L1D67

(1.3)
L1T128 (20%): processes (6%), actors (4%)

L1T34 (19%): transitions (12%), sustainability_transitions (10%), transition (9%)

L1T8 (12%): research (18%)

L1T131 (5%): approaches (16%)
titleabstract

The politics of deliberate destabilisation for sustainability transitions (2021) 🗎🗎

This paper advances scholarship on deliberate destabilisation for sustainability transitions. To understand how deliberate destabilisation plays out in practice, the politics of such processes must be confronted. To this end, we bridge research on the political economy of sustainability transitions with recent theorisations of the deliberate destabilisation of unsustainable socio-technical regimes and propose a set of analytical dimensions and guiding questions for the study of the latter. The added value of a political economy perspective to understand the politics of deliberate destabilisation in capitalist economies is demonstrated through the historical example of the phase-out of hen battery cages in the Netherlands. The poultry sector in the Netherlands embodies an industrial approach to food and farming, orientated towards producing large amounts of standardised and cheap food. We foster new insights on the influence of intertwined political and economic interests for deliberate destabilisation processes, which may reproduce, rather than transform, unsustainable and unjust socio-technical regimes.

(Un)making in sustainability transformation beyond capitalism (2021) 🗎🗎

Theorizations of sustainability transformation have foregrounded the construction (making) of novel socioecological relations; however, they generally have obscured processes of deliberate deconstruction (unmaking) of existing, unsustainable ones. Amidst ever more compelling evidence of the simultaneous unsustainability and continued reproduction of capitalist modernity, it is misguided to assume that transformation can happen by the mere construction of supposed 'solutions', be they technological, social or cultural. We rather need to better understand whether and how existing institutions, forms of knowledge, practices, imaginaries, power structures, and human-non-human relations can be deconstructed at the service of sustainability transformation. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of a lens that attends to processes of making and unmaking in sustainability transformations through an analysis of an ongoing sustainability transformation, the territorios campesinos agroalimentarios (TCA) endogenous territorial figure and peasant movement in Colombia. TCA is transforming territory beyond capitalism on the basis of relational ontologies and principles of autonomy, dignity and sufficiency. This paper identifies processes of unmaking of capitalism in the TCA and demonstrates how they are concretely entangled in the construction of post-capitalist realities. This paper sketches a research agenda on sustainability transformation that is sensitive to and theoretically equipped for the analysis of transformation as a multifaceted, multilevel process that entails the deconstruction of capitalist modernity and the construction of post-capitalist realities. Central to this agenda is a plural engagement with theories of social change from across the social sciences and humanities, which have not previously been mobilized for this endeavour.

Revisiting carbon lock-in in energy systems: Explaining the perpetuation of coal power in Japan (2020) 🗎🗎

Carbon lock-in hampers the realisation of sustainable energy systems. It occurs when carbon-intensive technologies, markets and institutions co-evolve and become wedded to historical trajectories despite environmentally superior technologies being available. Multiple material and non-material causes are discussed in literature on socio-technical or energy transitions and carbon lock-in. However, these are yet to be synthesised into a comprehensive framework to guide the empirical identification of lock-in factors. Also, empirical understanding into how various causes of lock-in can interact is limited. To deepen understanding into the various types of socio-technical lock-in affecting energy transitions, we develop an encompassing analytical framework accounting for material, human, non-material and exogenous factors. In addition to carbon lock-in and path dependency, we synthesise diverse literature encompassing sustainability transitions, energy policy, innovation and firm management, economics and political economy. The resultant framework provides a finer-grained and more comprehensive understanding of lock-in than previous studies. Using Japan as a case study, we then apply this framework with two questions in mind: (i) What factors are contributing to the perpetuation of coal power in Japan? and ii) What opportunities emerge to overcome these? The empirical analysis is informed by triangulated data involving 46 semi-structured interviews and diverse documents. Our findings reveal a wide array of interacting factors that contribute to the perpetuation of coal-power in Japan and several emerging opportunities to tackle these. They also demonstrate our framework's utility as a heuristic that scholars could apply to other cases to increase empirical understanding into the multiple causes of socio-technical lock-in.

User innovation, niche construction and regime destabilization in heat pump transitions (2021) 🗎🗎

Domestic heating systems require a rapid shift to low-carbon options to meet global climate targets. We analyse a heat pump transition in two contrasting case studies: Finland and the United Kingdom, utilizing original data from interviews, document analysis, and archival online data. Finland has an almost completed transition, while the United Kingdom can be considered a stalled one. Building on previous research that has highlighted the importance of context, policy and users in transitions, we explore various user roles within low-carbon transitions, and how they shape processes of niche construction and regime destabilisation. Our findings show that the role of users is one key explanatory element of the different heat pump transitions. We also find that specific characteristics of a transition context can influence the types of users that emerge. We conclude that instead of just providing incentives, policy should also aim to mobilise users.

The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: Towards a new research agenda (2018) 🗎🗎

Meeting the climate change targets in the Paris Agreement implies a substantial and rapid acceleration of low carbon transitions. Combining insights from political science, policy analysis and socio-technical transition studies, this paper addresses the politics of deliberate acceleration by taking stock of emerging examples, mobilizing relevant theoretical approaches, and articulating a new research agenda. Going beyond routine appeals for more 'political will', it organises ideas and examples under three themes: 1) the role of coalitions in supporting and hindering acceleration; 2) the role of feedbacks, through which policies may shape actor preferences which, in turn, create stronger policies; and 3) the role of broader contexts (political economies, institutions, cultural norms, and technical systems) in creating more (or less) favourable conditions for deliberate acceleration. We discuss the importance of each theme, briefly review previous research and articulate new research questions. Our concluding section discusses the current and potential future relationship between transitions theory and political science.

Reconfiguration, Contestation, and Decline: Conceptualizing Mature Large Technical Systems (2018) 🗎🗎

Large technical systems (LTS) are integral to modern lifestyles but arduous to analyze. In this paper, we advance a conceptualization of LTS using the notion of mature phases, drawing from insights into innovation studies, science and technology studies, political science, the sociology of infrastructure, history of technology, and governance. We begin by defining LTS as a unit of analysis and explaining its conceptual utility and novelty, situating it among other prominent sociotechnical theories. Next, we argue that after LTS have moved through the (overlapping) phases proposed by Thomas Hughes of invention, expansion, growth, momentum, and style, mature LTS undergo the additional (overlapping) phases of reconfiguration, contestation (subject to pressures such as drift and crisis), and eventually stagnation and decline. We illustrate these analytical phases with historical case studies and the conceptual literature, and close by suggesting future research to refine and develop the LTS framework, particularly related to more refined typologies, temporal dimensions, and a broadening of system users. We aim to contribute to theoretical debates about the coevolution of LTS as well as empirical discussions about system-related use, sociotechnical change, and policy-making.

