Individual - Space - Society: Requirements for the land management towards a post carbon society.

Research Project
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01.06.2006
- 31.05.2012

Sustainable development requires the development and implementation of strategies that are suitable to secure a moderate standard of living in the face of limited ecological resources on the long run. In functionally differentiated societies this requires the contribution of different societal subsystems on the one hand; on the other hand, land use in Europe is mainly territorially organised. This means that land use is shaped by organisational units (e.g. communities, cantons, territorial authorities) that are operating spatially distinct, in parallel, with a relatively moderate degree of specialisation. Due to interregional interdependences and their connection to functional societal subsystems, however, they cannot exist independently. Sustainable land use, hence, raises a threefold coordination task: first coordination between different societal subsystems (like politics, economy, civil society), second coordination between similar territorial units and third coordination between territorial and functional units or subsystems. Individual and collective actors like organisations are the crucial agents in this complex setting. Due to their (multiple) memberships in different subsystems they (can) act as brokers and translators. However, due to their (multiple) memberships they (often) seem to act unpredictable and irrational. The point of departure of this research project is the following hypothesis: The same actors act differently according to their momentary prevalent affiliation to a different societal subsystem (be it territorial, functional or ideational = lifestyle). Political governance strategies have to respond to this variability in order to be successful. In order to test this hypothesis the research project aims at answering questions on different organisational levels: On the level of systems: - what are conditions and drivers for the change of territorial structures and / or the overcoming of territorial boundaries (e.g. Birsstadt)? - what are conditions and drivers for the structural coupling of different functional subsystems (e.g. cooperation in the context of Regiosuisse)? On the interplay between individual / actor and society: - under which conditions are which main structural frames of action prevalently effective (e.g. lifestyles, networks, governance modes)?

Publications

Sauer, Alexandra (2008) ‘Conflict Pattern Analysis (CPA) : preparing the ground for participation in policy implementation’, Systemic practice and action research, 21(6), pp. 497–515. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-008-9106-8.

URLs

Sauer, Alexandra (2007) ‘Lifestyles and governance for sustainable development’.

Members (2)

Paul Burger

Principal Investigator

Alexandra Sauer

Co-Investigator

Research Groups

Sustainability Research (Grabs)