Abstract
This article responds to increasing public and academic discourses on social innovation, which often rest on the assumption that social innovation can drive societal change and empower actors to deal with societal challenges and a retreating welfare state. In order to scrutinise this assumption, this article proposes a set of concepts to study the dynamics of transformative social innovation and underlying processes of multi-actor (dis)empowerment. First, the concept of transformative social innovation is unpacked by proposing four foundational concepts to help distinguish between different pertinent ‘shades’ of change and innovation: 1) social innovation, (2) system innovation, (3) game-changers, and (4) narratives of change. These concepts, invoking insights from transitions studies and social innovations literature, are used to construct a conceptual account of how transformative social innovation emerges as a co-evolutionary interaction between diverse shades of change and innovation. Second, the paper critically discusses the dialectic nature of multi-actor (dis)empowerment that underlies such processes of change and innovation. The paper then demonstrates how the conceptualisations are applied to three empirical case-studies of transformative social innovation: Impact Hub, Time Banks and Credit Unions. In the conclusion we synthesise how the concepts and the empirical examples help to understand contemporary shifts in societal power relations and the changing role of the welfare state.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 195-206 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Technological Forecasting and Social Change |
| Volume | 145 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This article is based on research carried out as part of the Transformative Social Innovation Theory (“TRANSIT”) project which is funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) under grant agreement 613169. The views expressed in this article are the collective responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. Flor Avelino works at DRIFT, Erasmus University Rotterdam, as an assistant professor, with a focus on the power and empowerment of civil society to self-organise social innovation and sustainability transitions. As the academic director of the Transition Academy, she co-creates new learning environments to challenge people to think and act for radical change. As scientific coordinator of the TRANSIT (Transformative Social Innovation Theory)-project, she is currently involved in empirically and theoretically investigating social innovation and transformation. Dr. Julia M. Wittmayer works as senior researcher at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, Erasmus University Rotterdam, focusing on social innovation and social sustainability in urban areas and on a local scale. She is interested in the roles, social relations and interactions of actors involved in processes and initiatives aiming to contribute to sustainability transitions — with a specific interest for the role of science. Together with Flor Avelino, she currently coordinates the EU-FP7 funded TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory (TRANSIT) project. Bonno Pel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d'Etudes du Développement Durable, Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. He specializes in the governance and politics of system innovations and transitions. Currently he is involved in the TRANSIT project on Transformative Social Innovation, investigating social innovation processes and their methodological challenges in particular. Paul Weaver is Professorial Research Fellow at ICIS, University of Maastricht, NL, and Adjunct Professor in Sustainability Science at LUCSUS, University of Lund, Sweden. He is an economic geographer with interests in social-ecological systems and their dynamics. Within the framework of the TRANSIT project, Paul is involved in case study research and issues of social innovation resourcing. Adina Dumitru works as a researcher at the University of A Coruna since 2011. With a background in social psychology and political science, her research focuses on psychological factors involved in transitions to sustainable lifestyles and a green economy, the role of social innovation initiatives in promoting societal learning and the individual and social factors contributing to the exercise of agency in processes of societal transformations. She is currently involved in the TRANSIT project on transformative social innovation and in the GLAMURS project, researching transitions to sustainable lifestyles and a green economy. Alex Haxeltine is Senior Research Fellow in Transitions Research in 3S, where he is currently leading on research into the role of social innovation and social movements in transformations to sustainability. His core research interest is in the new stories, and new worldviews, that are emerging at this time in history as society responds to unprecedented global ecological and social challenges. He is currently a WP-lead on the EU TRANSIT project, which is developing a new theory of transformative social innovation. Previously he has played a key role in a number of European research projects including ADAM: Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies and MATISSE: Methods and Tools for Integrated Sustainability Assessment (both Framework 6) in which he led a team from across Europe in developing a novel approaches to modelling the dynamics of social change in sustainability transitions René Kemp is professor of innovation and sustainable development in Maastricht, The Netherlands. He is one of the pioneers of sustainability transition research and has a long-term interest in issues of change and stability. He has more than 100 publications in the area of eco-innovation and sustainable development, several of which are viewed as seminal. He is advisory editor of Research Policy (the world-leading innovation journal), editor of Sustainability Science and editor of the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Together with Jan Rotmans he developed the model of transition management for sustainability transition, which, following many discussions with policy makers, was used by the Dutch national government as a basis for its innovation policy for sustainability energy. He is currently working on social innovation, urban labs, resource efficiency and the political economy of eco-innovation policy. Michael Søgaard Jørgensen is associate professor, M.Sc., PhD. His present research focuses on sustainable transitions, technology foresight, and employee and citizen participation in innovation processes. Coordinator of the Science Shop at Technical University of Denmark 1985–2010 and one of the founding members in 2001 of the international network of science shops, Living Knowledge. MSJ has participated in several EU projects about societal impacts of science shops, including SCIPAS, INTERACTS, ISSNET, TRAMS, and currently PERARES. Tom Bauler is Assistant Professor and Chair of Environment and Economics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles where he teaches ecological economics. His research focuses on the governance of alternative indicators for well-being, particularly on the dynamics of “beyond-GDP” indicators and the institutionalization of the policy agenda. Tom also conducts a series of research efforts on “governance of transitions” from the perspective of grassroots innovations. Saskia Ruijsink M.Sc. has a background in the field of urban planning and urban development. She joined the IHS in 2007, where she works on and manages training and advisory work in fields of participation, urban and regional planning and development. Amongst others, she currently is project manager and researcher in the project ‘Fostering Partnerships for Equitable Cities’ in Albania and wrote an article about opportunities for the Netherlands to learn from countries in e.g. the Balkans, Latin America and Asia with respect to urban management approaches. Tim O'Riordan is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His work has been for long in the realm of sustainability science research and he has been associated with governments, business, and community organisations all over the world, but most especially in the EU.
Keywords
- Empowerment
- Governance
- Societal challenges
- Transformative change
- Transformative social innovation