Sustainable Action ARRS Project

PThe project is focused on the responsible functioning on a micro level within the Slovenian national environment, which is intertwined with the EU and the global context. The central research problem is to identify the factors that affect responsible behaviour of the Slovenian population, and thus to address wider societal issues of sustainable development, and contribute to the advancement of the scholarly approaches and knowledge. The environmental responsibility is in that regard only one component of responsible functioning along with social and individual responsibility. 

In order to explore responsible functioning in the sociological context, the project seeks to establish new ways of understanding cooperation, which is needed on all societal levels. It deploys an innovative theoretical concept of the relational subject referring to a special kind of social differentiation being an alternative to the functional one, and implying greater significance of the third sector, public-private sphere, and civil society. The concept denotes the role of reflexivity of individuals who take into account their relations with significant others, and simultaneously also operate on/with/through social relations.

It implies a second order reflexivity emerging beyond the contributions of the single actors triggering it and being extended to social networks as well. When being reflexively engaged in social relation in terms of the relational subject, individual or collective actors can generate their own emergent properties through those relations, which contribute to social morphogenesis. Based on the theory, the main goal of the project is to develop a model of factors influencing responsible behaviour in the general population as a tool to provide realistic future scenarios and simulations, and guide macro-level policy interventions, which can enhance responsible behaviour. It deploys the interdisciplinary methodological approaches, including the use of high computing performance. The latter will set up future scenarios, and the formulation of policy recommendations based on obtained data, enabling to connect the micro, macro and mezzo social levels with all aspects of responsibility.

Activities of the project exceeds national boundaries, as they will lead to the development and application of a new methodology for measuring, identifying and predicting the possibilities for enhancing responsible social behaviour, which can then be applied in cross-national comparative studies, advanced monitoring and further policy recommendations, contributing to the additional social, political and economic relevance of social science research.

The results will be based on the: a) analysis of secondary data, discourse analysis of selected mass media and expert opinions, b) survey data for the general population based on novel batteries of questions with the development of new indicators, c) qualitative research enabling in-depth understanding of the relationship between the macro-level narratives and the individual levels of responsible functioning, d) structural equation models to identify the relationships between the aspects of responsible social functioning and to understand how these aspects and their relationships are affected by the latent variables indicating the features of different environments, e) predicting the future conditions of responsibility based on the likely scenarios of changes in the technology, social and natural environment. Thus, we will offer a wider picture of inter-relatedness of addressed issues leading to the advancement of scientific knowledge providing strong applicative potentials.

It will be implemented via WP1: The analysis of Slovenian structural-institutional and semantic environment; WP2: Quantitative survey of the general population; WP3: Qualitative research with selected survey respondents; WP4: Meta-analysis of data; WP5: Future scenarios building; WP6: Preparing recommendations; WP Management; WP Communication.