ABSTRACT
To meet the challenges of achieving sustainable societies, research has to address complex social and environmental issues. These present themselves as ‘wicked problems’ because knowledge of them is incomplete and/or contradictory, opinions about them are conflicting, research to address them is expensive and they are entangled with other problems. These problems cannot be overcome by existing modes of problem solving. Transdisciplinarity is an alternative approach that combines academic disciplines with personal, local and strategic understanding, recognises multiple knowledge cultures and value systems, and accepts the inevitability of uncertainty. This introduction outlines the origins and key features transdisciplinarity. Authors of the chapters that make up the remainder of the book highlight cooperation with ‘practice partners’ and dialogue with policy makers as constitutive features of transdisciplinarity. To this end, the design of transdisciplinary research needs to take account of both process (linking academia to practice) and outputs (different types of knowledge), as well as underlying, normative sustainability goals. The chapter authors describe a range of methodological innovations developed towards this end by research projects based institutionally in the German-speaking world. However, they argue that the incorporation of transdisciplinarity research into mainstream science will also require the transformation of academic institutions.
