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May 2014 - present
March 2006 - March 2014
Publications
Publications (100)
As current sustainability challenges are increasingly acknowledged to be of a persistent and systemic nature, sustainability transitions are pursued as likewise systemic solutions. Attempts at such systemic innovations have frequently been seen to become ‘captured’ by incumbent actors, however. As such neutralizing or even perverting co-optation re...
Social innovation is on the rise as a mode of governance through which to address societal challenges. Seeking to empower SI initiatives, researchers and policy makers are concerned with the development of supportive “ecosystems”. This concept usefully calls attention to the distributed nature of SI agency, but many questions remain on the kinds of...
This paper responds to the need in innovation research for conceptual clarity and solid theory on social innovation (SI). The paper conceptualizes SI as changing social relations, involving new ways of doing, knowing, framing and organizing, and theorizes transformative social innovation (TSI) as the process of SI challenging, altering, or replacin...
Social innovation (SI) is gaining attention as an innovation category. However, the SI concept proves vulnerable to stereotypical understandings. Next to the radically novel, diffusion-oriented and thereby manifestly innovative social ‘niches’, it is important to also acknowledge the rather latent SI phenomena of restoration and shielding. This pape...
This chapter explores the forms, contexts, and conditions of energy citizenship that have emerged in Belgium. Regarding the forms, it presents data from a large-scale mapping of energy citizenship initiatives throughout Europe. For Belgium, this comprises 21 initiatives differing in objective, size, and organisational form. Regarding the contexts a...
The first chapter introduces the concept of energy citizenship and the innovative approach this book has adopted to investigate it, as well as provides a road map for the remaining chapters. Specifically, the chapter discusses the origins of the concept of energy citizenship and the many forms in which it exists. It then briefly introduces the Ener...
This chapter traces the dynamic history of energy citizenship in the Netherlands, an evolution from grassroots protests to partnerships with businesses and government entities. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical events, case studies, and policy developments, the study shows how energy citizenship in the Netherlands has evolved from oppo...
Transitions research has gained traction in sustainability studies for its systemic approach to environmental challenges. A central tenet is that the persistence of these challenges can be attributed to 'system failures', and that system innovation is needed, i.e. a multitude of innovations that co-evolve into system-wide transformations. However,...
Energy citizenship is viewed as playing an essential role in the transition towards sustainable energy systems on a national and global scale. However, as a social science concept it is rather fuzzy and insufficiently elaborated. This paper proposes a conceptual typology of energy citizenship that aims for a balance between various competing unders...
An important precondition for responsible innovation is the awareness of directionality: Dynamic innovation processes can take different, more or less favorable, turns. The ongoing wave of digital innovations exemplifies how this directionality challenges societal actors to develop new strategic dispositions. This paper critically examines the ‘dig...
This report forms the concluding synthesis of WP2. Based on external feedback, conceptual advances and the empirical insights developed in WP3, WP4 and WP5, the deliverable provides empirically informed and conceptually refined insights into ‘active’ energy citizenship, the associated broader range of citizenship, and the relevant empowerment proce...
The institutionalization of social innovations is a key topic for social innovation scholarship. As Cajaiba-Santana (2014,
p. 44) indicated, social innovation amounts to the purposeful creation of new ideas and actions that spawn new institutions and social systems. A more thorough engagement with institutionalization processes would therefore help...
This encyclopedia entry deals with the role of social innovation in the remaking of social structures, socio-technical systems and regimes. The networked nature of social innovation and transformative goals of initiatives such as Slow Food and REScoop gives them a social movement element. Some are reformist, others are more transformative, but such...
Social innovation is gaining attention as a pivotal dimension of socio-technical transitions with renewable energy prosumerism as a prominent example. However, this example also highlights that social innovation evokes concerns about purposes, beneficiaries, normative dilemmas and legitimacy. This paper addresses recent calls to confront the percei...
The report describes the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal conditions that have impact on the emergence and development of energy citizenship in nine European countries involved in the EnergyPROSPECTS project: Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, The Netherlands, and Spain. The PESTEL analy...
