| 1. |
- Hileman, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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Keystone actors do not act alone : A business ecosystem perspective on sustainability in the global clothing industry
- 2020
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 15:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global industries are typically dominated by a few disproportionately large and influential transnational corporations, or keystone actors. While concentration of economic production is not a new phenomenon, in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, the scale of the impacts of keystone actors on diverse social-ecological systems continues to grow. In this article, we investigate how keystone actors in the global clothing industry engage in collaboration with a variety of other organizations to address nine interrelated biophysical and socioeconomic sustainability challenges. We expand on previous theoretical and empirical research by focusing on the larger business ecosystem in which keystone actors are embedded, and use network analysis to assess the contributions of different actor types to the architecture of the ecosystem. This systemic approach to the study of keystone actors and sustainability challenges highlights an important source of influence largely not addressed in previous research: the presence of organizations that occupy strategic positions around keystone actors. Such knowledge can help identify governance strategies for advancing industry-wide transformation towards sustainability.
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| 2. |
- Kehoe, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable
- 2019
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 364:6438, s. 341-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 3. |
- Palm, Celinda, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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Making Resilient Decisions for Sustainable Circularity of Fashion
- 2021
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Ingår i: Circular Economy and Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2730-597X .- 2730-5988. ; 1:2, s. 651-670
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fashion and textiles industry, and policymakers at all levels, are showing an increased interest in the concept of circular economy as a way to decrease business risks and negative environmental impacts. However, focus is placed mainly on the material ‘stuff’ of textile fashion and its biophysical harms. The current material focus has several shortcomings, because fashion is a social-ecological system and cannot be understood merely by addressing its environmental dimensions. In this paper, we rethink the fashion system from a critical social-ecological perspective. The driver-state-response framework shows social drivers and ecological impacts as an adaptive social-ecological system, exposing how these interacting aspects need to be addressed for sustainable and resilient implementation of circular economy. We show how current responses to global sustainability challenges have so far fallen short. Our overall aim is to expand possibilities for reframing responses that better reflect the complex links between the global fashion system, culture and creativity and the dynamics of the living planet. We argue that reducing planetary pressure from the global fashion and textiles industry requires greater recognition of the system’s social drivers with more emphasis on the many cross-scale links between social and ecological dimensions. Resilient decisions aiming for sustainable circularity of the fashion industry must therefore pay attention to social activities beyond the industry value chain, not just material flows within it.
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| 4. |
- Palm, Celinda, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
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Making sense of fashion : a critical social-ecological approach
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Sustainable Practice. - Huddersfield : Huddersfield University Press.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transdisciplinary studies and sustainability transformations of fashion are hindered by the gaps between social and biophysical conceptualizations of fashion. Using a critical realist metatheoretic approach we examine fashion as a social-ecological system and we show how big and deep these gaps are. In our indicative review of key contributory fields of study of fashion and the textiles industry, we find stark absences in current conceptualizations of social and biophysical issues, and we discuss how these missing links affect understanding of the global fashion system’s unsustainable dynamics.