Discontinuation of the automobility regime? An integrated approach to multi-level governance (2017) 🗎🗎

The case study at hand investigates a largely neglected phenomenon: the discontinuation of incumbent socio-technical regimes by means of deliberate governance. Comparing actor constellations and policy measures in four different countries (the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands) and on the EU level, we identify strategies and measures that have been applied to challenge the automobility regime. Instead of creating a new analytical framework for studying the governance of discontinuation, we propose to use three existing concepts, namely the multi-level perspective (MLP), multi-level governance (MLG) as well as actor-centred approaches, combining them into one integrated concept labelled "multi-level governance of socio-technical regimes". From this perspective, the European Union is the most active actor in attempts to restrict automobility, especially exerting pressure at the landscape level. However, in spite of various challenges, the automobility regime still remains considerably stable. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The energy-extractives nexus and the just transition (2021) 🗎🗎

The concept of a 'just transition' to a low-carbon economy is firmly embedded in mainstream global discourses about mitigating climate change. Drawing on Karl Polanyi's political economy elaborated in The Great Transformation, we interrogate the idea of a just transition and place it within its historical context. We address a major contradiction at the core of global energy transition debates: the rapid shift to low-carbon energy-systems will require increased extraction of minerals and metals. In doing so, we argue that extractive industries are energy and carbon-intensive, and will enlarge and intensify social and ecological injustice. Our findings reveal the importance of understanding how the idea of a just transition is used, and by who, and the type of justice that underpins this concept. We demonstrate the need to ground just transition policies and programmes in a notion of justice as fairness.

Transition topology: Capturing institutional dynamics in regional development paths to sustainability (2020) 🗎🗎

A key challenge in sustainability transitions research is to better understand the huge variety and spatial unevenness of transitions paths. Institutions and institutional change have been identified as critical issues, as regional institutional settings significantly influence the pace and scope of sustainability transitions. However, the complex institutional dynamics underpinning Regional Transition Paths to Sustainability' (RTPS) are not well understood. Underexplored is in particular the link between short time gradual changes on the micro-level and long-term transformative change on the system level. In order to add to a more profound understanding of these processes, a focus on organizational change is valuable. The basic argument made in this article is that the emergence of new temporary and more permanent forms of organization has the potential to enable de-institutionalization and new institutionalization processes simultaneously. As we will show, new organizational forms also serve as a means to make institutional dynamics visible. The contribution of this paper is thus twofold: By combining insights from sustainability transition theory, evolutionary economic geography and neoinstitutional organization theory, we develop an original conceptual framework. By developing and applying the methodological approach of a 'transition topology', the potential of this framework for comparative research on actors and processes in different regional transition path to sustainability is revealed.

Leviathan Awakens: Gas Finds, Energy Governance, and the Emergence of the Eastern Mediterranean as a Geopolitical Region (2020) 🗎🗎

This article explores the role of energy in regionalization processes, assessing the case of natural gas finds in the Eastern Mediterranean (East Med). It makes three observations. First, we show that energy resources are a defining factor in shaping a region by rearranging the interactions and networks of actors involved in regionalization processes. Second, we demonstrate that such "energization" processes are not only-and not even primarily-attributable to security practices pursued by state actors. Regionalization underpinned by energy as the key governance object is characterized by a variety of actors, including governments, but also international energy companies, investors, consumers, and regulators. Third, we posit that regionalization processes cannot be fully understood without appreciating the importance of existing global and regional governance frameworks and the values ascribed to the physical resource by international market forces. The findings call on International Relations to go beyond analyzing the East Med energy region through the prism of security studies, which arguably is a function of both theoretical path dependence and a lack of attention to the insights from energy studies. Instead, a multidisciplinary research agenda promises to strengthen academic inquiry into regionalization dynamics in the East Med and the role of regions in world politics more broadly.

Radical change and deep transitions: Lessons from Europe's infrastructure transition 1815-2015 (2019) 🗎🗎

Schot and Kanger (2016) argue that the shift from an unsustainable to a sustainable society requires radical historical change in the form of a Deep Transition: "a series of connected transitions in many socio-technical systems [e.g. energy, mobility, food] towards a similar direction [e.g. sustainability]." They call for more research. In response, this paper discusses a historical Deep Transition. It tracks the connected histories of Europe's mobility, food supply, warfare, and ecological systems, all of which experienced a transnational infrastructure transition in the 19th and 20th centuries. Studying these connected histories as a 'deep' infrastructure transition highlights important dynamics of radical historical change. This paper also adds to Schot and Kanger's research agenda, highlighting: (1) the importance of studying actors in Deep Transitions-particularly 'system entanglers' who interweave various sociotechnical systems and thereby connect transitions; (2) how such actors produced convergence, but also divergence across connected transitions; (3) the extreme unpredictability of Deep Transitions due to such divergences; and (4) the need for reflexivity regarding the analyst's role in delineating Deep Transitions, so as to avoid essentialism and the uncritical reproduction of contemporary preoccupations.

Justice in energy transitions (2019) 🗎🗎

This paper argues that transitions research more broadly needs to take more account of justice in its analysis. This paper draws primarily from environmental and energy justice literature to engage with the concept of justice in transitions research, as it seeks justice for people, communities, and the non-human environment from negative environmental impacts. This is achieved through different forms of justice: distributive, procedural, and recognition. Our paper concludes with reflections upon the application of a justice approach to sustainability transitions research and offer insights into a potentially new research agenda.

Sustainability transitions and the state (2018) 🗎🗎

Sustainability transitions is an emerging field of research that has produced both conceptual understandings of the drivers of technological transitions, as well as more prescriptive and policy-engaged analyses of how shifts from unsustainable to sustainable forms of production and consumption can be achieved. Yet attention towards the role of the state is underdeveloped in the field. The significance of this neglect has become more apparent in particular due to the heightened urgency around the need to tackle climate change and energy security, where there are increasing calls for an enhanced role for the state. This paper sets out to advance understandings of the multiple and conflicting roles that states play in transitions. It first addresses key weaknesses in the way the state has been examined thus far. Second, it highlights theoretical resources and conceptualisations of the state that can help scholars of transitions open up new and more productive avenues for understanding drivers and barriers to sustainable transitions drawing on examples from different sectors, regions and issue areas.

Towards a conceptualization of power in energy transitions (2017) 🗎🗎

The field of sustainability transitions has recently benefitted from efforts by multiple scholars at better conceptualizing power and politics, and integrating insights from other fields. This article argues for an understanding of power as relational, productive, contingent and situated. I conceptualize power to the aim of understanding and explaining how and where power relations become de/stabilized in energy transitions in poor rural communities. An understanding of power as a relational capacity to act is integrated with a sociotechnical and relational understanding of constitutive power, which enables us to explore the co-production of social relations, technology and nature. The resulting conceptualization is applied to a case of mini-hydropower electrification in Tanzania. I find that electrification simultaneously reinforces social inequality and enhances social mobility. I identify material, symbolic and discursive domains that work as sources of de/stabilization of social hierarchies, producing effects on the system configuration and relations of class and gender. (C) 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: A research agenda (2017) 🗎🗎

Improving the understanding of the politics of sustainable energy transitions has become a major focus for research. This paper builds on recent interest in institutionalist approaches to consider in some depth the agenda arising from a historical institutionalist perspective on such transitions. It is argued that historical institutionalism is a valuable complement to socio-technical systems approaches, offering tools for the explicit analysis of institutional dynamics that are present but implicit in the latter framework, opening up new questions and providing useful empirical material relevant for the study of the wider political contexts within which transitions are emerging. Deploying a number of core concepts including veto players, power, unintended consequences, and positive and negative feedback in a variety of ways, the paper explores research agendas in two broad areas: understanding diversity in transition outcomes in terms of the effects of different institutional arrangements, and the understanding of transitions in terms of institutional development and change. A range of issues are explored, including: the roles of electoral and political institutions, regulatory agencies, the creation of politically credible commitment to transition policies, power and incumbency, institutional systems and varieties of capitalism, sources of regime stability and instability, policy feedback effects, and types of gradual institutional change. The paper concludes with some observations on the potential and limitations of historical institutionalism, and briefly considers the question of whether there may be specific institutional configurations that would facilitate more rapid sustainable energy transitions.

Transforming power/knowledge apparatuses: the smart grid in the German energy transition (2016) 🗎🗎

Politics and the dominant actors in the German energy system fear that the politically promised integration of renewable energies in the course of the Energy Transition will lead to losses of control due to increasing volatility, decentralization and heterogeneity of processes and actors. Yet, a novel form of control through the artificial intelligence of smart grids is envisioned that would tame the chaos in the system. To analyze the conditions and effects of smart grids we introduce the Foucauldian concept of a power/knowledge apparatus into the study of sociotechnical transitions. It brings into focus the entwined changes of positions of actors, knowledge and power constellations and their effects. These are crucial to innovation and transformation processes, yet the question how they emerge is only marginally addressed in other science and technology studies approaches. The article analyzes the problem framing and solution by smart grids as an emerging power/knowledge apparatus which implies a comprehensive re-arrangement of the power/knowledge constellations in the energy system. The order and ordering of the emerging apparatus of transformation is getting visible by an empirical case study based on expert interviews and document analysis. The apparatus aims at and engenders a permanent experimentation of all relations between the actors, organizations, techniques, knowledges, etc., which are included in an energy system based on the envisioned smart grid.

Transition failure: Understanding continuity in the automotive industry (2012) 🗎🗎

This paper argues that there is a powerful tendency in forecasting of socio-technical change to focus on the causes and consequences of change at the cost of greater understanding of the reasons for and significance of continuity. Taking the case of the global automotive industry, the paper therefore analyses the evidence for systemic continuity in technologies, economic structures, cultural positioning and embedded social function through the lens of transition theory and the multi-level perspective. It is concluded that the observable processes are as much about enduring technologies and social practices as they are about systemic change. That is, the industry has shown resistance to change notwithstanding the apparent imperatives for radical action or the multitude of attempts via socio-technical experimentation to nurture strategic niches. At a theoretical level, it is concluded that greater attention must be paid to understanding how change can be nullified. Moreover, theoretical expectations of systemic change need a greater emphasis on the way in which technological transition as a process may mean that many existing practices and structures are retained more or less intact rather than entirely replaced by new practices and structures. The future research agenda needs therefore to understand more fully how embedded practices and technological change inter-relate in specific concrete conditions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Social Dynamics of Degrowth (2013) 🗎🗎

Degrowth cannot be realised from within a capitalist society, since growth is the sine qua non for capitalism. But, societies are no blank slates; they are not built from scratch. Putting these two thoughts together seems to make degrowth logically impossible. In this paper we argue that this paradox can be solved with the use of classical and contemporary concepts from the social sciences. We illustrate the use of these concepts with reference to studies on current practices and patterns of food production and consumption. The concept of social mechanism is used to illustrate how social practices can simultaneously reinforce and challenge the dominant (food) regime. We argue that current discussions on degrowth fail to envision how such contrasting developments are linked, and that the degrowth paradox originates in the idea of capitalism and the steady-state economy as alternative systems. The paradox dissolves with studies of mechanisms and social practices that show how the two systems are not autonomous, but 'hybridised' and come into existence and gain shape as reactions to each other.

The shadowy side of innovation: unmaking and sustainability (2012) 🗎🗎

Transitions towards more sustainable ways of life depend on the development or reintroduction of lower carbon sociotechnical arrangements and the demise of other more resource intensive configurations. Within the fields of innovation studies and transitions theory, processes of emergence and stabilisation are better documented and more widely discussed than those of disappearance, partial continuity and resurrection. In this article I refer to the recent history of cycling in the UK and in other European countries, using this as a means of identifying questions that lie at the margins of current debate but that are important in understanding how incoming and outgoing configurations co-exist, how dormant remains of past regimes come back to life, and how innovation journeys start over again. I argue that there are new questions to be found in the shadows of innovation studies, and that these are important for academics and policy makers interested in developing and promoting more sustainable sociotechnical systems, aspects of which are foreshadowed by ways of the past.

Ideas, institutions, and interests: explaining policy divergence in fostering 'system innovations' towards sustainability (2011) 🗎🗎

Over the last few years a fast-growing literature has developed around the notion of sociotechnical transitions and the possibilities for governing 'system innovations' towards sustainability. Government policies are assumed to play an important role in such processes. However, an important critique has suggested not to see these transition processes as politically neutral but to pay more attention to the politics of these processes. With this paper I make a contribution towards this debate by analysing the underlying political processes and their institutional contexts which led to two quite different approaches aimed at promoting system innovations in the UK and the Netherlands. The main question I answer is why the two governments engage with the same challenge in such different ways. Building on a discursive-institutionalist perspective based on the work of Hajer and Schmidt, 1 highlight the interplay of discourses, institutional contexts, and interests in shaping policy initiatives to promote system innovations. I conclude by suggesting a typology of possible relationships between these variables and expected policy outputs which helps to explain the two case studies and is believed to be applicable more widely.

From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems - Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory (2004) 🗎🗎

In the last decade 'sectoral systems of innovation' have emerged as a new approach in innovation studies. This article makes four contributions to the approach by addressing some open issues. The first contribution is to explicitly incorporate the user side in the analysis. Hence, the unit of analysis is widened from sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems. The second contribution is to suggest an analytical distinction between systems, actors involved in them, and the institutions which guide actor's perceptions and activities. Thirdly, the article opens up the black box of institutions, making them an integral part of the analysis. Institutions should not just be used to explain inertia and stability. They can also be used to conceptualise the dynamic interplay between actors and structures. The fourth contribution is to address issues of change from one system to another. The article provides a coherent conceptual multi-level perspective, using insights from sociology, institutional theory and innovation studies. The perspective is particularly useful to analyse long-term dynamics, shifts from one socio-technical system to another and the co-evolution of technology and society. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Escaping carbon lock-in (2002) 🗎🗎

This article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in "Understanding carbon lock-in" (Unruh, 2000), which posited that industrial countries have become locked-into fossil fuel-based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale, Carbon lock-in arises through technological, organizational, social and institutional co-evolution, "culminating" in what was termed as techno-institutional complex (TIC). In order to resolve the climate problem, an escape from the lock-in condition is required. However, due to the self-referential nature of TIC, escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Regime resistance and accommodation: Toward a neo-Gramscian perspective on energy transitions (2021) 🗎🗎

Transition scholars are increasingly addressing questions of power and politics in their explanations of the direction and form of sustainability transitions. Drawing on insights from neo-Gramscian scholarship to enhance the conceptualisation of power in sustainability transitions, we develop a theoretical account of how combinations of incumbent actor resistance and accommodation contribute to regime stability and change. We use this to understand how incumbent firms and their industry organisations contribute to the (re)production of a sociotechnical regime by drawing on material, institutional and discursive forms of power to execute strategies of resistance and accommodation. This helps embellish understandings not only of the nature of the power of specific incumbent actors tied to a particular regime, but also of the operation of incumbency as a deeper system of power. We apply a neo-Gramscian lens to the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions: a lens comprised of multiple interrelated concepts, including hegemony, historical bloc, integral state, war of position, passive revolution and trasformismo, whose contributions we outline in turn.

Exploring the role of failure in socio-technical transitions research (2020) 🗎🗎

In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary review of 'failure' in transitions research. What is meant by failure, and is the community biased against it? How is failure explained through different perspectives? How can failures be addressed more appropriately in transitions studies? We synthesize a large body of evidence spanning transitions studies, innovation studies, science and technology studies, organisation and management studies, policy studies and the history of technology to probe and sharpen these questions. We examine within these literatures the instances and possibilities of success with transitions and discuss why this may be problematic, organising our analysis around four types of bias (selection, cognitive, interpretive, and prescription). In addition, we review three 'families' of framings of failure put forward in and around the socio-technical transitions literature, notably discrete failure events, systemic failings and processual accounts of failure, and discuss how they can be constructively put to work.

Global socio-technical regimes (2018) 🗎🗎

This paper addresses the question why socio-technical transitions follow similar trajectories in various parts of the world, even though the relevant material preconditions and institutional contexts vary greatly between different regions and countries. It takes a critical stance on the implicit methodological nationalism in transition studies' socio-technical regime concept and proposes an alternative 'global' regime perspective that embraces the increasingly multi-scalar actor networks and institutional rationalities, which influence transition dynamics beyond national or regional borders. By drawing on globalization theories from sociology and human geography, we show that socio-technical systems often develop institutional rationalities that are diffused via international networks and thus become influential in various places around the world. In so doing, we shed light on the multi-scalar interrelatedness of institutional structures and actors in socio-technical systems and elaborate on the implications for the conceptualization of transition dynamics. The paper illustrates this with the case study of an unsuccessful transition in the Chinese wastewater sector. Recent studies indicate that key decisions on wastewater infrastructure expansion were not only influenced by path-dependencies stemming from China's national context, but equally (or even more critically) by the dominant rationality of the water sector's global socio-technical regime. We conclude by discussing the contours of a new research agenda around the notion of global socio-technical regimes.

The economic crisis as a game changer? Exploring the role of social construction in sustainability transitions (2016) 🗎🗎

Continuing economic turbulence has fuelled debates about social and political reform as much as it has stimulated actions and initiatives aimed at a more fundamental transition of dominant economic systems. This paper takes a transition perspective to explore, from a Western European viewpoint, how the economic crisis is actually viewed through a variety of interpretations and responded to through a range of practices. We argue that framing societal phenomena such as the economic crisis as "symptoms of transition" through alternative narratives and actions can give rise to the potential for (seemingly) short-term pressures to become game changers. Game changers are then defined as the combination of: specific events, the subsequent or parallel framing of events in systemic terms by engaged societal actors, and (eventually) the emergence of (diverse) alternative narratives and practices (in response to the systemic framing of events). Game changers, when understood in these terms, help to orient, legitimize, guide, and accelerate deep changes in society. We conclude that such dynamics in which game changers gain momentum might also come to play a critical role in transitions. Therefore, we argue for developing a better understanding of and methodologies to further study the coevolutionary dynamics associated with game changers, as well as exploring the implications for governance.

Putting the Power in 'Socio-Technical Regimes' - E-Mobility Transition in China as Political Process (2014) 🗎🗎

A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is justifiably a leading approach in such research, with important connections to high-profile socio-technical systemic analyses within the mobilities paradigm. The paper explores the key contributions that a Foucauldian-inspired cultural political economy offers, going beyond central problems with the MLP, specifically regarding: a productive concept of power that affords analysis of the qualitatively novel and dynamic process of transition; and the incorporation of the exogenous 'landscape' into the analysis. This move thus resonates with growing calls for attention to power dynamics in mobilities research and a 'structural' turn. In making this case, we deploy the key case study of contemporary efforts towards mobility transition in China. This not only sets out more starkly the importance of MLP's gaps but also provides an empirical case to illustrate, albeit in the form of informed speculation, possible routes to low-carbon urban mobility transition and the inseparability from broader qualitative power transitions at multiple scales, including the global.

Bringing geopolitics to energy transition research (2021) 🗎🗎

This perspective aims at a geopolitical conceptual and empirical contribution to research questions on power in energy transition research, coming from the history of energy and Sustainability Transitions Studies. It aims at answering the call that has been made for the development of approaches that take power dynamics between actors into account, by authors coming from Sustainability Transitions Studies. This article suggests a geopolitical approach of power relations, at and of the different scales of energy transitions - understood as a change of energy resource could open a complementary and more spatial vision on this issue based on the main concepts of representations, territoriality, and resource development. This conceptual proposition is then developed over two empirical examples. The first one is France's energy governance system, which is just stepping out of its precedent energy transition towards nuclear energy. It explores the effects of the ongoing sustainable transition on the structure of the political landscape and of the energy sector using the concepts of resource development control and appropriation. The second one on EU energy transition policy highlights the importance of representations, a key concept in geopolitics, whose analysis facilitates the understanding of actors' strategies.

Just transition: A conceptual review (2021) 🗎🗎

The growing attention paid to the idea of a just transition away from the incumbent fossil fuel energy paradigm has led scholars to devise diverse definitions, understandings, and viewpoints of the term. This review seeks to clarify the different perspectives surrounding the concept, to consolidate knowledge, and to provide a concise account of current debates in the literature as well as a research agenda. It identifies five themes around which the concept has been discussed: (1) just transition as a labor-oriented concept, (2) just transition as an integrated framework for justice, (3) just transition as a theory of socio-technical transition, (4) just transition as a governance strategy, and (5) just transition as public perception. Overall, this review suggests that the literature on just transition employs rich theoretical and empirical insights from various disciplines yet contains several gaps. Specifically, it argues that the literature would benefit from more empirical studies rooted in practice, more discussion on the relationship between different concepts of just transition, an expansion of geographical scope to include developing countries and non-democratic regimes, and more attention to power dynamics in just transition.

Towards a theory of just transition: A neo-Gramscian understanding of how to shift development pathways to zero poverty and zero carbon (2020) 🗎🗎

As a global community, we need to understand better how a just transition can shift development paths to achieve net zero emissions and eliminate poverty. Our past development trajectories have led to high emissions, persistent inequality and a world that is fragmented across multiple contradictions. How can countries shift to development pathways that deliver zero poverty and zero carbon? In developing a theory of just transition, the article begins by reviewing a range of theoretical approaches from different traditions, building in particular on neo-Gramscian approaches. It applies and modifies core components of Gramsci's approach, building a neoGramscian theory of just transitions around concepts of ideology, hegemony, change agents and fundamental conditions. The theory suggests how coalitions of change agents can come together behind a just transition. The coalition needs to gain broader support, establish a new cultural hegemony in support of just transitions and be able to transform the fundamental conditions of the 21st century. The article briefly considers how this better understanding can be applied to the practice of shifting development pathways. The penultimate section reflects on limitations, including that a fuller development of a theory of just transition will require application for detailed concrete examples and a community effort. Together, we might address the multiple challenges of our present conditions to transition to development that enables human flourishing and a healthy planet.

Rethinking the Multi-level Perspective for energy transitions: From regime life-cycle to explanatory typology of transition pathways (2021) 🗎🗎

The mounting challenge of climate change requires large-scale transitions in energy, mobility and agro-food systems underpinning industrial societies. An influential framework for the study of energy transitions is the Multi-level Perspective which has been applied to a broad range of new topics and questions over the last decades. One of the recent key themes is the timing, duration and acceleration of transitions. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion by offering a reformulation of MLP's 'global' model which explains socio-technical system shifts through interacting processes on niche, regime and landscape levels. Through a close inspection of MLP's seminal works coupled with selected insights from other literatures the paper develops two conceptualizations: 1) a regime life-cycle model of transitions; 2) a 'property space' based approach to transition pathways. These formulations enable to establish a common analytical core of various frameworks focused on systems change, open up new research questions, generate new hypotheses, construct an explanatory typology of transition pathways and provide practical methodological guidance for case selection in further research on energy and mobility transitions.

How to change the sources of meaning of resistance identities in historically coal-reliant mining communities (2020) 🗎🗎

This paper explores the sociocultural identity debate surrounding coal mining and coal combustion infrastructures in Aragonese coalfields (Spain) to better understand local and individual resistance to energy transition. Adopting the Touraine-Castells sociological perspective and using an interpretive approach and a qualitative research design with in-depth interviews, this article focuses on cultural attributes that give meaning to resistance and project identities under construction. It also explores how resistance identities are linked to climate and energy policies and proposes an analytical framework to understand and to design decarbonisation pathways from resistance identities to project identities. The following conclusions are drawn from this study: a) the sources of meaning supporting current resistance identities are similar to juxtaposed, legitimising coal-phase identities (occupational, class-belonging and community identities), are reactive and founded on coal dependence, solidarity and justice; and b) resistance can only be overcome by a sustainable territorial project with a social base, which is why the adaptive dilemmas of historically coal-reliant mining communities (HCRCs) must be resolved. This research paper demonstrates the need for innovative governance to promote a transformative transition that addresses the sociocultural identities of HCRCs in the design of ecological transition contracts.

