Ways of being (usefully) critical in complexity-based sustainability research

What are the roles of different kinds of research in addressing complex policy issues, including sustainability, inequality and injustice? In the policy and social sciences, interpretive and critical approaches have played a key role in contributing to a recognition of complexity, focusing on the multiplicity of meanings, interpretations and problem formulations. However, the practical value of these and other ‘critical’ contributions from the social sciences is – perhaps ironically – highly disputed in transdisciplinary sustainability research, where complex adaptive systems approaches predominate from the natural sciencs. Here, the focus is on so-called ‘problem-solving’ or ‘solutions-oriented’ approaches, that can provide policy-makers with practical tools and decision-making heuristics to navigate complexity. Those who identify with these ‘solutions-oriented’ approaches often contend that critical researchers are more interested in critiquing policy-makers than identifying constructive ways forward. Meanwhile, critical researchers retort that ‘solutionism’ disguises the uneven power relationships that are the root cause of unsustainability in the first place. The result is a somewhat divided landscape of critical theorists on one side, and complexity theorists on the other. In this paper we develop some resources to bridge this divide. We suggest that the distinction between solutions-oriented and critical research – while heuristically attractive – rests on a narrow conception of what ‘being critical’ means, which significantly underestimates the value of critical research practices for addressing complex sustainability challenges. We seek to expand the idea of ‘being critical’: away from a personal characteristic or the exclusive preserve of a particular theory or research approach, towards a set of relational and contextual practices available to all. We review a range of explicitly critical research fields, including Critical Policy Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Thinking and Pedagogy, and Critical Political Ecology, to identify a set of ‘critical research practices.’ These practices include: (i) identifying and confronting our assumptions with empirical experience, (ii) enhancing our awareness of personal interests, values and motivations, (iii) reflecting on our positions within political, economic, linguistic and technological structures, (iv) identifying and questioning the effects of existing institutional arrangements on opportunities for change, and (iv) attempting to build mutual understandings with others. We then show how these practices are present to varying degrees in all kinds of research – even in positivistic complexity sciences – in so doing dissolving any easy distinction between ‘critical’ and ‘solutions-oriented’ research. Finally, we illustrate how critical research practices can be put to work in interventionist sustainability research through two case studies: knowledge system mapping of peatland governance in Indonesia, and Indigenous land management in Australia. A richer understanding of the different ways of being critical highlights the important roles critical research practices can play in navigating complexity.