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Social Innovation and Human Development—How the Capabilities Approach and Social Innovation Theory Mutually Support Each Other
Abstract
In light of the growing importance of social innovations in addressing the big social challenges, this article examines the need to develop a concept of social innovation as an analytical category. As such, social innovation is grounded in social theory, which looks at its various manifestations, actors and cultural contexts as well as its interrelationship with processes of social change. With recourse to social practice theories and the social theory of Gabriel Tarde, social innovations are analyzed as an intentional new figuration of social practices and as a generative mechanism of social change. Based on the outlined social-theoretical foundation of social innovations, the various interactions between social practices, social innovations and concepts of human development are discussed.
... Both models express that social innovations are not generated by individual actors or social enterprises alone. These four aspects (empirical-analytically, normative, communitarian/collaborative, organizational) are of importance in the analysis of social innovations (see also Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017). Finally, depending on the actor, (world) region, or disciplinary approach, different aspects are emphasized when describing social innovations (Howaldt et al., 2018). ...
... In particular, the capability approach according to Amartya Sen and Marta Nussbaum, briefly presented in the introduction, can point the way for this (Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017). ...
... Therefore, the approach is briefly outlined in the following section. The CA is discussed from a critical pedagogical perspective(Boni & Walker, 2013; Wood & Deprez, 2012) and in the context of social innovations(Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017; Ziegler, 2018). The approach can serve as a helpful analytical framework for critically reflecting on and promoting social innovation based on normative ethical considerations that have not been widely discussed in the context of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, either in practice or in academia(Hota et al., 2019; Ziegler, Molnár, Chiappero-Martinetti, von Jacobi, et al., 2017). ...
The challenges of today’s globalized world are manifold. This relates to challenges to overcome political and social crises around the globe. Solutions to these challenges are urgently needed, more precisely social innovations that help solve these complex global problems. Universities and educational institutions provide places where people can learn to create solutions and social innovations. Future generations need decision-making and problem-solving skills to be able to shape constant change. They also require the skills to work with people of different cultures and religions, to cooperate and to consider different perspectives in their daily work. Therefore students, teachers, lecturers, and researchers alike must understand how they can change and improve the world. They need to learn how to analyse and research social problems and how to create solutions in an entrepreneurial way. Teachers should learn how to design learning programmes or develop holistic learning systems. Finally, they must understand what competencies they and their students need to do this. In this globalized world, universities and educational institutions have a special responsibility to develop and offer learning programmes that help meet global and local challenges, and to do so together with stakeholders from society, politics, and business at both national and international levels. This dissertation therefore addresses the nascent field of social innovation education. It examines the field mainly from the perspective of economics and business education literature with its ramifications in various social science disciplines. It contributes to social entrepreneurship education and its interfaces with global citizenship education, education for sustainable development and management education in general. In addition, social, curricular, and extracurricular learning settings in communities of practice, which include (volunteer) engagement in initiatives, social start-up teams and project teams, serve as the central object of inquiry in this work. The first paper (Chapter 1) asks how a holistic learning system for social innovation education can be designed and anchored institutionally. It describesthe World Citizen School model developed at the Weltethos Institute 1 at the University of Tübingen, which identifies and systematically reflects on the various constitutional aspects of a holistic learning system. The second paper (Chapter 2) examines the principles according to which social-innovative teaching and learning settings can be designed. Using the design-based research approach as a method for the development of the learning design “social innovation camp”, the study describes the theoretical foundations, the process, and their practical relevance on the basis of the inquiry-based learning approach. The third paper investigates what (social) entrepreneurial competencies engaged students develop or can develop through their volunteering (Chapter 3). The subjects of this study are engaged students from different student initiatives and their “communities of practice” in which they engage with different topics and activities. In total, more than 1000 engaged and non-engaged students from 13 different universities were interviewed. The results of the three studies, their strengths and limitations are discussed and reflected on in the context of the young concept of critical entrepreneurship education and critical pedagogy. Finally, practical implications for the further development of social innovation education are formulated. The dissertation contributes on an institutional and didactic level, as well as to the discussion about the transfer function and third mission on a higher education policy and socio-political level of the young concept. All studies were developed within an explorative approach, due to the young concept of social innovation education. The starting point for all considerations and questions arose from the practical implementation and development of the “World Citizen School” model, which began in 2013 at the Weltethos Institute of the University of Tübingen as a "social innovation school" and whose formats have since been tested at other universities. Both the results and the approach are closely linked to the tradition of pragmatism.
