Investigating malleability of
social metabolism under disruptions
REMASS explores how societies' resource use systems respond to crises, from geopolitical conflicts and pandemics to economic recessions, climate impacts and other environmental catastrophes. By integrating socio-metabolic research with complexity science and political ecology, the project pioneers a new interdisciplinary field: socio-metabolic malleability and resilience science.
The research in this field advances our understanding of the impacts of crises and disruptions on global resource flows and stocks, supply chains, trade and social wellbeing. We investigate how these disruptions influence the malleability of provisioning systems, thus offering critical insights for sustainability transformations.
Because access to resource use and its outcomes is highly unevenly distributed, REMASS will link socio-metabolic research with approaches that address actors, institutions and power relations associated with resource use.
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Research Approaches
REMASS integrates the fields of socio-metabolic research, complexity science, and political ecology to study the resilience and malleability of resource use. To this end, global studies are combined with place- and people-based approaches.
Using high-resolution databases, complex network models, and big-data approaches, the project analyzes non-linear dynamics in social metabolism and quantifies the resilience of national economies’ resource systems. REMASS links material stocks and flows to actors and institutions to understand how power relations shape decision-making.
Through real-world case studies on housing, food, and mobility, REMASS examines how disruptions affect supply chains, economies, and social wellbeing across the Global North and South. By combining quantitative system models with qualitative actor-centered research, the project provides new insights into power dynamics and pathways or barriers to sustainable transformation.
Expected Outcomes
REMASS aims to deliver groundbreaking insights into the resilience and malleability of social metabolism in the face of global disruptions.
The project will provide innovative models bridging high-resolution data and in-depth case studies to assess the impacts of resource use changes on economic systems and wellbeing, offering valuable guidance for sustainable transformation strategies across diverse contexts.
These outcomes will inform both policy and practice, bridging the gap between complex systems analysis and real-world sustainability challenges.
This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/EFP5]