Professor Stewart Lockie, School of Sociology, The Australian National University

The Tank, Haydon-Allen Building 23, The Australian National University

This presentation is concerned with the contributions sociology might make to understanding and informing future social and environmental change. It develops the argument that sustainability – the ever-moving target of environmental governance – is much more than a concept or an aspiration. Mediating human relationships with ecosystem processes, natural resources, future generations etc, sustainability is a material force, an agent, in its own right. Further, as a force that is the product of human action, but never entirely under our control, sustainability demands an approach to the future based on learning, deliberation and accountability.

Sustainability offers sociologists a unique opportunity to contribute to decision-making forums from which we may otherwise be excluded. When evaluating sustainability claims in retrospect, we stand on firm ground. Sociological research has highlighted numerous ways in which those who ostensibly speak on behalf of sustainability do so in ways that seek to contain it; that is, to direct sustainability practices towards the maintenance of often already privileged interests. But sociologists have also been active in holding sustainability claims to account in prospect and, in so doing, in contributing to the configuration of future social ecologies.

Anticipating and assembling future social-ecological possibilities requires us to intensify and to extend critique in a manner that supports social learning and deliberation, empowering constituencies for sustainability beyond the commodity circuits of ‘big capital’. The presentation will conclude with some reflections on sociological contributions to the theorization and composition of future time, and on possibilities for involvement in multidisciplinary attempts to support social-ecological transformation such as the International Council for Science’s Future Earth initiative.

Speaker biography:

Stewart Lockie is currently Professor of the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. He is an environmental sociologist with expertise in environmental and natural resource management policy, social impact assessment and the sociology of food and agriculture. Professor Lockie's current research is primarily concerned with climate adaptation policy, risk management in hazardous industries, biodiversity conservation, environmental and social standards for food production, sustainable consumption practices and food security in Australia and the Philippines. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, President of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Environment and Society, and a member of the International Council for Science’s Committee for Scientific Planning and Review. From January 2014, Professor Lockie will be Director of The Cairns Institute at James Cook University.