-exist and serve as inspiration for multiplying possible ways of engaging with and understanding groundwater sustainability.

Long abstract:

This article presents a reflection on what it means to care for groundwater. We document the different practices of caring, sharing and protecting aquifers in three countries: Peru, Algeria and Morocco to show how the differences between them in pumping and storage techniques as well as in how collective action is organized and co-shape how people make sense of and relate to groundwater. ‘Caring’ for groundwater, therefore, means something else in each case. The implication of this is that it is difficult to straightforwardly compare them: even when all can be recognized as representing examples of groundwater care, the cases do not transport knowledge by themselves; a lot of work needs to be done to make translations between them possible. These differences matter, we think, which is why they need to be handled with care.  

By calling on ‘care’ to study the diverse ways of working and interacting with groundwater we take inspiration  from feminist methodologies and scholarship that set out to blur and trouble the binary distinctions (such as those between rationality and emotion) that continue to guide much thinking in water governance.  Feminist scholars also usefully call for carefully situating research, by showing how abstractions are always derived from specific situations and experiences. We propose that instead of holding on to ‘care’ as a solid concept against which the cases can be discussed and assessed, there is merit in slowing down transportability and universalisms by also making ways of comparing itself the topic of reflection.

Short abstract:

To what extent is sustainability assessment fundamentally limited in terms of its transformative potential? This paper seeks to problematise and politicise methods of measurement in the hope of opening space for new ways of doing.

Long abstract:

Sustainability assessment presents a vast paradigm of tools, frameworks, indicators, and methodologies for aiding the transition towards a normatively conceived ‘better’ society. To realise change we need to be able to measure transformative progress, to make sure we are going in the right direction, and adjust our trajectory if necessary. This logic is embraced, largely uncritically, across sustainability research. Yet after four decades of sustainability assessment, transformation is not forthcoming. There is no agreement on what sustainability is, let alone how to measure it.

Measurement challenges are well documented within the sustainability assessment literature, from technical challenges such as barriers to data collection, to epistemological questions surrounding the quantification of subjective concepts like happiness. Yet the choice of what gets measured (and consequently what does not) is inherently political, a core observation which is often lost in the minutiae of developing new assessment methods.

Drawing on literature on the history and philosophy of measurement, and reflecting on two empirical attempts to develop sustainability assessment frameworks, this paper presents a provocation: is sustainability assessment necessary? Does it inhibit transformative potential? And does it offer us anything beyond an incrementalist adjustment to the status quo? Can we transform methods of measurement, or is this a futile endeavour?

Short abstract:

Based on decolonizing and social justice principles, insights and community-driven "best practices" for inclusive sustainability research will be presented. These stem from two years of collaborative engagement with marginalized BIPoC and immigrant communities in Berlin, Germany.

Long abstract:

Drawing from two years of co-productive and collaborative engagement with community activists from marginalized communities in Berlin (Or 2023), lessons learned and "good practices" for sustainability and transformation research with communities will be presented. In recent years, amidst university decolonization efforts, Indigenous perspectives have garnered attention in sustainability and transformation research (Cajete 2020). This has sparked interest in decolonizing and ethical research methods, moving beyond postcolonial extractive science (Degai et al. 2022). A similar shift is occurring regarding transformative knowledge and practices in marginalized urban communities in Europe, including BIPoC (Black Indigeneous and People of Color) and immigrant communities, which have historically been undervalued and delegitimized. While currently a new interest of researchers to learn from and with these communities is emerging, there is a need to design and carry out novel research formats that engage these communities. The presentation draws on decolonizing and social justice approaches to research (Cohen Miller/Boivin 2022) and identifies community-led practices that facilitate respectful engagement with community knowledge holders, navigating painful histories of exploitation and marginalization of alternative knowledges, and addressing the power relations between researcher and co-producers. It reflects on experiences of implementing "good practices" while co-producing an edited volume with diverse members from marginalized communities in Germany (Or 2023). The presentation aims to promote research approaches that foster genuine collaboration, rather than perpetuating patterns of exploitation, communication breakdowns, or a lack of engagement. With this, the presentation aims to contribute to more inclusive and effective approaches to sustainability and transformation research in urban contexts in Europe.

Short abstract:

This paper presents empirical work exploring the challenges and opportunities of designing and creating immersive technology experiences (namely VR scenarios) as a novel sustainability research method. It examines how this method embeds sustainability research with ‘creative making’.

Long abstract:

As immersive technology experiences have grown in popularity, scholars have identified these experiences as having huge potential for educating audiences about sustainability, and for encouraging audiences towards both individual and collective sustainable tranformations (Soliman and Peetz, 2017; Brakes and Heber, 2019). Yet, as a methodological tool, immersive technologies themselves have their own sustainability tensions, having a significant carbon footprint and contributing to e-waste (Woodhead, 2023). This paper focuses on these sustainability tensions, exploring the challenges and opportunities of designing and creating immersive technology experiences (namely VR scenarios) as a novel sustainability research method. The paper reflects on the future of immersive technology based methods, which ultimately rely on the ‘coming together’ of original research on sustainability and experimental 'creative making'. It also critically reviews the potentials of immersive technology as a medium for encouraging collaborative and transdisciplinary sustainability action, and what this may mean for the future of sustainability transformations. The paper draws on the author’s process of creating sustainability focused immersive technology experiences as part of her Researcher in Residency (Environmental Sustainability) position at the University of Nottingham's Virtual and Immersive Production Studio (UK).

Short abstract:

This contribution builds on an ethnographic study of participatory modelling practices. It discusses how participatory sustainability science might contribute to transformation by paying renewed attention to enactments of social order that occur through seemingly technical research practices.

Long abstract:

Researchers interested in enabling sustainability transformations as well as STS scholars increasingly champion participatory research – along with increasing incentives from funding bodies to use participatory methods. Participatory modelling often implies a change in the way in which conceptual models of sustainability issues are constructed. Sometimes, this remaking of research pratices explicitly seeks to empower participants, by making their perspectives known or helping to strengthen exchange networks. Ironically, however, this approach, which outwardly associates a ‘political’ qualifier with sustainability science and broadens models of sustainability to incorporate ‘social’ factors, may inadvertently sustain a conventional separation between knowledge and politics.

Building on an ethnographic inquiry into a particular branch of participatory modelling, this paper outlines some practices central to the approach. It discusses, among other things, in how far a participatory modelling practice that relies on fixed model structures and methods might inadvertently promote a human-centric, closed-ended way of knowing that potentially enacts a version of ‘the good’ which shares ordering principles with conventional perspectives on ethics, such as a meritocratic utilitarian ethics or a contractual ethics, and standard models of democracy. Such distinct versions of ethics might emerge alongside a version of knowledge that emphasises knowing in terms of an indexing of reality to identify an inventory of factors to intervene on given a substantive good-of-the-whole, at the expense of knowing, for example, contextually contingent processes and practices of meaning-making that sustain conceptual links and variables in the models, or different goods and social capabilities.