Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation.

In this study, we explore the social construction of the monarch butterfly as a conservation icon in order to understand how the butterfly has come to be endowed with the power to shape public conversations and potentially alter policy and practice. Our analysis is guided by the sociological concepts of coproduction and boundary objects, which reveal how this butterfly has animated and sustained conversations across diverse organizational boundaries. We find that engagement with narratives of beauty, natural wonder, scientific discovery, conservation imperatives, and civic duty has allowed the monarch to enroll actors in a broad network that gives rise to surprising, emergent properties. These properties make the monarch a powerful communication vehicle and a potent ally in environmental politics. Our analysis of the historical and contemporary construction of the monarch as an icon contributes to ongoing efforts to bring resources from critical social science to bear on the strengthening of science-policy–practice interfaces.

The complex links and feedbacks between ecosystems and people are now sharply in focus. Our growing understandings of the complex relations between ecosystems and people, the social and ecological ...

Science is frequently called upon to provide guidance in the work towards sustainable development. However, for science to promote action, it is not sufficient that scientific advice is seen as competent and trustworthy. Such advice must also be perceived as meaningful and important, showing the need and urgency of taking action. This article discusses how science tries to facilitate action. It claims that the use of scientific storytelling—coherent stories told by scientists about environmental trajectories—are central in this; these stories provide meaning and motivate and guide action. To do this, the storylines need to include both a normative orientation and emotional appeals. Two different cases of scientific storytelling are analyzed: one is a dystopic story about a world rushing towards ecological catastrophe, and the other is an optimistic story about a world making dramatic progress. These macrosocial stories offer science-based ways to see the world and aim to foster and guide action. The article concludes by stating that using storylines in scientific storytelling can elicit fear, inspire hope, and guide action. The storylines connect cold and distant scientific findings to passionate imperatives about the need for social transformation. However, this attachment to emotions and values needs to be done reflexively, not only in order to create engagement with an issue but also to counteract a post-truth society where passionate imperatives go against scientific knowledge.