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A Living Systems Perspective for Stewarding Sustainability Transformations

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Stewarding Sustainability Transformations

Abstract

This Chapter introduces systems thinking with a focus on life-enhancing processes. It does so in a trans- and multidisciplinary way and shows the role of patterns as a relational and constituting element in the co-creative process of life. Drawing on socio-ecological research, it relates such constituting elements to vitality and resilience as a form of aliveness in living systems. It argues that transferring and translating the insights of this approach to understanding how socio-ecological systems as well as human interaction systems function (or fail to function) is key to conceptualizing stewarding sustainability transformations in a new way.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pattern, retrieved on 8th August, 2016.

  2. 2.

    See the following remarks: “The Nature of Order is not only a summa summarum of what Oxford University Press has called “The World of Christopher Alexander”, but it is surely one of the most ambitious books ever published. Its profound argument ,, that order in both nature and in what we build is essentially the same ,, if ultimately understood and accepted by serious readers may prove to be one of the most consequential works Oxford has published in all its 500 years.” William McClung, special project editor for Oxford University Press, former senior editor of the University of California Press. Source accessed on second March 2017: http://www.regismedina.com/articles/christopher-alexander-theory-of-incremental-design

  3. 3.

    Source (accessed on third June 2917): http://www.oecd.org/statistics/measuring-well-being-and-progress.htm

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  1. Full Member of the Club of Rome, Collective Leadership Institute, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany

    Petra Kuenkel

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Kuenkel, P. (2019). A Living Systems Perspective for Stewarding Sustainability Transformations. In: Stewarding Sustainability Transformations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03691-1_4

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