... 52, 53;Redlich 1949, p. 235), but it is little theorized. Early on, Ward (1903) mentioned that Tarde saw SI as advantageous to society, and much later, several researchers named Tarde as a possible forerunner of SI theory (Godin 2012;Jessop et al. 2014;Ayob et al. 2016;Howaldt and Schwarz 2017)-along with Schumpeter, the first modern theorist on innovation (Damanpour 2020). However, Tarde is still little explored in relation to innovation (Howaldt et al. 2015), and "the long forgotten early exponent of an integrated sociological theory of innovation" (Howaldt and Schwartz 2017, p. 169). ...
... He uses SI in the same way he uses innovation elsewhere. At second glance, even though the term SI may be interpreted as a category of innovation, it is correct to understand it more broadly to include any type of innovation, something supported by others as well (Godin 2012;Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). ...
... As seen, Tarde had a broad conception of innovation covering domains such as economy (industrial), public administration (political, law/judiciary, military), and culture (artistic, language/literary, ritual). His emphasis on social phenomena (1895, p. 193; 1902a, p. 4) was later interpreted as a wide variety of SIs (Godin 2012;Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). This means that the inventions that spread may be material or immaterial objects. ...
Social innovation (SI) has received increasing attention from policymakers and researchers. It has become one of the answers to contemporary societal challenges (Grimm et al., 2013), a policy in the European Union (Nicholls and Edmiston 2018), and is still an emerging area of innovation studies (Van der Have and Rubalcaba 2016). Even though the empirical history of SI is becoming well documented, its theoretical history has not received much attention. Exceptions include contributions to SI, where Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) has been named as a source of a theory about SI. Motivated by these observations, this paper explores, describes, and discusses Tarde’s theoretical ideas about innovation in general and especially the category of SI by asking the following guiding question: What are Tarde’s innovation-related theoretical ideas and what is their relevance to SI research today? This theoretical discussion is based on three areas of literature: (i) a selection of 12 of Tarde’s original publications from 1890 to 1902, (ii) a selection of contemporary publications on SI, and (iii) a diverse selection of literature relevant to the development of innovation studies and SI studies. A central component of this paper is that it is based on original French publications and two early English translations that represent good sources for pinpointing when words and concepts were used in Tarde’s writings. This paper identifies and discusses three connections between Tarde and SI research. The first is the identification of three categories of innovation that cover examples of SI today. The second is his social theory, which emphasizes the role of invention and imitation in social change. The third is that Tarde is an early example of the theoretical idea of a combination of innovation and social change, which can also be identified in current research on SI. These findings could be of interest to those intrigued by how SIs today are the result of the diffusion or combination of earlier ideas with different sources (hybrids).
... The present study proposes SI-based multi-sectoral cooperation as a way to transform and rehabilitate South African service delivery as it takes SI to be the driving force for social change (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). However, using SI as an approach to service delivery is uncommon in South African local governments, despite growing evidence that it could be achieved (Chomane and Biljohn, 2021a;Weaver et al., 2019b). ...
... Transformative SI was introduced by the European Union Combining community efforts with bureaucracy through SI creates distinct partnerships that result in responsive innovations that transform and improve government service delivery (Castro-Arce and Vanclay, 2020). While transformation can happen spontaneously in the development process, transformative SI is focused on the transformation or change intentionally initiated by game changers (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). ...
