ABSTRACT
At first glance, sustainability transformations that involve actors with very heterogeneous societal values leave few opportunities for consensus building. However, when abandoning the viewpoint of reaching a consensus over complete value rankings, societal actors have at their disposal a much wider set of opportunities for social learning, the reaching of mutual understanding and convergence around core value orientations.
Based on the major works on social choice by Amartya Sen, Rationality and Freedom, and The Idea of Justice, chapter 4 further develops the idea of decision-making with partial ordering and incomplete information. From a general perspective, one can expect various types of social learning with varying targets. The more demanding targets can strive for agreements on a sub-set of value rankings adopted by societal actors. The less demanding targets may aim to adopt provisional common action strategies that can support further learning and completion of the value framework.
A common thread from this analysis is the importance of a critical engagement of research partners to reflect on their own societal value backgrounds. The chapters ends with an overview of process standards that can guide research partners to embed this critical role of social learning in transdisciplinary research.
