From Unspoken to Outspoken: Making voices heard and practicing justice in transdisciplinary and transformative research

Abstract

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) seeks to address pressing and complex sustainability challenges by bringing together academic and societal partners. These new forms of co-creation require a re-evaluation of principles of ethics in research. TDR might reproduce or create new social, economic, environmental and intersectional injustices if it lacks concepts, methods and ethical guidelines to reflect upon and address justice. If unattended, justice implications may run the risk of ultimately reproducing and exacerbating divides e.g. within or between species (non-/human), social groups (gender, class, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, etc.), urban and rural communities, or between the Global South and the Global North.

In the conceptual debate, different dimensions of justice are being explored such as distributive justice, procedural justice, recognition justice, retributive justice, reparative justice or epistemic justice or ecological justice (Newell et al. 2021; Williams and Steil 2023; Ohlsson and Przybylinski 2023). These dimensions seek to shed light on the distribution of costs and benefits across space and time and between different communities, procedures of participation and transparency, the recognition of histories, values, worldviews and culture, the historical and continuing extractive colonial violence, and unfairness in systems of knowledge production and the co-production of knowledge in contexts of unequal knowledge and power relations. In particular epistemic justices calls for decolonizing existing scholarship on justice and foregrounding research from different communities. There is a need to further debate the universalistic vs. vernacular understandings of justice (Newell et al. 2021). This also asks for acknowledging experiential and practical forms of knowing, which is to give back the power of interpretation to the local communities and storytellers. Despite the exploration of conceptions and dimensions of justice, we have to acknowledge that justice and sustainability are deeply socially embedded and contested concepts and cannot be defined in absolute terms (Ulrich 1994).

While the conceptual debate on justice abounds, there is still a gap in methods and experiences on how to do justice. Such challenges urge for reflexivity to engage with the concept of justice and its practice in and for TDR. The organisers and the invited speakers of this proposed dialogue session are a group of researchers working towards collaboratively creating a set of reflection criteria for practicing justice in transdisciplinary research.

The participants will be invited to join the Doing Justice Collective in their conversation on a set of action-reflection criteria for practicing justice in TDR. This timely session is highly relevant for the community of the ITD Alliance that is increasingly engaging with TDR and justice. The session is designed as a reflexive intervention to move from the theories of justice to the active practice of justice in academia.

Additionally, for sessions, workshops and trainings: description of the session/workshop design

Objectives of the workshop:

• To enhance reflexivity in transdisciplinary research practice

• To deepen understanding of conceptions of (in)justice

• To develop and share reflection criteria and guiding questions on (in)justice in TDR

• To encourage a conversation on a co-created document to support knowledge transfer on reflecting on and incorporating justice in TDR

The session will be divided into three parts:

a) Understanding and practicing justice in TDR: The three invited speakers will provide short impulses on:

• How to define justice? Concepts and dimensions of justice in TDR

• How to apply justice in TDR? Methods on how to do justice and undo injustices in TDR

• How to reflect on justice in TDR? Guiding questions and criteria for reflecting on practising justice in TDR

b) Intervention (peer consulting): We will present three cases highlighting injustices in transdisciplinary research designs. Participants will be invited to explore different dimensions of (in)justices in the particular case and collectively propose methods and well as compile reflection criteria for TDR. The participants will form break-out groups, which will be facilitated by the workshop conveners, to investigate a particular case.

c) Weaving: The three groups will share their findings. These will be synthesized into overarching principles of justice in TDR, guiding questions for reflection and methods to practice justice in TDR.

Indicative schedule:

• Introduction (0:00 – 0:05)

• Presentation of conceptions of (in)justice, facilitation methods and reflection criteria (informed by the co-created document) (0:05 – 0:30)

• Explanation of the tasks for the break-out groups (0:30 – 0:35)

• Break-out groups: peer consulting on case examples highlighting injustices in transdisciplinary research designs (0:35 – 1:10)

• Synthesis (1:10 – 1:30)

1–3 key readings (optional)

Caniglia, G., Freeth, R., Luederitz, C., Leventon, J., West, S.P., John, B., Peukert, D., Lang, D.J., von Wehrden, H., Martín-López, B., Fazey, I., Russo, F., von Wirth, T., Schlüter, M., Vogel, C., 2023. Practical wisdom and virtue ethics for knowledge co-production in sustainability science. Nat Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01040-1

Gaard, G., 2022. Queering Environmental Justice Through an Intersectional Lens. Am J Public Health 112, 57–58. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306489

Yaka, Ö., 2019. Rethinking Justice: Struggles For Environmental Commons and the Notion of Socio-Ecological Justice. Antipode 51, 353–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12422

References

Newell, P., Srivastava, S., Naess, L. O., Torres Contreras, G. A., & Price, R. (2021). Toward transformative climate justice: An emerging research agenda. WIREs Climate Change, 12(6). https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.733

Ohlsson, J. and Przybylinski, S. Theorising Justice: A Primer for Social Scientists, Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781529232233Ulrich, W. (1994). Can We Secure Future-Responsive Management Through Systems Thinking and Design? Interfaces, 24(4), 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.24.4.26

Williams, R., Steil, J., 2023. “The Past We Step Into and How We Repair It”: A Normative Framework for Reparative Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2154247