Environmental social sciences as an identity and intellectual home

When I am asked to give presentations on the topics I have studied, such as degrowth work, work during sustainability transformation, and ecofeminist political economy, the hardest part of the presentation is defining my research field. The long story goes like this: I’m trained in organisation and management studies (and more broadly in business administration and economics). After defending my doctoral dissertation in 2016, I’ve conducted one solo research project as affiliated with the Department of Design and collaborated with scholars in design for sustainability transformation. Currently, I am employed in sociology (Department of Social Research) and cultural studies (School of Humanities). In addition, in 2023 I was accepted as a docent (adjunct professor) in sustainable entrepreneurship affiliated with Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry and Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science. Finally, being an ethnographer means that I take part in disciplinary discussions depending on the topic I’m studying, let it be entrepreneurships or forests. So go figure!

Consequently, when I try to briefly situate my research to others, I often call myself an environmental social scientist. Environmental social sciences (ESS) is an inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary field of research that focuses on the interconnectedness of ecological and social processes. Studies combine human and more-than-human perspectives. There is a large variety of ESS studies, since scholars have various backgrounds spanning from various social sciences to humanities. Alas, there is also a field of studies called environmental humanities. These fields are related, but have their own journals. But I’m diverging, since the distinction between environmental social sciences and humanities deserves its own blog post.

While I find “environmental social scientist” a satisfactory description for myself, it is only a tad narrower definition than social scientist, which can entail so many things. So what does it mean for me to be an environmental social scientist? I have a two-fold answer to this.

The first part concerns about meeting my folx. In the early phases of my doctoral studies, an organisation and management studies professor said to all of us junior scholars that if possible, pick a conference and visit the same conference regularly. By now you can probably guess that over the years I have visited oh so many conferences: organisation and management studies, design research, social enterprise and innovation, sustainability, ethnology, anthropology, forests, entrepreneurship, gender, work, ecological economics, sociology, social policy, adult education, etc.

I was thinking all this when I attended the 16^th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences (NESS) conference in Åbo Akademi, Turku in early June. Quite shortly after settling in to the conference, I felt that I had arrived home. I have indeed found my conference and folx to go to, and they are NESS and YHYS. Nowadays the NESS conference has participants from all over the world, but originally it was set up for collaborators in the Nordics. In 2024 the conference hosted 300 participants, more than ever before, and yet there were 5 people in the opening session who had been there in the very first NESS meeting (some decades ago). The Finnish equivalent to NESS is YHYS colloquium hosted by YHYS ry, the Finnish association for ESS.

The second part of the meaning of ESS to me relates to the actual research. While ESS scholars have various orientations, as we say as practice thinkers, and lean on a number of schools of thought, many share a position as in-between disciplines. We do not completely fit in with the social scientists, since the phenomena we study are not theorised adequately in social sciences (some people in social sciences do disagree). Yet, we are not natural scientists focusing on more-than-human “environment” and phenomena, since we problematise the whole notion of the environment by theorising about the human element in it. This position in-between has resulted in exciting thinking and projects that challenge ways of knowing. And perhaps for that reason, many participants in NESS and YHYS can discuss the onto-epistemological assumptions of their work. Which I always find super-interesting! Many ESS scholars also visit science and technology studies (STS) conferences, but due to my limited time and energies, I haven’t yet managed to travel to one. Also, the larger ones have not been organised close enough during times when I have been available.

So here I am as an environmental social scientist writing a whole text about my onto-epistemological assumptions. Such a MOT moment.