Call for participation and contributions on

Social dynamics toward sustainable futures from narratives of vision and identity

The international Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change Research Alliance (KLASICA) is very happy to announce dates and theme of the second KLASICA Symposium in Taipei. We very cordially invite researchers, policymakers, community activists, and practitioners who are concerned with societal transformations to sustainable futures in accord with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to join usin this exciting symposium.

Theme: Seeking insights into social dynamics by identifying affective expressions of narratives of vision and identity that guide or motivate societal change toward sustainable futures in different contexts and cultures and exploring their applicability for modeling of social dynamics.

We welcome applications to participate from all interested people from a wide range of disciplines and experiences and at all career stages. We particularly encourage participation of those who have experience or are concerned with any of the following:

• Narrative(s) that have played a significant role in framing or motivating actions by a community or collective
• Social movements related to sustainability transformations in different communities, contexts, and cultures or
• Computational modeling of social dynamics in the context of sustainability

In order that the symposium is an open and engaging mutual learning experience in which to work together to produce new insights and approaches to complex issues, we will limit the number of participants to a total of 50 people.

We especially invite contributions of abstracts or short papers presenting examples of narrative expressions of vision or identity.

We are seeking examples of narrative expressions of vision and identity that are evident in local or regional processes of change, including in social movements or identity politics. Contributions selected from those submitted in response to the call will be circulated prior to the symposium and used as a basis for discussion and development of a typology of narratives, as described below.A limited number of papers (15 to 20) selected from those submitted in response to the call will be used as the basis for discussion and development of a typology of narratives, as described below.

Objectives:

1) Identify and analyse examples of affective expressions of narratives that present a vision for sustainability OR that reflect individual or collective identity (worldviews). These narratives should be related to guiding and inspiring societal change toward sustainable futures as set out in the SDGs. The essence of the narrative may be expressed in various formats (e.g., visual, verbal, musical) appropriate to and resonant in local contexts. One of the key challenges is understanding the importance and power of relational, social ontologies embedded in narratives and how these influence decisions for collective action.

2) Create a typology of contemporary affective narrative expressions (and their forms or symbols) of vision or identity in regard to their function in offering guidance or rationale and motivation for or against societal change toward sustainable futures.

3) Based upon the motivations for and against change expressed in the typology of narratives, consider whether such expressions of motivation are viable and adequate as rules for agent-based computational models (ABM). The agents in aggregate represent collectives making decisions and acting in support of their goals for sustainable futures in a community or an alliance of purpose.

Intended output and outcomes:

A) Paper(s) or a special issue in an international journal (to be determined by participant co-authors) describing the analysis and derived typology of affective narrative expressions and their significance in responses to societal change toward the SDGs and on the potential that these offer for agent-based modeling of influences on collective behavior change.

B) collaboration with colleagues engaged in ABM on testing the feasibility and potential for innovative studies of contexts and conditions that could facilitate creative thinking about societal change toward sustainable futures in different cultures and contexts.

Logistics:

Costs of lodging, meals, and local transportation for the symposium within Taiwan will be kindly covered by RSPRC, National Taiwan University for those selected to join us in the symposium. There is no fee for registration.

Travel costs from locations outside Taiwan and return are the responsibility of participants.

NOTE: People attending the World Social Science Forum in Fukuoka, Japan from 25 to 28 September 2018 can make arrangements to fly directly from Fukuoka to Taipei and return – about 2 hours each way non-stop for 100-430 € round-trip.

The symposium will begin with an informal gathering and dinner on the evening of Saturday, 29 September and conclude at around 17:00 on Tuesday, 2 October.

Application to attend:

Please send the following information to Ms. Angela Borowski at [email protected]:

• a brief professional biography
• a short statement explaining your interest in participating
• a 3-5 page description of an example of a narrative and its affective expression and how they influenced or connected with issues of sustainability its in its particular cultural, spatial, and social context.

To reserve a space, applications must be received no later than 15 June 2018.

We are looking forward to receiving your applications.

