Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences
- Frances Fahy - National University of Ireland, Ireland
- Henrike Rau - National University of Ireland, Ireland
- Part I: examines the key challenges inherent to social scientific sustainability research, focusing in particular on methodological questions that arise from recent efforts towards greater disciplinary integration.
- Part II: discusses methodologies aimed at the investigation of attitudes and behaviour observable at the local level - from families and households to individual organisations within communities.
- Part III: focuses on comparative sustainability research across different levels of socio-political organisation - from cities and regions to nation-states.
- Part IV: covers recent developments which recognise the significance of time for sustainability research and which offer innovative methodological approaches that focus on life events and long-term outcome.
- Part V: offers a critical assessment of current and future trends in social-scientific sustainability researc.
Bringing together contributions from international social scientists, this is the resource for academics and practitioners interested in sustainability research. It will be a core teaching text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sustainability and sustainable development, geography, environmental sociology and the environmental sciences.
Methods of Sustainability Research fills a large gap in the literature of sustainability and green issues from a social science perspective. While there is a lot of work on what un/sustainability is... what we have less of is the varieties of methodological approaches to researching un/sustainability... An important book demonstrating the further maturation of the social science study of un/sustainability.
Dr John Barry
Queens University Belfast, author of The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability
Sustainable development, or sustainability, is one of the defining issues of our time. However relatively little has been written about different approaches about how to systematically research this issue. This innovative and important book fills that gap and will be widely read and used by both academics and practitioners alike.
Fahy and Rau’s collection provides useful perspectives on how ‘sustainability’ as a term can be opened up conceptually and methodologically. The essays will prove attractive to researchers pursuing interdisciplinary questions on how societal development can be reconciled with the consumption of resources in different regional and economic contexts.
This international and interdisciplinary collection exploring the concepts and methods of social science research into sustainability will be valuable for students, researchers and community activists wishing to research the need for or impact of environmental policies. Throughout, the focus is upon helping individual researchers to think critically about ‘sustainability’, ask salient questions and produce robust conclusions.
An original and significant contribution to contemporary discussions surrounding the question of methodological approaches to researching and thinking about sustainability and ‘green’ issues internationally. The excellent selection of chapters and case studies offered gives the reader a range of approaches and tools that can be developed within other contexts, as well as identifying critical faultlines in the field and offering suggestions for future research.
This book offers two critical points of discussion that are relevant to all those interested in 'sustainability' as a nexus between human society and environmental resources, including researchers, teachers and students, as well as policy makers.
It takes on a bold step towards that dual aim, one that merits further discussion and exploration in the research community, but also in classrooms and in the public realm.
Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences is not a “How To” book with tips made for debutants or graduate students in search for a textbook to start their masters; it is rather for doctoral students and academics who feel they need interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary methods for the understanding of environmental issues. This is the main strength of this volume which does not concentrate on results or conclusions as such but rather on the studying and comparison of fresh methodologies related to sustainability.
Th[is] book has a good collection of different researches and methodologies that present a wide variety of the sustainability field as well as various open questions presenting issues for further research. Since the book brings together studies from different disciplines it enables presenting the complexity of society-nature interaction and demonstrates the needs and the benefits of interdisciplinary approach in sustainability research. These qualities make this book useful for both social science researchers as well as students.
