Society's socially constructed relationships to nature are continually
politically shaped as well. Democratic regulation of these relationships, then, is not
only desirable but, from the viewpoint of a long-term viable solution, necessary as well.
Therefore, the research projects undertaken in this research area concentrate above all on
the investigation of different levels and models of democratic regulation of society's
socially constructed relationship to nature.
In 1995, "Urban ecology" placed central importance on the
regional and local levels. In this connection, the institute studied modes of mediation
between the material regulation of individual crisis areas &endash e.g., mobility and
traffic; water supply and disposal &endash and the modes of cultural symbolization
which influence them.
In addition, and partly overlapping, "sustainable development"
has crystallized as a further general topic of research. In this connection, the growing
orientation towards this model in various societal discourses has been become an aspect of
investigation. The background to this is the observation that, given the new orientation
of this concept since 1992 (the Rio conference) with its strongly rhetorical coupling of
growth and development, new forms of legitimation of ecologically oriented political
alternatives have arisen.
With this political orientation, however, the danger arises that
concepts, models and theories of "sustainability" will be evaluated in terms of
whether they strengthen or weaken an already worked out theoretical consensus instead of
in terms of scientific criteria of practicability. As opposed to this, a problem-oriented
approach to research is followed in this research area. Of particular importance are the
results of the UNESCO project, "Sustainable Development
as a Concept of the Social Sciences."
One can place in this field as well the international conference
"Educaci para un Desarollo Sustenable en AmÈrica Latina," in Valdivia, Chile
(16-20 October 1995), organized in cooperation with the German Foundation for
International Development (DSE). This meeting, to which approximately 40 scientists from
Latin America were invited, continued a series of conferences began in 1993 as a
cooperative effort on the part of ISOE, DSE and the Protestant Academy of Arnoldshain.