Society is transforming through a whirlpool of innovations. This includes technological as well as social innovations, i.e. changes in social relations involving new ways of doing, organizing, framing and knowing. Especially the potentials for transformative social innovation (TSI) are gaining the interest of progressive political actors and critic...
The report presents a detailed analysis of the major political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal conditions that shape the emergence, manifestations and transformations of energy citizenship at EU level. The report and resulting PESTEL analysis will serve as the reference point for the energy citizenship as observed in diffe...
The report presents a detailed analysis of the major political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal conditions that shape the emergence, manifestations and transformations of energy citizenship at EU level. The report and resulting PESTEL analysis will serve as the reference point for the energy citizenship as observed in diffe...
Avec le concept d’exnovation, les Sustainability Transitions studies (ST) connaissent un changement de paradigme. Leur focale typique sur les niches d’innovation durables se déplace pour éclairer désormais le revers de ces processus d’émergence : les voies de sortie des systèmes sociotechniques qui posent des problèmes de non-durabilité. Cet articl...
With the concept of exnovation, Sustainability Transitions (ST) studies are experiencing a paradigm shift. Their typical focus on sustainable niche innovations has now shifted to shed light on the reverse side of these emergence processes: the exit routes from socio-technical systems which cause problems of unsustainability. This article introduces...
With the concept of exnovation, Sustainability Transitions (ST) studies are experiencing a paradigm shift. Their typical focus on sustainable niche innovations has now shifted to shed light on the reverse side of these emergence processes: the exit routes from socio-technical systems which cause problems of unsustainability. This article introduces...
The question is how limited, local steps towards circularity can lead to bigger steps
that, over time, do make a difference. Transitions research is useful precisely in that
respect of change-over-time. It provides a theory of change. It usefully highlights
how innovations in enterprises and business ecosystems have already set a transition process...
The “exnovation” concept helps to understand the linkages between a range of developments in business ecosystems and business models that at first sight seem unconnected: the phasing out of coal plants, the decline of traditional retail, the de-materialisation of economic production, the decline of industrial regions, the various policies introduce...
We are living on a finite planet. Humankind is overstepping planetary boundaries, however. In 2021, worldwide consumption has exceeded the yearly bio-capacity of the Earth (what we call the overshoot day) on the 29th of July. For industrialised countries, the situation is far worse: In 2022, Belgium reached that overshoot day on the 26th of March....
The presentation presents theoretical, methodological and normative consideration regarding research on labour/decarbonization transitions. The associated paper (in progress) takes issue with reductionism in 'twin transition' discourse, and develops advances towards a more refined and empowering discourse.
How does the transitions theory perspective enrich existing insights on the success, failure and societal impacts of innovations in transportation? The chapter shows how this systemic perspective challenges conventional insights regarding 1) the rationale, 2) governance philosophy, 3) relevant dimensions and 4) scope of transport innovation. It pro...
The paper sets out to enrich the emerging debate on ‘deep’, transversal transitions. It does so by drawing attention to socio-economic developments neglected in the Deep Transition (DT) framework of Kanger and Schot, such as marketization, labour contracts becoming more individual and precarious, and changing human beliefs, aspirations, needs and w...
LAMARTRA addresses the interlinkages between transition processes of decarbonisation and ‘labour market’ - understood more broadly as work and employment. The salience of these interlinkages is increasing as processes of low-carbon transition are progressing beyond their initial stages of pioneering and niche markets. This salience speaks from the...
The importance of social and institutional innovations in the energy transition has become increasingly evident in recent years. The quest for new institutional arrangements and social relations has been accompanied by the proliferation of new concepts: Energy democracy, energy justice, energy poverty and energy literacy are interrogating and openi...
Within this deliverable we examine how energy citizenship, and the associated normative ideals of ‘active’ energy citizenship, has developed and continues to develop differently across European contexts. We report the results from four (local language) one-day regional workshops, hosted in Spain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary.