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| 5. |
- Palm, Celinda
(författare)
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Re:ally re:think – seeking to understand the matters of sustainable fashion
- 2021
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Academic studies of sustainable fashion, and the discourses of actors in business and policy, under-define fashion as a system by treating the social and ecological aspects of fashion separately. This reduces the potential for academic findings to provide knowledge useful for transformation of the fashion system and obstructs desired outcomes from policy and business responses to fashion’s negative social and environmental impacts.Understanding how fashion works as a system presents a challenge to transdisciplinary efforts for transformation towards sustainability. In this Licentiate, I explore ways to look at fashion using a feminist critical realist social-ecological system approach. I develop a theoretical framework to understand the fashion system, and particularly to understand what is keeping it unsustainable. I view fashion as a ‘nested’ social-ecological system with inseparable social and biophysical parts. I use a feminist lens characterized by diversity; this draws attention to gaps, what is known, missing and absent. To show that social aspects and material aspects are intertwined and cannot be studied independently of each other, I use critical realism as a metatheory. I bring its idea of a stratified reality and the model of the four-planar social being to the social-ecological system approach that forms the core of my work. I combine Ostrom’s frequently used general framework for analysing social-ecological systems with a policy-oriented framework for sustainable development. Drawing from these two frameworks I develop a five principles for a strategy framework for sustainable fashion. In summary, applying the strategy framework within the theoretical framework enables thinking more deeply about the structure and implications of knowledge contributions when taking a social-ecological perspective on actions for sustainability. The two papers in this licentiate thesis examine the effects of ontological standpoints that allow environmental impacts of textile fibres to be analysed in isolation from the cultural and social aspects of fashion. Paper 1, ‘Making Resilient Decisions for Sustainable Circularity of Fashion’, is recently published in the journal Circular Economy and Sustainability (Palm et al. 2021). It aimed to show how current circularity responses to global sustainability challenges have so far fallen short. The current path of the expanding fashion industry is fraught with accelerated material throughputs and increased disposal and waste, contributing to human-driven environmental changes at planetary scale. In addition the fashion industry has issues of poor working conditions, modern-day slavery, and justice. By representing a Driver – State – Response framework as an adaptive cycle of a social-ecological system, it makes it clear that reducing planetary pressure from the global fashion and textiles industry requires greater recognition of the system’s social drivers. This paper was a step towards the iterative development of my sustainable fashion framework. Paper 2, ‘Reviewing and defining the concept of Sustainable Fashion: a critical social-ecological approach’, is included as an early-stage draft manuscript. It aims to provide a starting point for discussions towards a coherent science-business-policy definition of the concept of sustainable fashion itself. Using the five theoretically grounded principles of my strategy framework, I examine the manifold definitions related to sustainable fashion such as eco fashion, green fashion, ethical fashion, slow fashion, organic fashion and cradle-to-cradle-fashion. Critical realism’s idea of absence structures this paper. This thesis contributes to knowledge of what a nested inseparable social-ecological system fashion is, enriching ontological descriptions for resilience research more generally. Also, it provides concrete guidance for transdisciplinary efforts with business and policy working to decrease fashion’s negative impacts on humans and the planet, by showing that fruitful responses pay attention to social activities beyond the industry value chain, not just material flows within. Finally, I hope my research serves as a contribution to propaedeutics of the field of sustainable fashion, i.e. giving an introductory understanding of the reality and the possibilities of fashion for people and planet.
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| 6. |
- Palm, Celinda, 1970-
(författare)
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Sustainable fashion : To define, or not to define, that is the question
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fashion’s unsustainability is increasingly getting attention from policymakers, researchers, fashion stakeholders and individual users, with consensus that it is a problem that needs addressing, but there is still disagreement on what sustainable fashion is. Claims are made that the lack of a clear definition of sustainable fashion is a major reason behind fashion’s increasing unsustainability. To understand the correctness of that claim, I use a social-ecological system perspective expanded by a feminist critical realist understanding of being (ontology) and knowledge of being (epistemology) to examine and critique the growing body of literature published over the past two decades that mentions the concept ‘sustainable fashion’. I find that a definition is indeed lacking in various academic discourses and approaches related to sustainable fashion. This is problematic because it means that the fashion industry can talk preposterously without making useful progress on decreasing its negative impacts on people and the living planet. It is also not problematic because the patterns and contexts of fashion are constantly changing so a definition would soon be outdated and rather useless. Rather than arguing about a single definition and to prevent businesses from exploiting the slipperiness of inconsistent definitions, policy and academic discourses on sustainable fashion would benefit from collaborations using a systems approach that includes fashion’s social [non-material] and ecological [material] aspects. The conclusion is that discourses concerned with sustainability of fashion need to think in plural of sustainable fashions.
