Towards Epistemological Pluralism and Transdisciplinarity: Responsible Citizenship, CSR and Sustainability Revisited

Today’s global challenges not only threaten humanity’s survival but also that of millions of other species. It is generally agreed that these challenges are the product of anthropogenic impacts on the planet through humanity’s pursuit of economic ends. Due to the intractable nature of these challenges they are often referred to as wicked problems as their complexity and scale are “interconnected, contradictory, located in an uncertain environment and embedded in landscapes that are rapidly changing” (Sardar 2010: 183). However, the global pursuit of economic growth not only threatens to bring about ecological brinkmanship it also produces large societal costs. Dominant neoliberal development policies have largely failed to adequately address inequality or reduce poverty in an age of plenty, which suggests—as argued widely (Kates et al. 2000; Barth et al. 2007; Vare and Scott 2007; Rieckmann 2012; Barth and Rieckmann 2012; Thomas et al. 2013)—that future human wellbeing within environmental limits requires a fundamentally new and different approach; for the purposes of this book we regarded the concepts of responsible citizenship, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development as expressions of this new approach and the kind of social change agendas that share a vision of a more socially and environmentally just future. It has been the premise of this volume that universities have both the capacity and the responsibility to be the drivers of change towards this vision (Kates et al. 2000).