This deliverable describes the conceptual framework on energy citizenship. It lays down the key definitions, theoretical underpinnings and social constructions of the required systematic energy citizenship understanding. The conceptual framework discloses the diversity of more and less 'active' energy citizenship forms, identifying the main distinc...
This deliverable elaborates the fundamentals of the conceptual framework (D 2.1) into a conceptual typology of energy citizenship (ENCI). Following a robust methodology, ten ideal-types are presented and discussed in this document. This innovative conceptual typology captures the breadth of energy citizenship in terms of conceptual forms, thus enco...
Transitions research needs to engage more thoroughly with relapses in transitions. Particularly salient are the dynamics of ‘backlash’: Transition trajectories that, after initial diffusion, stagnate and subsequently relapse in terms of intended system change. Due to preoccupations with desirable transitions and virtuous S-curves, the phenomenon is...
This deliverable elaborates the fundamentals of the conceptual framework (D 2.1) into a conceptual typology of energy citizenship (ENCI). This document provides a background report on the process of grouping the key conceptual distinctions of ENCI into empirical observable analytical categories. Following a robust methodology, ten ideal-types are p...
Taking RE prosumerism as a key example of social innovation in the context of the energy transition, this paper demonstrates how the dark sides of social innovation can be articulated in sustainability transitions theory. Current discussions of those dark sides hover between naïve optimism and paralyzing critique. We develop a more balanced underst...
This deliverable describes the conceptual framework on energy citizenship. It lays down the key definitions, theoretical underpinnings and social constructions of the required systematic energy citizenship understanding. The conceptual framework discloses the diversity of more and less 'active' energy citizenship forms, identifying the main distinc...
Social innovation is an important dimension of current transformations in energy systems. It can refer to alternative business models, novel policy instruments, financing schemes, participatory governance approaches to energy questions, or new discourses. Its significance for energy systems is often considered in narrow instrumentalist terms, reduc...
Renewable energy (RE) prosumerism comes with promises and expectations of contributing to sustainable and just energy systems. In its current process of becoming mainstream, numerous challenges and doubts have arisen whether it will live up to these. Building on insights from sustainability transitions research and institutional theory, this articl...
DEEE comme enjeu systémique; interrogations de point de vue de la theorie des transitions sur les dimensions, phases, agencements dans la transition DEEE en Bruxelles
Current sustainability challenges call for transitions in locked-in socio-technical systems. The governance of transitions often remains limited to the cultivation of sustainable 'niche' innovations, however. This paper explores how to handle transitions directionality, i.e. the diversity of possible socio-technical development paths. It reaches be...
Current social innovation initiatives towards societal transformations bring forward new ways of doing and organizing, but new ways of knowing as well. Their efforts towards realizing those are important sites for the investigation of contemporary tensions of expertise. The promotion of new, transformative ways of knowing typically involves a large...
Festivals have come to play an important role in tourism, and managing their legacy has become an important challenge for governments and the events industry. Festivals typically take place over limited periods of time, but they also bring longer lasting legacies for the economy, local communities and the environment. Festival legacies are characte...
The mainstreaming of RE prosumerism amounts to a complex crossroads of multiple possible RE prosumerism futures, with very different implications in terms of citizen participation, inclusiveness and transparency. The ‘incentive structures’ shaping the RE prosumerism process have been identified by considering RE prosumerism as a bundle of new actio...
Society is transforming through a whirlpool of innovations, including technological innovations and a wide array of social innovations such as new modes of governance or ways of working and living together. As researchers and practitioners are trying to make sense of transformative innovations, they run into various paradoxes: Despite being revolut...
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...
Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power...
Alongside current policy discourses on the transformative potentials of social innovation, social innovation initiatives also construct their own accounts of how society can be transformed and by whom. Building on state-of-the-art futures studies and narrative research and their linkages, this article unfolds these narratives of change (NoC) by soc...
Social innovation is widely embraced as a way to renovate, energize and open up administration. This promise often leads to disappointments, however, due to unrealistic expectations and under-estimation of the difficulty to introduce and sustain new social relations and institutional arrangements. Realism is needed.
