Sustainability dilemmas such as climate change and biocultural diversity loss have resulted in part from dominant Cartesian and Newtonian modes of thinking, which separate mind and matter, object and subject, social from ecological systems, foregrounding determinacy and linearity. In order to meet widespread calls for transformation away from unsustainability, research processes themselves need to transform to avoid perpetuating the very challenges they are meant to meet. In the Anthropocene era, which acknowledges the effects of human entanglement in Earth systems processes, rigorous sustainability sciences require methodological approaches that enable researchers to understand their own role in change processes. Science and feminist studies, and specifically new materialism, have made interesting propositions for advancements, such as diffractive approaches, that could lend important insights for researchers who are part of transformative change processes. Both sustainability science and new materialism are centrally concerned with making a difference in the world, but thus far, there has been relatively limited exchange between the two fields. The aim of this paper is to show how insights from new materialism can be embodied in the how of sustainability science, to help foster the potentiality for transformative science. The paper is situated amongst current frontiers of sustainability science: a recent turn towards more relational thinking, knowledge co-production and reflexivity, and posits that diffractive approaches could develop these frontiers further, explicitly outlining how to engage in research in which researchers are embedded in the world they seek to understand. Through a personal narrative based on a long-term collaborative ethnography between a researcher and farmer, the paper shows how reflexive stances turn to diffractive processes, and where co-production of knowledge becomes a co-becoming with the world, leading to novel ways of knowing, doing and being. The paper concludes with considerations of a new ethics of entanglement for doing sustainability research.

In many transdisciplinary research settings, a lack of attention to the values underpinning project aims can inhibit stakeholder engagement and ultimately slow or undermine project outcomes. As a research collective (The Careoperative), we have developed a set of four shared values through a facilitated visioning process, as central to the way we work together: care, reflexivity, inclusivity, and collectivity. In this paper, we explore the implications of a values-centered approach to collaboration in food system transformation research. The paper presents two cases that illustrate how researchers might approach centering values in practice. Where much research on food system transformation focuses on values of food system stakeholders, we contribute insights into the values of researchers in such transdisciplinary endeavors. Specifically, we argue that researchers working on sustainability transformations need to be better prepared to engage in such reflections and aspire to embody values aligned with the transformations they seek to research.

Non-Technical summary Transdisciplinary sustainability scientists work with many different actors in pursuit of change. In so doing they make choices about why and how to engage with different perspectives in their research. Reflexivity-active individual and collective critical reflection-is considered an important capacity for researchers to address the resulting ethical and practical challenges. We developed a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach, which helps make any decisions that influence which perspectives are included or excluded in research explicit. We suggest that transdisciplinary sustainability research can become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity. Technical summary Transdisciplinary sustainability science is increasingly applied to study transformative change. Yet, transdisciplinary research involves diverse actors who hold contrasting and sometimes conflicting perspectives and worldviews. Reflexivity is cited as a crucial capacity for navigating the resulting challenges, yet notions of reflexivity are often focused on individual researcher reflections that lack explicit links to the collective transdisciplinary research process and predominant modes of inquiry in the field. This gap presents the risk that reflexivity remains on the periphery of sustainability science and becomes 'unreflexive', as crucial dimensions are left unacknowledged. Our objective was to establish a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach. We developed and refined the framework through a rapid scoping review of literature on transdisciplinarity, transformation, and reflexivity, and reflection on a scenario study in the Red River Basin (US, Canada). The framework characterizes reflexivity as the capacity to nurture a dynamic, embedded, and collective process of self-scrutiny and mutual learning in service of transformative change, which manifests through interacting boundary processes-boundary delineation, interaction, and transformation. The case study reflection suggests how embedding this framework in research can expose boundary processes that block transformation and nurture more reflexive and transformative research. Social media summary Transdisciplinary sustainability research may become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity as a dynamic, embedded, and collective learning process.

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be fully developed. Formal evolutionary theory has been applied as a dynamic theory of change of complex phenomena in biology and the social sciences, but rarely in SES research. In this paper, we explore the connections between both fields, hoping to foster collaboration. After sketching out the distinct intellectual traditions of SES research and evolutionary theory, we map some of their terminological and theoretical connections. We then provide examples of how evolutionary theory might be incorporated into SES research through the use of systems mapping to identify evolutionary processes in SES, the application of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology to understand the connections between systems changes and evolutionary changes, and how evolutionary thinking may help design interventions for beneficial change. Integrating evolutionary theory and SES research can lead to a better understanding of SES changes and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene.

As a result of years of increased rationalization and consolidation of food systems, the knowledge and skills of many actors in food value chains, especially those linked to smaller-scale traditional and artisanal production, processing, and cooking, have rapidly been eroded. Despite the resilience that such knowledge and skills can offer. In this paper, we use the lens of gastronomy to highlight how culinary craftsmanship and innovation hold potential to drive the development of biosphere stewardship that contributes to more biocultural, diverse, and resilient landscapes. We propose the concept of ‘gastronomic landscapes,’ i.e., land/seascapes that are governed, managed, or cared for to contribute specifically to culinary development while having substantive value for landscape resilience and food system sustainability. Through six cases representing different knowledge systems and landscapes across the world, the breadth of gastronomy and how it is linked to landscapes is highlighted. We develop a typology of characteristics that can be used to analyze gastronomic landscapes based on locality, diversity, and quality. In the paper, we conclude that thinking and acting in line with gastronomic landscapes can help build resilience and food sovereignty over time and offers a helpful conceptualization for further studies.

