Development and Sustainability: The Challenge of Social Change (International Studies in Poverty Research) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783606231 ISBN 13: 9781783606238

Verlag: Zed Books, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Explores how new forms of interdisciplinary cooperation can help to eradicate poverty on a world scale.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alberto D. Cimadamore is scientific director of CROP. He is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research of Argentina (currently on leave). His research and publications are focused on the political economy of poverty, the international relations of poverty and development, and regional integration in Latin America.

Fungisai P. Gwanzura Ottemöller is associate professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Development at UiB. She has done research on common mental disorders and on HIV prevention with primary school children (in Zimbabwe), and child participation in schools (in Scotland). Fungisai teaches in the master's programme in health promotion and health psychology. Her current research interests are immigrant children and families' experiences of the Norwegian child welfare system, child participation and early intervention.

Maurice B. Mittelmark is professor of health promotion at the Department of Health Promotion and Development at UiB. His research and publications are focused on philosophy and methods of health promotion research, salutogenesis and resources for health, transdisciplinary collaboration for health promotion, and child health in former colonial regions.

Gro Therese Lie is a professor at UiB's Department of Health Promotion and Development and former director of UiB Global, as well as a social, community and cross-cultural psychologist. She has worked on health promotion challenges in sub-Saharan Africa for twenty-seven years: prevention of and coping with HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, gender and generation, orphans and vulnerable children, and grassroots movements. She has also worked for UNDP as a consultant and research leader of multidisciplinary research groups. Her interests include participatory action research and movements for social change.

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Development and Sustainability

The Challenge of Social Change

By Alberto D. Cimadamore, Maurice B. Mittelmark, Gro Therese Lie, Fungisai P. Gwanzura Ottemöller

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2016 CROP
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-623-8

Contents

Figures and tables Acknowledgements, 
Foreword by Dag Rune Olsen, 
1 Development and sustainability science: transdisciplinary knowledge for positive social change Alberto D. Cimadamore, Fungisai P. Gwanzura Ottemöller, Gro Therese Lie and Maurice B. Mittelmark, 
2 Seeking wisdom: a transdisciplinary perspective on Australian Indigenous practices and planetary management Mark G. Edwards, 
3 Policies for poverty reduction in a Transformative Green Economy Enrique Delamonica, 
4 Health promotion and sustainable development in Kazakhstan Altyn Aringazina, 
5 Children's literacy in health and sustainability Neil Chadborn and Jane Springett, 
6 Participatory research as a tool for change in ecosystem approaches to health and social equity Jane Springett, 
7 Connecting development and sustainability: empowering people to effective international cooperation Cristine Koehler Zanella, 
8 Sustainability and transdisciplinary knowledge: experience gained and challenges ahead Gro Therese Lie, Alberto D. Cimadamore, Maurice B. Mittelmark and Fungisai P. Gwanzura Ottemöller, 
Notes on contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE: TRANSDISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE FOR POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE

Alberto D. Cimadamore, Fungisai P. Gwanzura Ottemöller, Gro Therese Lie and Maurice B. Mittelmark

Introduction

This book interlinks four concepts: development, sustainability science and transdisciplinarity, all in the quest for positive social change. The editors have been working for years, mostly separately, with different notions of development. Our exposure to sustainability science and transdisciplinarity is of more recent vintage. Some of us approach development with a focus on poverty and international relations in order to understand the way in which development changes lives and societies; others have been more focused on health promotion in the global South.

We are all attracted by the addition of 'sustainable' to development, because the needs of present and future generations force us to have a long-term systemic view of the interactions between nature and society and the implications for the global system. Still, we appreciate the quandaries of perceived views on development, and the appeal of post-development alternative approaches and the critique of Western-initiated programmes aiming for sustainable development and poverty eradication (Rahnema and Bawtree 1997; Escobar 2012; Rist 2014; Pogge et al. 2013; Cimadamore et al. 2013). The mainstream approach to sustainable development seems rightfully characterized as being more 'about sustaining [economic] development ... than developing sustainability in the ecological sense' (Castro 2004: 220). Yet what approach to development will satisfy the critics, and the counter-critics, and still deliver on people's urgent need for schools, healthcare, sanitation and other essential components of a decent life?

It is no wonder that tensions and conflicts are components of any kind of development discussion. Our journey as social scientists is influenced by diverse theoretical and methodological experiences, and we feel the need to take others' perspectives as a strategy for our individual and collective scientific growth. We are keenly aware of the limitations to our understanding resulting from the disciplinary perspectives of our respective educational paths. We do our modest best within our disciplinary territories, and strive to experience the richness of transdisciplinarity. In our understanding, transdisciplinarity is qualitatively different from multidisciplinarity (and interdisciplinarity). It denotes research conducted by investigators from different disciplines working jointly with relevant society actors to create conceptual, methodological and practical innovations that integrate and move beyond discipline-specific approaches to confront vital social problems. This is why we embraced a transdisciplinary ethic in developing the project leading to this book. Indeed, we could hardly have chosen otherwise, as transdisciplinarity seems so interlinked to sustainability science that it is almost impossible to contemplate the latter without referring to the former.

This chapter provides readers with the roadmap we use to move from our disciplinary and interdisciplinary activities towards transdisciplinarity and sustainability science. It introduces readers to the work of colleagues who participated in the journey, which started with a call for papers on 'Development and Sustainability Science – the Challenge of Transdisciplinary Knowledge for Social Change' and continues with this book project. The book closes with the following question: How do the contributions in the foregoing chapters fit into the project as represented in the call for papers and how do they deal with development, sustainability science and transdisciplinarity?

Further setting the stage for the main set of chapters, we will continue to discuss how we have defined and understood development, sustainability science and transdisciplinarity. The material on development includes a description of development scholarship at the University of Bergen. This provides an important context, since all the editors are at the University of Bergen. This introductory chapter is logically linked to the concluding chapter, where we discuss how the following chapters address the original intention set in the call for papers. The book concludes by considering some of the challenges ahead, and how this book will add to our foundation for future progress in Bergen.

Development and the search for sustainability

This book has its genesis in a workshop conceived as a practical step to forge a new international collaboration on sustainable development between the University of Bergen (UiB) and other national and international institutions. Poverty and health were at the core of our preoccupations, whereby the goal was to work towards connecting social and environmental sciences for a definite purpose in an emerging collaborative effort: enhancing the well-being of people and their environments where it is most needed, namely the places where severe poverty stubbornly continues to hamper sustainable human development.

The concept 'development' is controversial and disputed. Development has been defined in different ways in different disciplines and has varied over time. We do not want to concentrate here on a theoretical discussion about this, but we are conscious of how certain interpretations of development have had hegemony in academic communities as well as in international agencies. Depending on how we understand development, different possibilities arise for integrating disciplinary views into transdisciplinary collaboration.

Historically, theories on development have roots in sociology, anthropology, economics and political science, but are not limited to these disciplines. Before the Second World War and in the years following the war, the so-called modernization theory dominated and created the intellectual roots of the field. Modernization theory looked at which aspects of countries were beneficial and which constituted obstacles for economic development with a distinct...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783606231
• ISBN 13: 9781783606238
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Herausgeber: Cimadamore Alberto, Mittelmark Maurice, Lie Gro Therese, Ottemöller Fungisai P. Gwanzura
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland