The Feasibility of Socio-Ecological Transformation: Exploring Political and Economic Constraints

Project: Funded research › Other mainly public funds

Acronym	F-SET
Status	Finished
Effective start/end date	15.02.2024 → 14.02.2026

Fields of science

502022 Sustainable economics
502018 Macroeconomics
504027 Special sociology
502 Economics
502027 Political economy
508021 Media studies
508023 Media economics
504030 Economic sociology
502055 Distribution economics
509023 Development research
502049 Economic history
506007 International relations
603124 Theory of science
603123 History of science
506013 Political theory
509019 Futurology
504007 Empirical social research
509017 Social studies of science

JKU Focus areas

Sustainable Development: Responsible Technologies and Management
Digital Transformation

Access Project

Socio-ecological transformation (SET), i.e. the re-organization of currently established socioeconomic provisioning systems in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries and allows for reducing absolute poverty on a global scale, is the core societal challenge for the 21st century. While SET is a complex and multi-dimensional process, in this project we aim to explore two important and mutually interlinked constraints, which condition the practical feasibility of SET. First, we aim to investigate political-discursive constraints of SET by providing a comprehensive analysis of different concepts of SET to assess the discursive framing of these concepts in public and political debates in an actor-based analysis of core institutional and personal actors in SET-related debates in Austria. Second, we aim to explore the technical-economic constraints for SET. For doing so we suggest to develop and evaluate model-frameworks that are suitable to assess the impact of SET. Specifically, we strive to compare predictions across different model classes and evaluate their empirical performance with reference to historical and contemporary cases. By explicitly considering the political as well as economic dimension of SET, our proposed project directly addresses the multifaceted challenges of SET with a transdisciplinary analytical framework integrating quantitative and qualitative methods as well as theoretical approaches from different research programs across the social sciences. Since the potentials and challenges of SET are not mere academic questions, we also aim to contribute to public and political debates, not least by cooperating with different civil society actors.

SETER: Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation and Economic Reasoning
Aistleitner, M. (Researcher) & Pühringer, S. (PI)
01.07.2024 → 30.06.2029
Project: Funded research › FWF - Austrian Science Fund

6 Working paper
2 Chapter
1 Blog post

Beyond Text-as-Data: Integrating Structural Topic Modeling and Critical Discourse Analysis for Contextualized Transformations Research
Theine, H. & Verita, C., Feb 2026, 20 p. (SET Lab Working Paper Series; no. 2).
Research output: Working paper and reports › Working paper
Contested Transformative Imaginaries: Economic Reasoning and Actor Coalitions in Austria's Corporatist Setting
Hager, T., Porak, L., Pühringer, S. & Terhorst, C., Feb 2026, (SET Lab Working Paper Series; no. 3).
Research output: Working paper and reports › Working paper
Contested Transformative Imaginaries: Economic Reasoning and Actor Coalitions in Austria's Corporatist Setting
Hager, T., Porak, L., Pühringer, S. & Terhorst, C., Feb 2026, 29 p. (ICAE Working Paper Series; no. 175).
Research output: Working paper and reports › Working paper

6 Invited talk
4 Other talk or presentation
3 Contributed talk

The hydrogen fairytale - discursive coalitions in EU renewable energy policy
Porak, L. (Speaker), Verita, C. (Contributor) & Terhorst, C. (Contributor)
25 Sept 2025
Activity: Talk or presentation › Contributed talk › science-to-science
Umkämpfte Mobilitätswende
Eder, J. T. (Speaker)
12 Aug 2025
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › science-to-public
Mobilitätswende produzieren - Beschäftigungspotenziale, Arbeitsbedingungen und Arbeitskräftebedarf der österreichischen Bahnindustrie
Eder, J. T. (Speaker)
24 Jun 2025
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › science-to-public

The Feasibility of Socio-Ecological Transformation: Exploring Political and Economic Constraints

Project Details

Fields of science

JKU Focus areas

Access Project

Projects

SETER: Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation and Economic Reasoning

Research output

Beyond Text-as-Data: Integrating Structural Topic Modeling and Critical Discourse Analysis for Contextualized Transformations Research

Contested Transformative Imaginaries: Economic Reasoning and Actor Coalitions in Austria's Corporatist Setting

Contested Transformative Imaginaries: Economic Reasoning and Actor Coalitions in Austria's Corporatist Setting

Activities

The hydrogen fairytale - discursive coalitions in EU renewable energy policy

Umkämpfte Mobilitätswende

Mobilitätswende produzieren - Beschäftigungspotenziale, Arbeitsbedingungen und Arbeitskräftebedarf der österreichischen Bahnindustrie