Humanity faces tremendous challenges and systemic risks, including climate change, resource limitations, and food insecurity. The well-being and perhaps survival of human society depends upon transforming society to just and equitable sustainable futures, particularly in local contexts. A key issue for this transformation is the question of how collective behaviour change toward sustainable futures occurs or can be fostered in diverse communities at different temporal and spatial scales. Addressing this question is at the core of the international research and action alliance KLASICA (www.klasica.org). KLASICA has sought to identify underlying principles of collective behavior change (CBC) to sustainable futures by examining multiple cases in diverse contexts regarding the pre-conditions, success factors, and barriers in these cases (see link below).This workshop at Leuphana is an excellent opportunity to further develop this effort with a focus on models, narratives, and experimental data from real world contexts. We will ask how to make best use of different methods and tools to move from theory to practice and examine how information from studies of Asian and European communities can be used as data for agent-based modeling of complex socio-environmental systems. Specifically, we aim to a) identify the kind of empirical data, including motivational narratives, needed to populate socio-environmental models – ones that can provide sound, plausible options and corresponding consequences for use in decision making by stakeholders and b) consider how to experimentally test the principles and models of CBC, and c) plan how to use the insights gained in a) and b) to foster CBC.

At the start of the workshop, international experts will provide short inputs that will be followed by discussion in small working groups on how case studies can inform modeling, narratives and experimentation and foster CBC. The workshop will end with a fishbowl discussion synthesizing the insights of the breakout groups and outlining the next steps.

This KLASICA-Leuphana workshop follows on the examination of cases of island and isolated communities in Asia and Pacific Islands in the Taipei KLASICA symposium in November 2016, which resulted in a preliminary framework document (see http://klasica.org/a-framework-from-the-klasica-taipei-symposiumklasica-taipei-framework/#more-775). A series of webinars stemming from the Taipei symposium, in conjunction with other case studies, symposia, and workshops, will form the basis for developing a synthesis of observations and generalizations across the tapestry of diverse contexts, cultures, and locations and lead to practical outcomes in supporting community efforts of CBC for sustainable futures.The workshop will be part of KLASICA and the research project „Bridging the Great Divides“ funded by the State of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation and will inform the pilot studies of the latter project.

Collective Behavior Change Toward Sustainable Futures:

Context:

There have been many calls to address the urgent and critical challenges of changing human society to more sustainable practices in the face of accelerating global change. Remaining safely within the limits of essential resources and life-enabling conditions on Earth and transforming society to reach sustainable and equitable patterns of behavior in our increasingly populated and urban global society are expressed in the Planetary Boundaries discourse and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). Avoiding transgression of the boundaries and achieving the goals requires major societal transformations at multiple governance levels and spatial scales across the world.

The crucial question is how substantial changes in behaviors and practices of society at multiple levels of governance, sectors of society, and spatial scales can occur. What factors enable or inhibit such major transformation of society? How can the transformations best be fostered through inclusive deliberative democratic means?

These are the fundamental questions motivating the research of the international Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change Alliance (www.KLASICA.org), which is based at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. Through the intellectual lenses of the natural and social sciences, arts, and humanities, KLASICA addresses the crucial questions of what is needed to enable and catalyze societal transformations – collective behavior changes (CBC) – toward sustainability with equity and justice in the social, economic, cultural, and political contexts that comprise human societies. KLASICA aims to produce results that both deepen our understanding of how CBC unfolds, based on real-world empirical studies, and how CBC to sustainability can be initiated and supported in many different settings. There have been many studies over decades on social movements (e.g., civil rights, women’s suffrage, labor movements, anti-war protests), but what KLASICA investigates are questions about social movements in pursuit of long-term sustainable outcomes for societies, which is a goal that is much less directly and apparently personal. The questions include how do movements form, create a sense of collective ownership, invest in social capital and capacity to collectively address changes towards sustainability, and develop productive processes and structures to meet these challenges.

As an alliance that is focused on research and actions, it is essential that KLASICA research is co-designed, knowledge co-produced, and shared openly with stakeholders at appropriate governance levels and locations. Thus, in addition to developing the conceptual basis and methods for research on CBC, case studies and mutual learning dialogues are at the heart of the agenda of KLASICA.

The Taipei Workshop

The Taipei KLASICA symposium, held at the Risk Society and Policy Research Center of National Taiwan University in November 2016, was the first of a series of symposia on case studies of CBC toward sustainable futures in different contexts and cultures. It focused on nine cases from the Asia and the Pacific Islands, including Viet Nam, Micronesia, Taiwan, Nepal, India, and the Philippines. This allowed the symposium participants, including those presenting the cases, to examine and compare cases from a large and diverse area that is exposed to substantial risks from climate change, as well as significant and rapid changes in demographic, social, economic, and consumption-production patterns.

