Orientation work: caring for the relevance of research to social-environmental problems

Relevant research in a longer-term perspective is not result of a one-point intervention and re-direction of research to address social-environmental problems. Rather, for a research field to stay relevant to social-environmental issues, researchers and their communities need to continually engage in what we conceptualise as orientation work. Contrary to the notion of an invisible hand governing science in self-organised ways, the notion of orientation work offers a novel conceptual perspective on changes in research direction in the sense of caring for relevance, defined as open-ended, responsive, and collective process. Orientation work requires certain conditions of possibility and attention to value-based questions. The case of soil carbon research illustrates how orientation work can prevent research fields from getting stuck on paths that have (partly) lost their relevance. Slowly emerging in the 2000s, promises that carbon sequestration in soils could make substantial contributions to mitigate the climate crisis have generated much attention and, consequently, research funding and institutional support. Particularly with regard to responding to the climate crisis however, researchers have started to question the strong prioritisation of studying soil carbon within their research field, calling for reflections on its social-environmental relevance. Debates within soil carbon research provide evidence how orientation work on the level of research communities (besides other levels of research governance) can play an important role in addressing social-environmental problems.