Ambiguity is often recognized as an intrinsic aspect of addressing complex sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, in the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research, ambiguity is often an ‘elephant in the room’ to be either side-stepped or reduced rather than explicitly mobilized in pursuit of solutions. These responses threaten the salience and legitimacy of sustainability science by masking the pluralism of real-world sustainability challenges and how research renders certain frames visible and invisible. Critical systems thinking (CST) emerged from the efforts of operational researchers to address theoretical and practical aspects of ambiguity. By adapting key concepts, frameworks, and lessons from CST literature and case studies, this paper aims to establish (1) an expansive conceptualization of ambiguity and (2) recommendations for operationalizing ambiguity as a valuable means of addressing sustainability challenges. We conceptualize ambiguity as an emergent feature of the simultaneous and interacting boundary processes associated with being, knowing, and intervening in complex systems, and propose Reflexive Boundary Critique (RBC) as a novel framework to help navigate these boundary processes. Our characterization of ambiguity acknowledges the boundary of a researcher’s subjective orientation and its influence on how ambiguity is exposed and mediated in research (being), characterizes knowledge as produced through the process of making boundary judgments, generating a partial, contextual, and provisional frame (knowing), and situates a researcher as part of the complexity they seek to understand, rendering any boundary process as a form of intervention that reinforces or marginalizes certain frames and, in turn, influences action (intervening). Our recommendations for sustainability scientists to operationalize ambiguity include (1) nurturing the reflexive capacities of transdisciplinary researchers to navigate persistent ambiguity (e.g., using our proposed framework of RBC), and (2) grappling with the potential for and consequences of theoretical incommensurability and discordant pluralism. Our findings can help sustainability scientists give shape to and embrace ambiguity as a fundamental part of rigorous sustainability science.

Transformations to sustainability require alternatives to the paradigms, practices, and policies that have generated social-ecological destruction and the Anthropocene. In sustainability science, several conceptual frameworks have been developed for transformations, including social-ecological, multi-level, transformative adaptation, and pathways approaches. There is a growing shift towards recognising transformations as ‘shared spaces’ involving multiple ways of knowing, being, and doing. Diverse relational approaches to transformations are increasingly articulated by Indigenous, humanities, and social science scholars, practitioners, and activists from the Global South and North. Broadly, relational approaches enact alternatives to separable categories of society and nature, emphasise unfolding relations between human and non-human beings, and highlight the importance of ethical responsibilities and care for these relationships. Yet while it is important to recognise the collective significance of diverse relational lifeways, practices, and philosophies to transformations, it is also vital to recognise their differences: efforts to produce universal frameworks and toolboxes for applying relationality can reproduce modernist-colonialist knowledge practices, hinder recognition of the significance of relational approaches, and marginalise more radical approaches. In this paper we explore five intersecting ‘relationalities’ currently contributing to discussions around transformations: (i) Indigenous-kinship, (ii) systemic-analytical, (iii) posthumanist-performative, (iv) structural-metabolic, and (v) Latin American-postdevelopment. We explore how these different relational approaches address key concepts in transformations research, including human-nature connectedness; agency and leadership; scale and scaling; time and change; and knowledge and action. We suggest that their diversity gives rise to practices of transformations as ‘walking together in a world of many worlds’ and support intercultural dialogue on sustainability transformations.

Resilience is a common concept in pastoralism scholarship and policy-making, especially in dryland environments where livelihoods are considered vulnerable to frequent shocks such as droughts, pests and epidemics, and conflicts. Resilience lends itself to pastoral studies due to its ability to capture uncertainty, complexity and dynamism: key characteristics of dryland environments and pastoral systems. However, resilience has also been critiqued for inadequately incorporating aspects of power, its emphasis on individual agency and nature-culture dualism, and its problematic application in development. We build on recent sociology, anthropology, and scholarship on pastoralism to contribute to the ‘relational turn’ in sustainability science to address: How can an approach focused on processes and relations, and socio-ecological interdependence help us better understand resilience in pastoral landscapes? And vice versa: how can pastoralism offer insights about how to understand resilience starting from processes and relations? We compare different empirically grounded formulations of resilience that researchers operationalize in six pastoral case studies from Africa, Asia and Europe.

Resilience has become increasingly popular in sustainability research and practice as a way to describe change. Within this discourse, the notion of resilience as the capacity of people, practices and processes, to persist, adapt or transform is particularly salient. The ability to bounce back from shock (persistence) or to take adaptive measures to cope with change are most commonly attributed to resilience, but at the same time, there is a strong push for a transformation agenda from various social and environmental movements. How capacities for resilience are enacted and performed through social practices remains relatively underexplored and there is potential for more dialogue and learning across disciplinary traditions. In this article, we outline the ‘Resilience Capacities Framework’ as a way to a) explicitly address questions of agency in how resilience capacities are enacted and b) account for the dynamic interactions between pathways of persistence, adaptation and transformation. Our starting point is to conceptualise future pathways as co-evolved, whereby social and ecological relationships are shaped through processes of selection, variation and retention, enacted in everyday practices. Drawing on theories of bricolage and structuration, we elaborate on the role of actors as bricoleurs, consciously and non-consciously shaping socio-ecological relationships and pathways of change. Informed by cases of rural change from mountain areas, we explore the extent to which an approach focusing on agency and bricolage can illuminate how the enactment of resilience capacities shapes intersecting pathways of change.

We review the past decade’s widespread application of resilience science in sustainable development practice and examine whether and how resilience is reshaping this practice to better engage in complex contexts. We analyse six shifts in practice: from capitals to capacities, from objects to relations, from outcomes to processes, from closed to open systems, from generic interventions to context sensitivity, and from linear to complex causality. Innovative complexity-oriented practices have emerged, but dominant applications diverge substantially from the science, including its theoretical and methodological orientations. We highlight aspects of the six shifts that are proving challenging in practice and what is required from sustainability science.