Tackling Wicked Problems

<p>From climate change to GM foods, we are increasingly confronted with complex, interconnected social and environmental problems that span disciplines, knowledge bases and value systems. This book offers a transdisciplinary, open approach for those working towards resolving these 'wicked' problems and highlights the crucial role of this 'transdisciplinary imagination' in addressing the shift to sustainable futures.</p> <p>Tackling Wicked Problems provides readers with a framework and practical examples that will guide the design and conduct of their own open-ended enquiries. In this approach, academic disciplines are combined with personal, local and strategic understanding and researchers are required to recognise multiple knowledge cultures, accept the inevitability of uncertainty, and clarify their own and others' ethical positions. The authors then comment on fifteen practical examples of how researchers have engaged with the opportunities and challenges of conducting transdisciplinary inquiries.</p> <p>The book gives those who are grappling with complex problems innovative methods of inquiry that will allow them to work collaboratively towards long-term solutions.</p> <p>Foreword </p> <p>Acknowledgements</p> <p>Part I: The Ideas</p> <p>1. Towards a Just and Sustainable Future </p> <p>2. Beyond Disciplinary Confinement to Imaginative Transdisciplinarity </p> <p>3. A Philosophical Framework for an Open and Critical Transdisciplinary Inquiry </p> <p>4. Collective Inquiry and Its Wicked Problems </p> <p>5. Ignorance and Uncertainty </p> <p>Part II: The Practice <br>Overview</p> <p>6. Conducting an Imaginative Transdisciplinary Inquiry </p> <p>7. Specialized Inquiry <br>7a 'Now I'm Not an Expert in Anything' <br>7b Global Inequalities in Research <br>7c Applying Specialized Knowledge </p> <p>8. Community-based Inquiry <br>Overview <br>8a Inclusive Governance for Sustainability <br>8b Fences and Windows <br>8c Calculating Community Risk </p> <p>9. Organisational Inquiry <br>Overview <br>9a Embedded Scales <br>9b Adaptiveness and Openness <br>9c Truth, Knowledge and Data <br> <br>10. Individual-focused Inquiry <br>Overview <br>10a Making Their Way <br>10b White Skin, Black Masks <br>10c Exploring the Doctoral Interface </p> <p>11. Holistic Inquiry <br>Overview <br>11a Designerly Ways of Knowing <br>11b Rethinking Change <br>11c All Knowledge Is Indigenous </p> <p>Part III: The Future <br>Overview</p> <p>12. Human Ecology and Open Transdisciplinary Inquiry </p> <p>13. Can There Be a Community of Practice? </p> <p>Glossary</p> <p>Index</p>