Linköping University, Sweden
Linköping University is currently unable to offer an elective on the ESST Programme. However, they have delegated to the University of Gothenburg, also in Sweden, to offer one instead of them during the period 2025-2027.
Sustainability Science and Expertise: Sociological Perspectives
Introduction
This elective is also an optional course within the 2-year Master’s Programme in Sociology at the University of Gothenburg. The language of tuition is English. Course lectures and seminars are held mainly during the month of February. ESST students will be allocated a local supervisor upon arrival in Gothenburg. While working on their theses, ESST students are welcome to attend the monthly STS seminars held jointly by the University of Gothenburg and neighbouring Chalmers University of Technology. There is also a monthly STS ‘fika’ and a work in progress seminar to participate in at the Department of Sociology & Work Science if desired.
Course Overview
How can the social sciences contribute to sustainability transitions research? How do the challenges of ecological crisis call for new patterns of science and society relations including the creation of new forms of social science expertise? This course asks how research within STS and environmental sociology can contribute to the struggles for a ‘just’ transition?
The course begins by interrogating different visions of a more publicly engaged and accountable social science responding to the grand challenges of achieving a just and fair transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. These visions portraying social scientists as engaged and committed experts are discussed as moving beyond the traditional ‘linear model of expertise’ where science is tasked with ‘speaking truth to power’. In contrast to this model, expertise is portrayed as a distributed and relational phenomenon cultivated within social and material networks stretching across the worlds of science and politics.
Growing disaffection with the linear model of expertise is related to the history of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and debates surrounding its configuration as an institution of science advice to government. This opens for discussion of the many and varied interactions between politics and expertise shaping environmental policy and practice today. Attention will be paid, for example, to new forms of citizen and community research where academics partner with activists to get ‘undone science’ carried out further evidencing environmental risk and harm. In addition, the importance of expert activism and advocacy will be highlighted for bounding science and politics in the transdisciplinary fields of sustainability transitions research. Different. combinations of expertise and activism will be related to the varying conceptions of justice shaping climate, energy and environmental transitions research which have created the challenge of coordinating and unifying the struggles for a ‘just transition’.
Learning Outcomes:
Knowledge and understanding
• Explain and apply key theories and concepts relating to the expert role of
social scientists in society and their involvement in sustainability transitions.
• Define and identify the distinguishing characteristics of different patterns of science
and society relations shaping contemporary environmental policy and practice.
• Distinguish and account for the different conceptions of environmental justice
driving the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy.
Competence and skills
• Critically reflect over and interrogate the nature of science and expertise in society.
• Creatively and independently apply different perspectives from the sociology of
expertise to the analysis of sustainability transitions
• Coherently and precisely express the knowledge gained in the course through
written and oral presentations
• Carry out a meaningful dialogue about science and expertise in sustainability
transitions with different lay audiences and publics.
Judgement and approach
• Reflect over and discuss the combined ethical, legal, social and political
implications of sustainability science and expertise
• Reflect over and evaluate the different conceptions of justice and fairness informing
sustainability transitions.
Course Literature
Arancibia, Florencia (2016). ‘Rethinking Activism and Expertise Within Environmental
Health Conflicts’, Sociology Compass 10(6).
Beck, Silke (2011). ‘Moving Beyond the Linear Model of Expertise? IPCC and the Test of
Adaptation’, Regional Environmental Change 11.
Bennett, Nathan et al (2019). ‘Just Transformations to Sustainability’, Sustainability
11(14).
Burawoy, Michael (2005). ’For Public Sociology’, British Journal of Sociology 56.
Ciplet, David (2022). ‘Transition Coalitions: Toward a Theory of Transformative Just
Transitions’, Environmental Sociology 8(3).
Evans, Robert (2008). ’The Sociology of Expertise: The Distribution of Social Fluency’,
Sociology Compass 2.
Eyal, Gil (2010). ‘How Parents of Autistic Children Became “Experts of Their Own
Children”: Notes toward a Sociology of Expertise’, Berkeley Journal of Sociology 54.
Eyal, Gil (2023) ‘Sociology of Expertise as Public Sociology’ in Bifulco, Lavinia & Borghi,
Vando (eds.) Research Handbook on Public Sociology. Edward Elgar.
Flyvbjerg, Bent (2008). ’Making Sociology Matter: Phronetic Sociology as Public
Sociology’ in Michael Hviid Jacobsen ed. Public Sociology. Aalborg University Press.
Funtowicz, Silvio & Ravetz, Jerome (1993) ‘Science for the Post-Normal Age’, Futures
25(7).
Gabrys, Jennifer (2017). ‘Citizen Sensing, Air Pollution and Fracking: From Caring about
your Air to Speculative Practices of Evidencing Harm’, Sociological Review 65(2).
Kimura, Aya & Kinchy, Abby (2016). ‘Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of
Participatory Research’, Engaging Science, Technology and Society 2.
Levins, Richard & Lewontin, Richard (1987). ‘The Commoditization of Science’, Chapter 8
in The Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University Press.
Lidskog, Rolf, Standring, Adam & White, James (2022) ‘Environmental Expertise for
Social Transformation: Roles and Responsibilities for Social Science’, Environmental Sociology 8(3).
Longo, Stefano et al (2022) ‘Key Challenges to the Corporate Biosphere Stewardship
Research Program: Inequity, Reification and Stakeholder Commensurability’, Global Sustainability 5.
Osborne, Thomas (2004). ’On Mediators: Intellectuals and the Ideas Trade in the
Knowledge Society’, Economy and Society, 33(4), 17.
Oreskes, Naomi (2004). ‘Science and Public Policy: What has Proof Got to Do with It?’
Environmental Science & Policy 7.
Shrivastava, Paul et al (2020). ’Transforming Sustainability Science to Generate Positive
Social and Environmental Change Globally’, One Earth 2(4).
Sundqvist, Göran Hermansen, Erlend et al (2018). ‘One World or Two? Science-Policy
Interactions in the Climate Field’, Critical Policy Studies 12(4).
Turner, Stephen (2001). ’What is the Problem with Experts?’ Social Studies of Science 31,
Wylie, Sara Shapiro, Nicholas & Max Liboiron (2017). ‘Making and Doing Politics
Through Grassroots Scientific Research on the Energy and Petrochemical Industries’, Engaging Science, Technology and Society 3.
List of Possible Supervisors
Asst. Prof. Elena Bogdanova, STS, Economic Sociology, Valuation Studies.
Asst. Prof. Helena Cleeve, STS, Care Studies, Industrial Design.
Prof. Mark Elam, STS, Medical Sociology, Environmental Sociology
Assoc. Prof. Stefano Longo, Environmental Sociology, Sustainability Science
Assoc. Prof. Jesper Pettersson, STS, Medical Sociology
Prof. Göran Sundqvist, STS, Environmental Sociology, Sociology of Expertise.
Co-ordinator of elective:
Prof. Mark Elam
Department of Sociology & Work Science
University of Gothenburg
Box 720
405 30 Gothenburg
SWEDEN
Email: mark.elam@gu.se
Welcomes services at University of Gothenburg: https://www.gu.se/en/welcome-services
Looking for accommodation in Gothenburg: https://www.gu.se/en/welcome-services/housing/student-housing