Transition tensions: mapping conflicts in movements for a just and sustainable transition (2020) 🗎🗎

The concept of a 'just transition' positions justice concerns of workers, front-line communities, and other marginalized groups at the center of sustainability efforts. However, related scholarship has largely neglected conflicts that arise between sustainability and justice goals. A framework is developed to identify three main tensions that planners and activists may encounter in efforts to advance a just transition. First, the 'sustainability-inclusivity' tension involves conflicts between rapid and bold policy action in time-sensitive contexts and inclusive governance processes. Second, the 'sustainability-recognition' tension involves conflicts between sustainability performance and recognition of diverse value systems and rights. Third, the 'sustainability-equity' tension involves conflicts between achieving sustainability performance and equitable distribution of benefits and burdens. Identifying and intentionally responding to such tensions is crucial to advance a just transition in the context of growing domestic and international inequality, the erosion of worker rights, and a warming climate.

Studying Industrial Decarbonisation: Developing an Interdisciplinary Understanding of the Conditions for Transformation in Energy-Intensive Natural Resource-Based Industry (2020) 🗎🗎

The ambition to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, as recognised in the Paris Agreement, implies a reorientation towards low-carbon societal development and, ultimately, the decarbonisation of human societies and economies. While climate policy has been geared towards achieving set emission reduction targets, the decarbonisation of key socioeconomic sectors such as energy-intensive natural resource-based industries (ENRIs) has not yet been sufficiently addressed, neither politically nor in science. Decarbonising the ENRIs is a complex societal problem that will require structural transformation technologically as well as socially. Understanding the conditions for transformative change therefore necessitates integrated knowledge from multiple perspectives of different research fields. In this paper, we examine the potential of combining three different research fields and critically scrutinize the challenges to integration for understanding the conditions for industrial decarbonisation: energy system analysis, sustainability transition research and policy studies. We argue that these perspectives are complementary-a fundamental condition for fruitful integration-but not easily compatible since they are sometimes based on different ontological assumptions. The research fields are in themselves heterogeneous, which poses additional challenges to an integrated research approach. Drawing on experiences from a Swedish research project (GIST2050) on industrial decarbonisation, we suggest a modest approach to integrated research that could progressively develop from multidisciplinary exchange towards more integrated forms of interdisciplinarity by means of cross-disciplinary dialogue and understanding.

Linking socio-technical transition studies and organisational change management: Steps towards an integrative, multi-scale heuristic (2019) 🗎🗎

While the role of agency is widely acknowledged in socio-technical transition research, there remains a research gap on agency in transitions and a call for studies using an actor-centred approach to transition studies. In response to this call, this paper addresses the role of actors and, particularly, organisations in transitions. It examines the role of organisational change in socio-technical sustainability transitions and, more specifically, how transition initiatives may trigger and support these changes in organisations and systems. For this purpose, the paper draws on literature from both transition studies and organisational change management (OCM) to build a multi-scale, integrative theoretical heuristic. This addresses drivers and barriers for organisational change as an integral part of transition processes, connecting the micro level of the individual, the meso level of the organisation and the macro level of the broader system in which the organisation is located. With the goal of illustrating the links between OCM and transition studies, this paper empirically examines the impact of Region 2050, a large, multi-organisation transition initiative in Sweden, in terms of creating change within the organisations involved. The main focus is on how the organisations acquire the new knowledge and capabilities required for improving regional planning for sustainability. The empirical study identifies leverage points at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels, which may be used in order to change strategic planning processes. Three different theoretical concepts from transition studies and OCM that could help to foster long-term planning are also identified: (1) the macro level of institutional plurality and its connection to the meso- (organisational) level; (2) collaboration as a key success factor on the organisational level; and (3) at the micro-level, the roles of individuals as change agents and boundary spanners. Overall, the case highlights the merits of the OCM literature for transition studies and their emphasis on understanding interacting processes operating at multiple scales. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

What enables just sustainability transitions in agrifood systems? An exploration of conceptual approaches using international comparative case studies (2019) 🗎🗎

The paper introduces a special issue on the timely question of 'What enables just sustainability transitions in agrifood systems?' which emerged from an explicitly international comparative and collective writing project. The special issue gives central attention to addressing and interlinking the key issues of power relations, food justice, change mechanisms at meso-level, and the diversity of sustainability visions, by exploring a range of revisited and new conceptual approaches which are blended with rich empirical cases. Especially as the second decade of the 21st century closes, we argue that we need to open up this conceptual vector and invite scholars to engage, debate, and combine new and well-established approaches. This will allow to analyse and progress with the urgently needed transition processes in agrifood systems. Six cross-national contributions are introduced which provide starting points for this endeavour.

Redefining power relations in agrifood systems (2019) 🗎🗎

Reconfiguration of power relations is crucial to transformations in agro-food systems. In this paper, we propose a conceptual basis for understanding this relation, building on the approaches to power of transition studies and other strands of studies. We explore the conditions for reconfigurations to occur by analysing three cases, concerning participatory plant breeding in Italy, public food procurement in France and diversification of agrifood chains in Wales. We highlight the critical importance of creating enabling relational environments, where power reconfiguration can occur. Within this new configuration, new, diverse sources of power are mobilized and new practices and institutions are co-constructed and legitimised, establishing the conditions for new socio-technical trajectories to emerge and for further transformative potential to develop. Our results show that a more variegated and dynamic configuration of power relations is needed. Transformations of agrifood systems depend on the variety of interactions that, in a multi-scale and dynamic dimension and through the play of the different forms of power, may develop among the actors involved. Understanding these processes and the implications that they show in terms of governance is critical.

Roots, Riots, and Radical ChangeA Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics (2019) 🗎🗎

In this paper, we put forward a new research agenda for ecological economics, based on three realisations. We then show how these can be connected through research and used to generate insights with the potential for application in broader, systemic change. The first realisation is that the core ambition of ecological economics, that of addressing the scale of human environmental resource use and associated impacts, often remains an aspirational goal, rather than being applied within research. In understanding intertwined environmental and social challenges, systemic approaches (including system dynamics) should be revitalised to address the full scope of what is possible or desirable. The second realisation is that the focus on biophysical and economic quantification and methods has been at the expense of a comprehensive social understanding of environmental impacts and barriers to changeincluding the role of power, social class, geographical location, historical change, and achieving human well-being. For instance, by fetishising growth as the core problem, attention is diverted away from underlying social driversmonetary gains as profits, rent, or interest fuelled by capitalist competition and, ultimately, unequal power relations. The third realisation is that ecological economics situates itself with respect to mainstream (neoclassical) economics, but simultaneously adopts some of its mandate and blind spots, even in its more progressive camps. Pragmatic attempts to adopt mainstream concepts and tools often comfort, rather than challenge, the reproduction of the very power relations that stand in the way of sustainability transitions. We consider these three realisations as impediments for developing ecological economics as an emancipatory critical research paradigm and political project. We will not focus on or detail the failings of ecological economics, but state what we believe they are and reformulate them as research priorities. By describing and bringing these three elements together, we are able to outline an ambitious research agenda for ecological economics, one capable of catalysing real social change.