The communities in the Asia-Pacific region that were discussed in the context of the case studies are mostly long-standing, well-defined communities or groups of communities. The following questions were central to the discussions in the symposium:

• Time: What temporal scales from short election cycles to generations are most significant in analyzing and discussing the change processes? What is needed for a process of behavior change to be coherent and consistent over different time scales?
• Space: Over what spatial scales is the community situated and how do distance and special locations (e.g., fishing areas, sacred spaces) affect the needs and perspectives of the community members?
• Actors: Who is engaged in the processes, who is not? Who leads the change process (“change agents”)? How are they chosen or take charge and how do they function? How do actors organize themselves and the group to become productive?
• Narratives; What narratives of individual or community identity (worldviews) were expressed and how did they affect the motivation for or against change? How can restraints of habit and conflicting narratives be surmounted or avoided to catalyze and foster sustainable practices?
• Impact: What does impact mean to the community and who is affected or not? Who decides whether a change process was successful and how is success assessed?

Based on the nine case studies and the questions above, a set of ten main lessons learned was collected.

1. Combine bottom-up needs assessment with top-down raising of stakeholders’ awareness of opportunities and challenges in local contexts.
2. Be aware of and sensitive to the cultural backgrounds, traditions, and the rationale of each actor or stakeholder group.
3. Attend to local perspectives, while simultaneously integrating them into a larger global context.
4. Build on group processes by taking advantage of and integrating occasions where groups already meet for developing an expanded network.
5. (Co-)develop compelling narrative visions inspired by both scientific insights and local or traditional knowledge that resonate in the local culture and context.
6. Co-develop economic and cultural perspectives that provide incentives for positive engagement for members of the society who may be potential losers when changes occur.
7. Be sure to have sufficient support from key actors.
8. Build enough capacity in skills, funds, incentives to sustain the process even after the initiating project or funding ends.
9. Ensure that multiple perspectives are represented in proposed actions and solutions.
10. Address the needs of the future by appropriately meeting the needs of the present.

The Way Forward

KLASICA is following up the preliminary observations from the 2016 Taipei case study symposium with a webinar series in 2017 and plans for further examination of case studies. The aim of the webinar series is to expand and deepen the conceptual and empirical results of collective behavioral change in local regions and to assemble a broad review of examples of CBC in pursuit of sustainable futures. Recordings of past webinars and notice of upcoming ones are available on the KLASICA website (www.KLASICA.org).

The KLASICA website is intended as a ‘living space’, bringing together a broad variety of information and content. It will provide information on the case studies, as well as observations and reflections around them. It will allow users to share guidance and lessons for other cases of collective behavior change, and it will allow the community to exchange, raise questions, debate open issues and find partners for future collaborations.

Finally, KLASICA will engage in empirical studies on collective behavior change in the field, to test the findings from the Taipei symposium and other sources as rigorously as possible and to refine the understanding of how change can be catalyzed and how long-term adaptive processes can be established. This next step will be essential for achieving KLASICA’s goals as an action-focused research network – a powerful, trans-disciplinary and international network that analyses and fosters knowledge, learning, and societal change.

In moving forward as indicated above, KLASICA will continue to expand its network of researchers and practitioners from all parts of the world in its aims to understand and catalyze positive collective behavior change toward sustainable futures in the world’s societies.

You will find more information here.

Insights from the First KLASICA International Case Studies Symposium in Taipei

The first Knowledge, Learning, And Societal Change Alliance (KLASICA) Symposium, which took place on 21–24 November 2016, in Taipei, Taiwan was a stimulating and productive event. KLASICA is a new effort using the wide range of intellectual lenses of the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities to understand conditions that enable or obstruct collective behavior change and societal transformation to just and equitable sustainable futures and to use the evolving understanding to foster that change.

The goal of the Taipei symposium was to learn from select cases about the enablers and barriers for collective behavior change toward sustainable futures and to identify ways in which the barriers could be addressed and enabling factors scaled within the case-specific context or other contexts. Nine case studies from Asian and Pacific island and isolated communities seeking just and equitable sustainable futures were considered for discussion. The cases were from India, Micronesia, Nepal, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and covered a variety of issues, including sustainable resource use and management in small islands, forests, and marine national parks; skill and capacity development; sustainable reduction of air pollution; transitioning to a low-carbon economy; maternal and child nutrition, and sustainable livelihoods.

The symposium was moderated by Ortwin Renn and Viola Gerlach from the IASS, who engaged 40 participants in rich, diverse, and interactive discussion during short interviews with case presenters and in plenary sessions. This was followed by in-depth discussions in six small groups. While there was broad guidance on how to go about the discussions and what kind of output was expected by the afternoon of day three, it was up to the groups to decide how to structure their own group discussion, document the collective outcomes, and present them to the entire group during plenary on day three. I found this freedom very appealing, as did many other participants, and in my view it was a major contributing factor to the success of the symposium.

