Are We Practicing What We Preach? Scaling Out Knowledge System Infrastructure for Sustainability Transformations. Place-Based Publications: A Provocation and Proposal.

Abstract

Six years ago in Scotland, the 2017 Transformations to Sustainability Conference drew forth a discussion about the need for transformative changes in knowledge systems in order to realize more normative and sustainable futures. Participants voiced a growing discontent about the way that knowledge systems influence sustainability practice by shaping which kinds of knowledge gain power, who are seen as the experts, and how change is pursued.

Since then, calls for sustainability research to approach knowledge in ways that are more plural, contextual, decolonial, and deliberately co-produced have grown and gained momentum. However, discussing how the knowledge systems within academia might need to shift in structural ways to enable those changes remains under-explored. For example, how do mainstream processes in academia, like publishing in international peer-reviewed journals, interact with the issues of power we critique and the ideals we are pursuing?

I’ve been thinking about these questions alongside my PhD into sustainability discourses and place-based approaches to transformation. In this short and speculative paper, I recap some common themes in the calls to action and explore where there might be opportunities for strategic intervention. The specific opportunity I focus on is how academic knowledge systems engage with contextual (‘place-based’) knowledge, and I raise the idea of explicitly regional transdisciplinary publications as a potential leverage point in knowledge systems and their influence on sustainability. I hope to promote reflexivity about the current system and discussion of this potential addition: what could it look like, what incentives could it support, how could it influence power, and what pathways might it unlock for sustainability practitioners, local communities, and the landscapes that we live in?