




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 2 (2): 37–40, July 2019 

 
CONVERSATIONS: Practising Sustainability Science: Challenges in 
Teaching and Research 
 

Practising and Teaching Sustainability under the 
Shadow of Multiple Hegemonies 
 

Nitin D. Rai  and Sharachchandra Lele  
 
1. INTRODUCTION 

The latest report of the International Panel of Biodiversity and Ecosystem 
Services has concluded that biodiversity collapse is imminent, and the status 
quo is no longer an option. The IPCC 1.5°C report has also demanded 
drastic action to avert runaway climate change. Simultaneously, almost half 
the world‘s population continues to live on less than $2.50/day and 
UNICEF estimates that 22,000 children die daily due to poverty, even as 
the rich get richer! The decline in environmental and social indicators has 
been largely attributed to the economic model of capitalist development. A 
reliance on economic bottom-lines, the desire for efficiency and 
commodification of everything is leading us into a downward 
environmental spiral. What do we do as practising environmental 
researchers and teachers to understand this multi-dimensional and 
interconnected global crisis; a crisis that is clearly anthropogenic? Does the 
idea of Anthropocene help us understand the roots of the crisis, or do 
terms such as Capitalocene and Technocene highlight them better? Does 
sustainability science provide a way forward?  

Hassan, in this conversation, deplores that ―knowledge generation in 
sustainability science and education in the developing world has been very 

                                                           
 Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Royal Enclave, Sriramapura, 

Jakkur Post, Bangalore 560 064; nitinrai@atree.org.   

 Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Royal Enclave, Sriramapura, 
Jakkur Post, Bangalore 560 064; slele@atree.org. 

Copyright © Rai and Lele 2019. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i2.75  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i2.75


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [38] 

limited‖. The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment 
(ATREE) has explicitly embraced this idea, and has structured its research 
programmes around themes or sectors, rather than disciplines, and set up 
an interdisciplinary PhD programme in Conservation Science and 
Sustainability Studies. We admit students from all disciplines, and introduce 
them to the fundamental theoretical and methodological aspects of ecology, 
environmental science, sociology and economics. Following this, we 
provide training in multi-disciplinary methods and specifically in integrated 
approaches in environment and development that expose students to 
framing interdisciplinary research questions. Dissertation committees are 
multi-disciplinary and students are encouraged to take interdisciplinary 
topics, which allow them to balance between the social and natural. Our 
experience provides valuable insights into the possibilities and challenges 
involved—challenges created by the multiple hegemonies we confront in 
the real world and within academia.  

 

2. ACADEMIC HEGEMONIES 

Many years ago, during a meeting of conservationists and human rights 
activists in New Delhi, gathered to discuss the future trajectory for 
conservation in India, a human rights activist implored conservationists to 
read more papers in the social sciences which she said would open their 
eyes to the myriad injustices and the structural violence that is waged 
against local people in the name of development and conservation. We 
believe that breaking the hegemony of the natural sciences in environmental 
research is an essential first step for change. Although an uphill battle, given 
the narrow disciplinary training of Indian students from class XI onwards, 
the tendency in academia and outside to valorize only science and 
technology and the predominance of natural scientists among 
environmentally-oriented students, our PhD programme teaches students 
to recognize the need for a social understanding and to read across the 
natural-social divide.  

Within the social sciences, again, the divide between the economic or 
positivist and the critical social sciences, and the hegemony of the former, 
poses a major challenge. Explaining the assumptions and limitations of 
each, discussing the structure-agency debates, and offering students 
multiple ways of bridging the social and natural—political ecology, 
environmental governance and ecological economics—have proven to be 
useful strategies. Our own research takes a similarly catholic approach, 
acknowledging that all bridging may be incomplete. 



[39] Nitin D. Rai and Sharachchandra Lele 

Writing in Oryx, William Adams (2007) said that while it is important to 
have interdisciplinary teams, it is more important to have interdisciplinary 
people. And we would add that interdisciplinarity is required not for its own 
sake but because seeking solutions requires integrated understanding. The 
question, therefore, is whether our research institutions promote such 
interdisciplinary and applied research? The answer to this is rather dismal. 
The benchmarks for evaluation are borrowed from universities and hence 
publications become the single most important criterion for evaluation, 
despite knowing that interdisciplinary work is time-consuming, and that the 
leading journals are mostly disciplinary, with their turf guarded zealously by 
academics schooled in conventional systems. Most importantly, an 
academic review can at best vouch for rigour, but does a poor job of 
assessing the salience of research to real-world problems. Further, the state 
and donor agency‘s fetish for science and technology and the wider belief in 
technological solutions that prevails in India and probably in the developing 
world at large means that state support for interdisciplinary research is 
almost zero, while private donor support is narrowly focused on immediate 
impact. 

 

3. HEGEMONIES OF VALUES AND OBJECTIVITY 

Adams also said that while environmentalists have been encouraged to 
‗think like the mountain‘ (to borrow Aldo Leopold‘s famous phrase), it is 
time to now ‗learn to think like a human‘. But the term ‗sustainability 
science‘ only slightly humanizes conservationist thinking. Purushothaman, 
in this conversation, says that sustainability is somehow more nuanced and 
sophisticated than sustainable development, but we beg to differ. That is 
why ATREE has consciously embraced the goal of promoting 
―environmental conservation and sustainable development in a socially just 
manner,‖ openly acknowledging that environmentalism is multi-valent and 
that human development, equity and justice are essential concerns in it.  

Explicitly acknowledging our concerns requires us to shed the false 
objectivity of applied ‗science‘ and also requires us to take positions on vital 
issues of public policy. This may involve speaking out against structures—
of capitalism, state-ism or techno-centrism, among others. Unfortunately, 
the institutional space for such engaged public scholarship is shrinking. 
Work that is critical of the state or corporations is discouraged as 
institutions are often wary of displeasing the state or corporate donors. This 
is in line with a global squeeze on dissent as more and more populist and 
right-leaning governments take control. The attempts by the Indian 
government to apply civil service rules to academics in government-funded 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [40] 

institutions so as to prevent them from speaking against state policy is a 
chilling reminder of the times we live in. This fear of state reprisals 
pervades the non-governmental sector even more as these organizations are 
vulnerable to state and corporate power. 

ATREE believes in supporting and training free-thinking intellectuals who 
understand the linkages between environmental and social issues. 
Researchers acknowledge, and students are constantly trained to see, that 
the constructions of environmental problems are value-laden and that we 
need to question the basic assumptions that are often taken for granted 
when solutions are articulated. The central message is for students to 
develop an engaged science and critique. Equally, we have to move from 
critique to action, or as Paul Robbins (2012) says, from hatchet to seed. 
This will require freedom from existing hegemonies, freedom to 
experiment, to look outward as well as inward, given that the roots of 
current environmental crisis are embedded in the very social, political and 
economic fabric of our lives. 

 

REFERENCES 

Adams, W. 2007. ―Thinking like a Human: social science and the two cultures 
problem.‖ Oryx 41 (3): 275–276. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605307004131 

Robbins, P. 2012. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. 2nd Edition. UK: Wiley- 
Blackwell. 

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605307004131