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| 7. |
- Palm, Celinda, 1970-
(författare)
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Sustainable fashion : to define, or not to define, that is not the question
- 2023
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - 1548-7733. ; 19:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fashion's unsustainability needs transformative action, as policymakers, business, and wider society all agree. The lack of a clear definition of sustainable fashion is often given as a major reason behind fashion's increasing unsustainability. Taking a social-ecological system perspective, augmented by a feminist critical realist understanding of being (ontology) and knowledge of being (epistemology), I examine the past two decades of academic literature mentioning the concept sustainable fashion. I find a definition is indeed lacking in various academic discourses and approaches related to sustainable fashion. This lack is problematic because it means the fashion industry can talk preposterously without making useful progress on decreasing its negative impacts on people and the living planet. However, the ever-changing patterns and contexts of fashion would soon outdate a single fixed definition. What is presented as a two-sided problem - whether or not to define sustainable fashion - is instead a problematique. Sustainable fashion is better understood as an unsolvable predicament in a complex dynamic intertwined social-ecological system. While no solution exists, there are appropriate reflexive responses. These start by using a critical systems approach that includes fashion's social (non-material) and ecological (material) aspects. A social-ecological system approach prevents businesses from exploiting the slipperiness of inconsistent definitions, aids policymaking by providing context and structure for the many contributory concepts (e.g., slow, green, or circular fashion), and fosters vital transdisciplinary research on sustainable fashion.
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| 8. |
- Palm, Celinda, 1970-
(författare)
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The Global Fashion System : On its social-ecological intertwinedness
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The fashion industry contributes to shaping the state of the planet: impacts of production and consumption of textile fast-fashion are rising, and the growing number of sustainability-oriented actions have not slowed current trends. The industry’s (un)sustainability is mainly researched within two epistemic communities: fashion studies concerned with social sustainability, and circular economy focused on material biophysical and technological aspects of material cycles along the value chain. I argue that this split of social and ecological aspects is the problématique of sustainable fashion, and that the epistemic community of sustainability sciences should turn its attention to fashion.My aim has been to develop a theoretically informed way of thinking critically about the intertwinedness of social-ecological systems, using fashion as a case study. I combine a social-ecological systems approach with critical realism as a metatheory of transdisciplinarity. My four mixed-methods research papers draw from data and information synthesis, ‘Keystone actor’ and business ecosystem analysis, literature review, analysis and critique of texts that shape theory and praxis in social-ecological systems approaches, and metatheoretic integration.Paper I investigates the business ecosystem of the fashion industry´s keystone actors, revealing roles and alliances in sustainability efforts operationalized through wide-ranging industry collaborations. It finds the current focus on internal operations of fashion businesses fails to recognize the potential of other types of actors to influence the pace and direction of the industry’s sustainability efforts. This indicates the importance for policymakers within global sustainability to think beyond value chain boundaries and understand fashion as an intertwined system. Paper II explores why sustainability interventions by the industry and policymakers have not been successful. It demonstrates that deepening the systemic treatment of the widely used driver-state-response framework reveals social-ecological dynamics and supports proactive, rather than reactive sustainability efforts. It argues that reducing the fashion industry's planetary pressures requires explicit recognition of the system’s social drivers and shows the need for real-world adaptive actions that include social activities beyond the value chain. Paper III examines and critically reflects on disciplinary perspectives on fashion, showing ways to deepen the treatment of culture and diversity in social-ecological systems research at global levels. It provides systemic approaches for transdisciplinary actors to find more common ground on a ‘fashion system’ approach towards sustainability. It outlines challenges facing scientific research to contribute with knowledge useful for actions. Paper IV explores diverse perceptions and interests in the ‘sustainable fashion’ discourse, and points to ways that a systemic approach can harmonise existing efforts. It shows that academic papers rarely define sustainable fashion, and provided definitions are partial and not always consistent. Ultimately, it argues that a definition would rather impede than be helpful for work towards sustainable fashion. Its critical reflections contribute to interpretive approaches in social-ecological systems research, recognizing that meanings and intentions shape the effectiveness and significance of actions.Together, this provides a better understanding that the depth of fashion’s social-ecological intertwinedness is more than what is observed, studied and experienced. It contributes to a theoretical framework showing why sustainability of fashion needs to be thought of in terms of systems that reflect real connectivity and diversity, supporting fashion industry engagement with intrinsically intertwined material and social dimensions. Bringing attention to this intertwinedness opens up for possibilities and creative thinking for sustainable fashions.
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