Bridging socio-technical and justice aspects of sustainable energy transitions (2018) 🗎🗎

Sustainable energy transitions necessarily comprise both socio-technical aspects as well as important implications for social justice. However, in existing scholarship, these are mainly treated as distinct phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive approach that pulls together critical aspects of both socio-technical development and energy justice in understanding sustainable transitions. Drawing on the strengths of both sets of literature, we argue that a comprehensive approach requires analyses to account for the co-evolution of institutional change, material change and relational change, with a cross-cutting concern for multiple spatialities and normative implications. We then illustrate this approach through three brief case studies of multi-scalar solar uptake in Portugal, bringing out how justice considerations are intricately involved in the practices and politics of these concrete, broadly representative instances of sustainable energy transitions.

Power in Sustainability Transitions: Analysing power and (dis)empowerment in transformative change towards sustainability (2017) 🗎🗎

This paper conceptualizes power and empowerment in the context of sustainability transitions and transition governance. The field of transition studies has been critically interrogated for undermining the role of power, which has inspired various endeavours to theorize power and agency in transitions. This paper presents the POwer-IN-Transition framework (POINT), which is developed as a conceptual framework to analyse power and (dis)empowerment in transformative social change, integrating transition concepts and multiple power and empowerment theories. The first section introduces transitions studies and discusses its state-of-the-art regarding power. This is followed by a typology of power relations and different types of power (reinforcive, innovative, transformative). These notions are then used to reframe transition concepts, in particular the multi-level perspective, in terms of power dynamics. The critical challenges of (dis)empowerment and unintended power implications of discourses on and policies for sustainability transitions' are discussed. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the arguments and challenges for future research. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Beyond the disruption narrative: Varieties and ambiguities of energy system change (2018) 🗎🗎

For many observers we are entering an age of heightened disruption in energy systems - a 'disruption narrative' is now prominent and seemingly widely-shared. The energy disruption narrative often goes beyond the merely descriptive: it is also often used in a normative way, in that system disruption is seen as a necessary and welcome enabler of the shift to more sustainable and more rapidly decarbonised energy systems. While not denying that there are significant changes underway in the operation and governance of energy systems, I reflect here on the assumptions associated with the disruption narrative and its value as a guide to policy and research. I firstly review some theoretical and empirical research on disruptive innovation, consider some empirical evidence on historic energy system change, and then reflect on the value of a disruptive narrative in 'energy futures' research and policy. The disruption narrative is a contestable framing for researchers, across both 'whole systems' analysis and more specific technological and organisational level study, and is a problematic guide for policy. Researchers and policymakers should be sceptical of uniform narratives about change, and seek more balanced attention to both disruptive and continuity-based dynamics of energy system change and sustainable transitions.

Shifting Power Relations in Sustainability Transitions: A Multi-actor Perspective (2016) 🗎🗎

This paper contributes to understanding transition politics by conceptualizing (shifting) power relations between actors in sustainability transitions. The authors introduce a Multi-actor Perspective as a heuristic framework for specifying (shifting) power relations between different categories of actors at different levels of aggregation. First, an overview is provided of how power and empowerment have been treated in transition research, and remaining questions are identified on who exercises power and who is empowered by and with whom. It is argued that theoretical frameworks and empirical analyses in transition studies lack precision when it comes to distinguishing between different types and levels of actors. In response, a Multi-actor Perspective (MaP) is developed, which distinguishes among four sectors (state, market, community, third sector), and between actors at different levels of aggregation: (1) sectors, (2) organizational actors, and (3) individual actors. The paper moves on to specify how the MaP contributes to understanding transition politics specifically in conceptualizing shifting power relations. Throughout the paper, empirical illustrations are used regarding public debates on welfare state reform, civil society and Big Society', as well as more specific empirical examples of community energy initiatives.

Importance of Actors and Agency in Sustainability Transitions: A Systematic Exploration of the Literature (2016) 🗎🗎

This article explores the role of actors and agency in the literature on sustainability transitions. We reviewed 386 journal articles on transition management and sustainability transitions listed in Scopus from 1995 to 2014. We investigate the thesis that actors have been neglected in this literature in favor of more abstract system concepts. Results show that this thesis cannot be confirmed on a general level. Rather, we find a variety of different approaches, depending on the systemic level, for clustering actors and agency as niche, regime, and landscape actors; the societal realm; different levels of governance; and intermediaries. We also differentiate between supporting and opposing actors. We find that actor roles in transitions are erratic, since their roles can change over the course of time, and that actors can belong to different categories. We conclude by providing recommendations for a comprehensive typology of actors in sustainability transitions.

Civil society organizations and deliberative policy making: interpreting environmental controversies in the deliberative system (2014) 🗎🗎

This paper argues that while research on deliberative democracy is burgeoning, there is relatively little attention paid to the contributions of civil society. Based on an interpretive conceptualization of deliberative democracy, this paper draws attention to the ways in which civil society organizations employ "storylines" about environmental issues and deliberative processes to shape deliberative policy making. It asks, how do civil society organizations promote storylines in the deliberative system to change policy? How do storylines constitute policy and policy-making processes in the deliberative system? I answer these questions through an empirical analysis of two environmental controversies in the USA: environmental justice in New Mexico and coalbed methane development in Wyoming. Findings indicate that civil society organizations used storylines in both cases to shift the dynamics of the deliberative system and to advance their own interpretations of environmental problems and policy-making processes. Specifically, they used storylines (1) to set the agenda on environmental hazards, (2) to construct the form of public deliberation, changing the rules of the game, (3) to construct the content of public deliberation, shaping meanings related to environmental policy, and (4) to couple/align forums, arenas and courts across the system. These findings suggest that promoting storylines through accommodation and selection processes can be an important mechanism for shaping policy meanings and for improving deliberative quality, although these effects are tempered by discursive and material forms of power, and the competition among alternative storylines.

