Operationalizing ambiguity in sustainability science: Embracing the elephant in the room

Anita Lazurko, L. Jamila Haider, Tilman Hertz, Simon West, Daniel D.P. McCarthy

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
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Abstract

Ambiguity is often recognized as an intrinsic aspect of addressing complex sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, in the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research, ambiguity is often an ‘elephant in the room’ to be either side-stepped or reduced rather than explicitly mobilized in pursuit of solutions. These responses threaten the salience and legitimacy of sustainability science by masking the pluralism of real-world sustainability challenges and how research renders certain frames visible and invisible. Critical systems thinking (CST) emerged from the efforts of operational researchers to address theoretical and practical aspects of ambiguity. By adapting key concepts, frameworks, and lessons from CST literature and case studies, this paper aims to establish (1) an expansive conceptualization of ambiguity and (2) recommendations for operationalizing ambiguity as a valuable means of addressing sustainability challenges. We conceptualize ambiguity as an emergent feature of the simultaneous and interacting boundary processes associated with being, knowing, and intervening in complex systems, and propose Reflexive Boundary Critique (RBC) as a novel framework to help navigate these boundary processes. Our characterization of ambiguity acknowledges the boundary of a researcher’s subjective orientation and its influence on how ambiguity is exposed and mediated in research (being), characterizes knowledge as produced through the process of making boundary judgments, generating a partial, contextual, and provisional frame (knowing), and situates a researcher as part of the complexity they seek to understand, rendering any boundary process as a form of intervention that reinforces or marginalizes certain frames and, in turn, influences action (intervening). Our recommendations for sustainability scientists to operationalize ambiguity include (1) nurturing the reflexive capacities of transdisciplinary researchers to navigate persistent ambiguity (e.g., using our proposed framework of RBC), and (2) grappling with the potential for and consequences of theoretical incommensurability and discordant pluralism. Our findings can help sustainability scientists give shape to and embrace ambiguity as a fundamental part of rigorous sustainability science.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)595-614
Number of pages20
JournalSustainability Science
Volume19
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The study is part of the lead author’s (Anita Lazurko) doctoral dissertation, which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, and the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Jamila Haider was funded through the Swedish Research Council Vetenskaprådet (Grant number 2018-06732). Tilman Hertz was funded through the Swedish Research Council Vetenskaprådet (Grant number 2018-06139) and through the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas (Grant number 2021-00943). Simon West was funded through the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas (Grant number 2017-01631).

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Dr. Derek Armitage (University of Waterloo), Dr. Vanessa Schweizer (University of Waterloo), Dr. Jeremy Pittman (University of Waterloo), and Dr. Laszlo Pinter (Central European University) for their feedback on the manuscript. Thank you to researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre for hosting the lead author during a research visit in 2022, which resulted in this paper. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments improved the manuscript substantially.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

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