This realism is especially neede...
Current social innovation initiatives towards societal transformations bring forward new ways of doing and organizing, but new ways of knowing as well. Their efforts towards realizing those are important sites for the investigation of contemporary tensions of expertise. The promotion of new, transformative ways of knowing typically involves a large...
Social innovation is on the rise as a mode of governance through which to address societal challenges. Seeking to empower SI initiatives, researchers and policy makers are concerned with the development of supportive ‘ecosystems’. This concept usefully calls attention to the distributed nature of SI agency, but many questions remain on the kinds of...
As part of the broader research strategy in the TRANSIT project, it is the aim to compare RIPESS with other cases of transformative social innovation. The report primarily serves this internal purpose of building theory through case comparison. So other than providing a comprehensive case study and evaluating the achievements of the featured initia...
Considering that it is important for the social innovation research field to confront its methodological challenges, this contribution addresses the challenge of choosing appropriate units of analysis. Invoking insights from actor-network theory, it is demonstrated that this challenge is pervasive: the agency in social innovation processes is distr...
This paper argues that there is currently a need for new theory on transformative social innovation that is able to provide empowering insights to practice, especially in terms of how social innovation interacts with transformative change processes. It identifies three ‘pitfalls’ that such theory-building needs to confront, and presents middle-rang...
An updated version of this working paper has been published in the 'Research Policy' journal (2020).
Pel, B., Haxeltine, A., Avelino, F., Dumitru, A., Kemp, R., Bauler, T., Kunze, I., Dorland, J., Wittmayer, W. & Jørgensen, M. S. (2020), Towards a theory of Transformative Social Innovation: a relational framework and 12 propositions, Research Pol...
In recent years, there have been substantial efforts towards theory-building and conceptual clarification in social innovation (SI) research further contributing to its consolidation as a research field. Taking a different angle, this special issue aims to contribute to such consolidation by introducing greater reflexivity about the underlying meth...
Het slapende gezin in een voertuig zonder bestuurder is een vertrouwd beeld geworden. De zelfrijdende auto is niet meer uit het nieuws weg te slaan. Maar dat wil nog niet zeggen dat die zomaar in ons verkeerssysteem kan worden geïntroduceerd. De ‘driverless car’ is niet alleen een technologische vernieuwing en productinnovatie, hij zal ook heel wat...
Social innovation is gaining attention for its potential for system transformations. It is often initiated by grassroots collectives, which can become successful through support from other actors and through certain game-changing events or developments. We highlight how transformative social innovation is a highly dispersed, coproduced process of c...
Social innovation is increasingly endorsed for its potentials towards addressing societal challenges of sustainability, social inclusion and democratization. Critical scholars and practitioners have raised attention however to the many ways in which SI silently reproduces rather than transforms dominant institutions. This contribution seeks to clar...
This deliverable is the synthesis report of work package 5 ‘Cases and Evidence – Meta analysis’. It presents the results of the meta-analysis of TSI propositions through the Critical Turning Points database. This database contains 65 local manifestations of transnational social innovation networks in 28 different countries, and almost 400 in-depth...
Current persistent challenges of sustainable and equitable development call for systemic technical and social innovations. The ´insertion´ practices of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) can be considered examples of such innovation efforts. The underlying rationales and institutional frameworks have been elaborated extensively in social e...
The ‘mobilities turn’ has reinvigorated the social critique on the automobility system. Theorizing its profound reconfigurations of social life, relationist commitments invite a certain silence regarding the associated social pathologies, however. This article explores a critical-theoretical interpretation of the mobilities paradigm. It proposes th...
This is a working paper from the early stages of the TRANSIT project. More recent accounts are
Avelino, F., Wittmayer, J. M., Pel, B., Weaver, P., Dumitru, A., Haxeltine, A., ... & O'Riordan, T. (2019). Transformative social innovation and (dis) empowerment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 145, 195-206.