Up, down, round and round: connecting regimes and practices in innovation for sustainability (2013) 🗎🗎

The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change. The relationship between these two different camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but we argue that they are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, through empirical analysis of two different case studies of sustainability innovation, we show that analyses that adopt only one of these theoretical lenses risk blindness to critical innovation dynamics. In particular, we identify various points of intersection between regimes and practices that can serve to prevent (or potentially facilitate) sustainability transitions. We conclude by suggesting some possible directions for further research that place these crossovers and intersections at the centre of analyses.

Socio-technical regimes and sustainability transitions: Insights from political ecology (2012) 🗎🗎

Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core focus of geography, linking subfields such as urban, economic, and political ecology, yet strategies for achieving this goal remain illusive. Socio-technical transition theorists have made important contributions to our knowledge of the challenges and possibilities for achieving more sustainable societies, but this body of work generally lacks consideration of the influences of geography and power relations as forces shaping sustainability initiatives in practice. This paper assesses the significance for geographers interested in understanding the space, time, and scalar characteristics of sustainable development of one major strand of socio-technical transition theory, the multi-level perspective on socio-technical regime transitions. We describe the socio-technical transition approach, identify four major limitations facing it, show how insights from geographers - particularly political ecologists - can help address these challenges, and briefly examine a case study (GMO and food production) showing how a refined transition framework can improve our understanding of the social, political, and spatial dynamics that shape the prospects for more just and environmentally sustainable forms of development.

A dynamic conceptualization of power for sustainability research (2011) 🗎🗎

This paper takes up the challenge of providing a conceptual power framework to be used in the context of sustainability research. First, challenges of sustainability research are discussed by focusing specifically on recent insights from Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA), and on that basis some requirements for concepts to be used in sustainability research are postulated. It is argued that two of the most important aspects of sustainability assessment research are the long-term dynamics of change and an interdisciplinary paradigm. Second, a dynamic power framework is presented that was developed in the context of research on socio-technical sustainability transitions, including the basics of this power framework as well as some empirical illustrations. Third, it is discussed how the presented power framework deals with time, change and long-term dynamics, and how this contributes to the state-of-the-art. Fourth, it is indicated how the power framework integrates interdisciplinary and 'interparadigmaticatic' research requirements, and how this contributes to the state-of-the art. In conclusion, the arguments are summarized and some challenges for future research are distilled. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways (2007) 🗎🗎

Contributing to debates about transitions and system changes, this article has two aims. First, it uses criticisms on the multi-level perspective as stepping stones for further conceptual refinements. Second, it develops a typology of four transition pathways: transformation, reconfiguration, technological substitution, and de-alignment and re-alignment. These pathways differ in combinations of timing and nature of multi-level interactions. They are illustrated with historical examples. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Territorial and institutional obduracy in regional transition: politicising the case of Flanders' energy distribution system (2021) 🗎🗎

This case study unravels the ambiguous position of public energy distributor Fluvius in dealing with strategic regional transition challenges. It enriches current understandings of spatial transition dimensions and of public regime actors' role in transitions, by unravelling the territorial and institutional embeddedness of regional energy distribution systems. We disentangle three controversies in Flemish energy distribution, centred around the spatial concepts of density, spatial selectivity and socio-spatial redistribution. This spatial lens reveals the implicit spatial logics and inherently political character of transforming regional distribution systems. We conclude that a fundamental energy transition requires more inclusive governance, and an ambitious spatial transition vision.

Sustainability through institutional failure and decline? Archetypes of productive pathways (2019) 🗎🗎

Although current literature on sustainability governance and institutions is preoccupied with innovation, novelty, success, and "best practice," there is an emergent tendency to consider decline and failure as opportunities and leverage points to work toward and to achieve sustainability. However, although failure, crisis, and decay have been treated extensively, the link toward their productive potential has remained underdeveloped in the literature. Using a systems perspective, we described five archetypical pathways through which crisis, failure, deliberate destabilization, and active management of decline may facilitate sustainability transformation through adaptation, learning, providing windows of opportunity, and informed choices regarding stability versus change. We sought to provide a basis for further conceptual and empirical inquiry by formulating archetypical pathways that link aspects of failure to productive functions in the sense of sustainability. We started out by describing five archetypical pathways and their conceptual underpinnings from a number of different literatures, including evolutionary economics, ecology, and institutional change. The pathways related to (1) crises triggering institutional adaptations toward sustainability, (2) systematic learning from failure and breakdown, (3) the purposeful destabilization of unsustainable institutions, (4) making a virtue of inevitable decline, and (5) active and reflective decision making in the face of decline instead of leaving it to chance. These archetypical pathways were illustrated by a number of sustainability-related empirical case studies. In developing these archetypes, we have sought to move forward the debate on sustainability transformation and harness the potential of hitherto overlooked institutional dynamics.

Moving beyond the heuristic of creative destruction: Targeting exnovation with policy mixes for energy transitions (2017) 🗎🗎

Scholars looking at policy mixes for the energy transition and seeking to facilitate a move away from fossil-based structures are increasingly addressing the opposite side of innovation. To describe this, the article introduces the concept of exnovation, referring to attempts to end fossil-based technological trajectories in a deliberate fashion. It applies a framework that encompasses innovation and exnovation alike in order to investigate the policy mix of the German energy transition. Beside finding that energy transition policy mixes need to emphasize regulatory instruments more in order to bring about decarbonization, the article also describes some general aspects of the policy mix design required to govern the innovation-exnovation nexus.

Information stabilisation and destabilisation as potential usable concepts in practice theoretical approaches (2018) 🗎🗎

Introduction. The aim of the paper is to suggest two concepts, information stabilisation and information destabilisation, as usable in describing processes of information constructing. Method. The paper has chosen two core premises representing the panoply of practice approaches as a guiding principle for analysing selected studies and for suggesting the two concepts mentioned. Analysis. First, a reading is made of three studies to give examples of how to understand the two concepts proposed. Second, a critical view is given of the ways in which three selected studies from the field of LIS look at processes of information constructing in their analyses of information practices. Third, a discussion is taken of the benefits of using the two concepts. Findings. Using the two concepts seems to strengthen the concept of information practice by opening up for empirical investigation both stability and changes in information activities as well as in networks. Conclusion. The contribution of this paper is conceptual. The two concepts suggested are considered as potentially usable when describing processes of information constructing seen as evolving network of actors. The concepts are based on theoretical assumptions about collectives of agencies in general and active agency of material objects in particular.