Transformations to sustainability and transformative research approaches: two issues at the heart of ecological socioeconomics

From a methodological and epistemological point of view, the use of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches can enrich dialogue between academic disciplines, provided that interdisciplinarity remains confined to the academic world. These approaches are also likely to generate new relationships between different types of knowledge (scientific, expert, vernacular), even bringing scientific and political registers closer together. This latter stance breaks with scientific neutrality and coldness, which the current transformations of our societies and our environment encourage us to move away from. How can we remain indifferent to the consequences of climate change when the causes of this change are now documented and even measured? How can we analyse the decline in biological diversity and its ecological, health and social consequences without seeking to support those working to stem this decline? How, in short, can we not attempt to make our research an instrument for transforming our societies in order to contribute, in our own small way, to the construction of economic and social models that are more respectful of people and the environment?By associating itself very early on with reflections on post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994), Ecological Economics clearly presents itself as a field for the operationalisation of transdisciplinarity (Hirsch Hadorn et al., 2006 ; Max-Neef, 2005), which carries the seeds of a connection between different forms of knowledge, but also between the scientific and political spheres. Ecological socioeconomics (Petit, 2018; Petit, Froger and Bauler, 2022), because it displays even more clearly than ecological economics as a whole a desire to break with the capitalist economic model (by promoting a degrowth society), is committed to a radical transformation of the ways of thinking and lifestyles that are at the root of the disturbances in the biogeochemical cycles that cause climate change and biodiversity loss.However, adopting a transformative research stance is not without its problems. From a deontological and ethical point of view, but also in terms of institutional recognition of these research approaches. Furthermore, embracing and encouraging the transformative potential of research conducted in society also opens the door to transformations other than those we aspire to. How should we position ourselves with regard to these alternative discourses, which may relegate environmental and social issues to the background? These are some of the issues that this paper seeks to shed light on.First, we will review the seminal work that led to the idea of transformation to sustainability in the field of sustainability transition studies (Geels and Schot, 2007), in order to identify the different approaches to transformation (Scoones et al., 2015; 2020) that can coexist and how they are taken into account in academia and in public policies for sustainable development. This will then lead us to present the attributes associated with transformative research approaches (Dedeurwaerdere, 2014), looking back at how this idea has spread through public research institutions, while also finding an echo (albeit with different foundations) in participatory action research approaches (Hazard et al., 2020). In doing so, we will present how these approaches are already integrated into Ecological Economics. 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