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Area of protection in S-LCA: human well-being or societal quality

  • SOCIETAL LCA
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A Correction to this article was published on 27 May 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

Purpose

The set of stakeholders included in the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) guideline (UNEP/SETAC 2009) could create confusion as to the target of the assessment: individuals or society. This paper attempts to develop the epistemological foundations of S-LCA in social sciences. Its major discussion is who should be addressed in S-LCA: individuals or society as a whole. This article contributes to the definition of a social life cycle based on sociological perspectives.

Methods

This paper is a critical evaluation of well-being methodologies and sociological perspectives used to analyze the effects of a change in a social system. The two perspectives, individualistic and holistic, have been evaluated based on four criteria: subjectivity, social values, possibility of aggregation of social data and rebound effects. We have examined different points of view in the sociologic discipline to determine which perspective would be more suitable. Insights have been taken from structural functionalist, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theories to answer the troubling debates identified in S-LCA: Can the life cycle defined for LCA be used in S-LCA? More specifically, does S-LCA include the same actors and timeline as LCA? Does aggregation of data of individuals convey the characteristics of a society?

Results and discussion

Organizational or technical changes induce new cost and benefits in the social system. When focusing on the well-being of individuals, little emphasis is directed to the relations between people, and thus social costs and benefits are not valorized. The sociological perspectives that deal with social change (structuralism, functionalism, and symbolic interaction) seek to explain social phenomena based on the relations that are established and affected by a social phenomenon. The sociologic concept has brought insights to the definition of a social life cycle, the object of S-LCA.

Conclusions

This paper is an attempt to bring the attention of S-LCA practitioners to the concept of social change defined by sociologists. Whether society is considered as a sum of individuals or as an independent entity determines our approach as individualistic or holistic. This would obviously influence our perspective in the selection of stakeholders of the life cycle, the boundaries of the analysis, and the indicators to be assessed. We recognize the central social matter of a product system as its contribution to the overall order in a society.

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Change history

  • 27 May 2019

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.

Notes

  1. Since the boundary between structural-functionalism and functionalism was never rigid (Barnard 2000) we would use the term functionalism through the text which represents the ideas of sociologic discourses pertaining to structuralism, functionalism and structural-functionalism.

  2. It is not an exhaustive literature review by itself

  3. Translated from French: « Ce que produisent les acteurs, ce ne sont pas des choix mais des règles, ce ne sont pas des décisions conformes à ce que demande l’équilibre d’un système, c’est. le système lui-même ».

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of the European Commission under Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Programme. This work was conducted as part of a PhD thesis supported by the Agricultural Transformation by Innovation (AGTRAIN) Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program, funded by the EACEA (Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency) of the European Commission, grant number 2015–006. We would also like to acknowledge the comments of Bo Weidema and Catherine Macombe on the preliminary draft and the two anonyms reviewers for their constructive comments.

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Soltanpour, Y., Peri, I. & Temri, L. Area of protection in S-LCA: human well-being or societal quality. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 2073–2087 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-019-01620-y

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