The spectrum of knowledge: integrating knowledge dimensions in the context of forests and climate change

Abstract

Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as domains of knowledge are increasingly employed in holistic views on sustainability transformation but often remain conceptually driven. In this study, we analyze empirical data from a collaborative process with local forest stakeholders in Sweden through the lens of individual, collective, interior, and exterior knowledge dimensions. We show that the participants' understanding of knowledge about forests and climate change presents a nuanced picture of how knowledge and acting are connected. Meaning-making, cultural frames, and techno-scientific knowledge conceptions converge, interact, and, at times, replace or diminish each other. The connection and interplay of these dimensions, we suggest, can be understood as a knowledge spectrum. These insights into integrated knowledge, based on an empirical case, must be addressed in the production of knowledge, both to grasp the climate and sustainability issues that face us and to support action in response to them.

Keywords

Knowledge; Sustainability; Transformation; Climate change; Forests; Sweden

Published in

Sustainability Science
2023, volume: 18, number: 3, pages: 1329-1341
Publisher: SPRINGER JAPAN KK

SLU Authors

• Hallberg-Sramek, Isabella

  • Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01309-0

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/121957