Pel, B., Haxeltine, A., Aveli...
In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi introduced the concept of a double movement in society. The first movement is towards marketization: the spread of market thinking and market-based forms of allocation throughout society, driven by international trade and naturalist ideas of competition and utilitarianism. The second movemen...
Social innovation is increasingly believed to have a great potential for addressing persistent societal challenges such as sustainability, social inclusion, democratization and deprivation. We understand transformative social innovation (TSI) as social innovation that is aimed to challenge, alter, replace or provide alternatives to dominant institu...
Since its emergence as a theory of sustainability transformation, transitions theory has started to gain currency with both policymakers and researchers. As transitions approaches become established in research and policy, a process of institutionalization can be witnessed. Yet notwithstanding this mainstreaming, transitions theory continues to be...
Social innovation, understood as change in social relations, is gaining currency as an answer to contemporary societal challenges. On the account of transformative SI, it can challenge, alter and replace the knowings and doings of existing social structures. There is a duality in SI however, as it unavoidably also draws on and reproduces those. Thi...
The persistence of current societal problems has given rise to a quest for transformative social innovations. As social innovation actors seek to become change makers, it has been suggested that they need to play into impactful macrodevelopments or “game-changers”. Here, we aim to deepen the understanding of the social innovation agency in these tr...
Community energy is emerging as an intriguing new way of organizing the energy system. It fits very well to discourses on sustainability, but also to more neo-liberal ideas of self-reliance and independence. At the same time, its development challenges existing (energy) structures and raises questions about the (self-) governance of community energ...
Social innovation is gaining currency as an answer to contemporary societal challenges. The concept has raised high expectations, but also meets with skepticisms and contestations, however. It has been noted to be a particularly malleable concept. Considering its vulnerability to succumbing under divergent framings and fading away as a passing 'hyp...
Motorway capacity expansion projects are prominent causes for contestation. From a large technical systems (LTS) perspective, the concept of 'momentum' can be deployed to investigate social appraisals associated with such projects. Momentum is the end stage in LTS development, designating stabilization in the coevolution of social and technical sys...
Delta areas can be considered complex adaptive socio-ecological systems. The Dutch Southwest delta, facing serious flood risks, vulnerability to ecological decline, and various challenging issues of agriculture, industry, harbor development and energy provision, is a case in point. Still, many institutional barriers exist towards governing and plan...
This article argues that it is relevant to apply the complex adaptive system approach to urbanized deltas. On the basis of this, it discusses some important planning issues related to these areas: adapting them to changing circumstances, synchronizing the various sectors in the areas, and organizing collective action to realize this. The paper also...
Current persistent sustainability challenges are widely understood to require transitions and system innovations. As these systemic changes typically emerge from multiple co-evolving innovations, Schot and Geels [2008. Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys; theory, findings, research agenda, and policy. Technology Analysis...
Community energy is emerging as an intriguing new way of organizing the energy system. It fits very well to discourses on sustainability, but also to more neo-liberal ideas of self-reliance and independence. At the same time, its development challenges existing (energy) structures and raises questions about the (self-) governance of community energ...
This paper addresses the challenges of Joint Fact Finding (JFF) in spatial planning and design. JFF is an important component of a deliberative planning practice: The construction of (problematic) realities is fundamental for the formulation of challenges and solutions. Information is often contested in complex planning processes due to different i...
Zowel in mobiliteitsonderzoek als in de beleidspraktijk valt er recentelijk een onmiskenbaar streven naar 'robuustheid' waar te nemen. Dit streven is vaak een reactie op een als zeer dynamisch ervaren omgeving. Het is daarbij echter opvallend dat er zeer uiteenlopende invullingen aan dit concept worden gegeven. Dit roept de vraag op of het concept...
Current and future sustainability challenges are increasingly acknowledged to be of a persistent and systemic nature. This gives rise to calls for likewise systemic solution strategies: Transformative system innovations instead of incremental system improvements, and societal transitions rather than procrastination on current locked-in trajectories...