Co-producing ‘the future(s) we want’: Political imaginaries and conflicting logics of linking knowledge and action in collaborative sustainability research policy

In the wake of the global sustainability agenda implementation, collaborative sustainability research has been actively endorsed at many institutional levels. Co-production of research and action, transdisciplinarity and actionable science have been incentivised and heavily invested in - seen as an ‘epistemic imperative’ for the politics of sustainability. However, neither sustainability nor collaborative research are sedimented phenomena; they are both infused with conflictual interpretations and take diverse conceptual and practical forms along the political and scientific spectra. Furthermore, the logics by which ‘knowledge’ and ‘action’ come together vary widely across disciplinary perspectives, contexts and actors. Evidence suggests that these conflicts between interpretations, logics and practices, if not acknowledged, potentially hinder the contribution of collaboration processes to ’sustainabilities’. However, there is also evidence that, if acknowledged and understood, these conflicts can promote reflexive sustainability governance by opening up political processes at various levels and creating spaces for change. This article examines the logics linking knowledge and action employed by sustainability research financiers, and what kinds of collaborative sustainability research they potentially enable. Empirically, the article engages in two levels of sense-making analysis. First, it analyses four Swedish public research financiers’ interpretations of the overarching sustainability and collaborative research imaginaries reflected in the respective national policies, and how these interpretations shape the financiers’ research funding profiles and research calls. Second, it looks at how the research community responds to these calls and fills them with meaning. The article draws conclusions on what implications the existing logics and practices of public research funding may have for the contributions of collaborative sustainability research towards ‘sustainabilities’.