Crisis and Transitions. Socio-Ecological Changes and New Ways of Knowledge Production

This article illustrates the project around which the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development and Territory Management of the Università di Torino was established in 2010 and evolved. It is aimed at strengthening in universities the study, research, and training on current and future social ecological changes. The project is concerned with investigating both the current socio-ecological impacts caused by global changes such as climate change, and the fundamental models of the deep transitions that have occurred at the historical level—from organic Neolithic societies to agricultural, slavery, and feudal societies to the colonial, industrial and capitalist ones—and the transformative potential of contemporary societies toward new ecological horizons. Differently from the past, whereas the transition was a consequence of social systems internal dynamics, the current transition is needed to face planet global changes. However, this compulsory change is an opportunity to deeply change social structures sculpted by the geo-capitalism at global level. Among these transformative potentials, we must consider new forms of social organization characterized by widespread processes of commoning and participatory planning, new political forms such as communalism or green republicanism, new forms of transdisciplinary knowledge production, new technologies suitable for an ecological and decentralized society, and finally new educational approaches such as those proposed in the UNESCO document of 2021 “Reimaging our Futures Together. A New Social Contract for Education”.