PhD Scholar

The roles of reflexivity in managed social change for sustainability

E-mail: stefan.kaufman@anu.edu.au

Supervisors: Valerie Brown, Rob Dyball.

Key thinkers in human ecology, and elsewhere, are arguing that the transition to a sustainable civilisation will require consciously changing the way we understand and act in the world as a species. However, the most powerful, compelling accounts of reality that humans experience are always our own. Consequently, 'reflexivity' becomes a necessary (if not sufficient) part of that transition. Reflexivity, in this sense, is reflection on the influence of our identity, social setting, time and place on our own learning and understanding of human situations. Re-modernisation theory strongly argues that the experience of reflexivity in modernity is a confusing and dis-empowering one. As such, the theory suggests that the prospects of achieving intentional social change are ambiguous at best. However, it also hints at the prospect of some alternative(s) to the modern way of knowing and acting that offer some hope.

The primary research of this thesis is an examination of the efforts of two organisations attempting to cause intentional social change from within the heart of modernity, the academic sector. I am attempting to relate their successes and frustrations to a critical evaluation of re-modernisation theory. This inquiry may indicate a path beyond the theory's negative implications. Particularly, the research may show that the agenda of Integration in research and policy is an antidote to the conditions of re-modernisation, and so indicate some concrete directions out of ambiguity and confusion. If this conclusion is supportable, it will mean that we can explicitly link Integration (within and between knowledges and governance) to the experience of reflexivity for individuals, and its promotion as a societal characteristic. This would also demonstrate value and suggest the criteria for facilitating supportive structures for reflexivity in efforts to monitor and influence the development of our civilisation.

Publications

Kaufman, S.; Symons, W.; Bachar, Z., 2006, The Green Steps Program: fostering environmental change agents, in Advances in Sustainability in Australasian Universities, Bern: Peter Lang Publishing Group.

Dyball, R.; Beavis, S.; Kaufman, S., 2005. Complex adaptive systems: models of social learning and sustainability, in Social Learning for Sustainability. M. Keen, V. Brown and R. Dyball (Eds.), Earthscan.