Each group of 5–8 participants was assigned three cases, with each case being looked at by more than one group.

The group presentations were rich and diverse, with many emerging themes. Some of the points that stood out to me as important to consider when advancing collective behavior change processes toward sustainable futures include, but are not limited to:

• The need to collectively identify and recognize all knowledge systems, cultural norms and values in each local context as well as to engage all stakeholders in making meaning of the established body of knowledge, values, and cultural norms to facilitate the identification of needs, challenges and available resources and opportunities to address them.
• The establishment of collectively shared vision(s) on how to proceed in setting priorities, initiating processes, and sustaining progress for current and future generations.
• Ensuring diverse and adequate representation of actors and institutions that catalyze and facilitate processes toward sustainable futures.
• Identification and facilitation of optimal conditions in the relevant context (s) needed by various actors and institutions in order to act collectively to achieve the shared vison(s).
• The need for all stakeholders to be aware, transparent, honest and up-front about the immediate and foreseen benefits, the foreseen and unforeseen risks (including social risks) and uncertain and or unintended consequences of actions that threaten livelihoods and general wellbeing, as well as the available opportunities to mitigate, or cope with them.
• The need to build trust among all stakeholders involved and to foster a sense of ownership of the process and outcomes from the beginning and throughout the change process.

Overall, a total of 40 participants and six IASS colleagues were present for the entire duration of the symposium. Some students, faculty, and staff from Taiwan National University and Taiwan National Normal University were also present during plenary sessions. The symposium was co- organized by the KLASICA team at the IASS and colleagues from the Taiwan National University and Taiwan National Normal University and hosted by the Risk Society and Policy Research Center (RSPRC).

The symposium was complemented by numerous side-events and engagements. Personally, this was my first time in Taiwan and in Asia, in general. I found the people of Taipei to be kind, generous, honest, genuine, and very helpful. There were excellent dinners with mouthwatering Taiwanese dishes and teas, graced with the warmth of the Taiwanese people. As many readers will be able to confirm, these informal talks add considerable value to the outcomes of scholarly and scientific events, opening up opportunities for networking and future collaboration. I also had the pleasure to attend Ortwin Renn’s speech to the Taiwanese parliament (Legislative Yuan) on “Coping with systemic risks: implications for policy-making and risk communication”. There was energy and enthusiasm about the issues addressed from the policymakers, politicians, academics, practitioners and the general public in attendance.

To conclude, I witnessed the time, efforts, thoughts and work that went into putting together the event. And while new technologies have made it easier to organize such gatherings, nothing prepares you for what could happen on the ground when you bring together people from diverse academic disciplines, practices, cultures, and nations to discuss cases covering a range of issues from different locations. Of course, you do everything you can to plan for a meaningful and positive outcome, because you are convinced that there is value in approaching, for example, the issue of creating sustainable futures differently. But satisfying results are not only the product of good planning or of the conviction of the value and need of your endeavor. Indeed, they also dependent, to a large extent, on the cooperation and active engagement of the participants.

In the case of the Taipei Symposium, these worries were largely put to rest by the participants’ enthusiasm, commitment, and the shared common interest and vision of the need to identify opportunities and obstacles and ways to apply lessons learned collectively, at various levels in society, to generate interest and action toward just, fair, and sustainable futures. This commitment showed by the Symposium co-organizers at Taiwan National University and Taiwan National Normal University and all the participants is an indication of the interest and intention to confront with energy and optimism the challenges that lie ahead in developing processes that guarantee just, fair and equitable sustainable futures for all. My sincere thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the first KLASICA Symposium – from which I learned a great deal – such a success!

Grace Mbungu is a Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate at the IASS. Her doctoral study project looks at the contextual factors that support or hinder the sustainable transition from traditional cook stoves and fuels to clean, efficient and affordable cook stoves and fuels in the Kibera slum, in Nairobi, Kenya. She has worked with various organisations and institutions on issues of sustainable development and societal transformations, social justice, human rights, societal engagement and participation, and equitable access to basic needs and services in Kenya, the USA, and Germany. Grace has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Bowling Green State University (USA) and holds a BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies from the same institution. At the IASS, Grace supports the KLASICA Alliance team and was part of the Taiwan Symposium organising team.

Participants selected from civil society, the private sector, governmental agencies, NGO´s and the sciences will discuss, reflect and learn from a range of selected cases as observed in a variety of projects within the thematic frame islands and isolated communities.

The conference venue will be the Risk Society and Policy Research Center (RSPRC) located in the new building of the College of Social Sciences of the National Taiwan University (NTU).

For more information contact the project coordinator Angela Borowski.