Social innovation (SI) played a pivotal role in addressing local government water delivery challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. As traditional potable water delivery systems faced disruptions due to lockdowns and restrictions, innovative solutions emerged, driven by social and community-oriented approaches. In response to the urgent need for safe potable water, local government and civil society organisations leveraged social innovation to develop decentralised and community-driven water delivery mechanisms. These initiatives often involved the collaboration of government, local residents, businesses and non-profit organisations to establish alternative water supply chains. Such endeavours aimed not only to meet immediate water needs but also to enhance community resilience in the face of the pandemic. SI also supported equitable and inclusive access to water, recognising the pandemic’s overwhelming impact on disadvantaged communities. Initiatives were developed to ensure that marginalised populations have equitable access to safe drinking water, addressing both immediate and long-term imbalances in water delivery systems.
... So, from a theoretical perspective, it is suggested that acting on intrinsic and extrinsic socially driven motivations permits the creation of a sharing environment suitable for the cocreation of SIC, its implementation and dissemination. SI cannot ignore actors, cultural contexts and interrelations with social change processes (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017); therefore, acting on the intentionality of employees and volunteers means implementing a generative system of social practices and social change based on the responsibility of individuals and on a perspective of "workplace innovation" (Totterdill et al., 2012), that is, adopting organizational practices that allow employees to use and develop their skills, knowledge, experience and creativity in the perspective of SI. ...
... SIs are an intentional representation of social practices and generative mechanisms of social change (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017), which cannot ignore actors and cultural contexts as well as their interrelation with the processes of social change. In this perspective, the paper goes beyond the traditional approach focused on creating social and ecosystem changes (Chalmers, 2013;Breßler et al., 2016) by focusing on the enabling factors of individuals and on knowledge management processes that can contribute to building skills. ...
Purpose
This study aims to offer an empirical analysis to identify the relation between the adoption of knowledge management practices and the improvement of social innovation capabilities as an outcome of the knowledge sharing. Specifically, social innovation capabilities are triggered by knowledge-sharing enablers, such as intrinsic and extrinsic socially driven motivations.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a sample from 300 nonprofit organizations, the study explains causal relationships in terms of the multiplicity of triggers that act on a social innovation capability. The research applied the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method through SmartPLS 3.3 software. Data are collected from an online survey and highlight the employees’ and volunteers’ boost in nonprofit organizations to seek positive social change as a priority goal of their business model.
Findings
The results support the existence of a direct and positive relationship between knowledge-sharing enablers (i.e. intrinsic and extrinsic socially driven motivations), the mechanism of the formation of knowledge-sharing behaviors (an inside-out and outside-in process) and social innovation capabilities.
Research limitations/implications
The study combines the open innovation framework with social innovation activities and investigates the role of knowledge sharing in the building of social innovation capabilities. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is the first attempt to describe a synergic framework, including open innovation literature, social innovation capability and knowledge-sharing processes.
Originality/value
This paper is a part of the research stream that focuses on the processes of distribution of knowledge flows along the boundaries of the organization. Thus, this study broadens the field of knowledge management and social innovation initiatives.
... de Bruin and Read, 2018;Henry et al., 2017;Peredo et al., 2019;Tapsell and Woods, 2010). This is in spite of the field's links to human development, for example, via the capabilities approach (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017;von Jacobi et al., 2017) and the driving rationale for the field being the pursuit of societal change for the improvement of human flourishing and access to opportunities (Moulaert, 2009). The increase in attention paid to social innovation research and practice among academics, policymakers and practitioners has been driven by reactions to the enduring social and environmental challenges and wicked problems (Zivkovic, 2018) that established marketoriented institutional arrangements have been unable to address or indeed have created and reinforced. ...
... We contend that this lens complements existing macro-level understandings of social innovation development that consider political interventions for the devolution of power to marginalised groups (von Jacobi et al., 2017), historical institutional approaches (cf. Peredo et al., 2019) and human development (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017) as they apply to Indigenous social innovation. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how a complexity informed understanding of Indigenous–settler relationships helps people to better understand Indigenous social innovation. To do this, this paper uses the attractor concept from complexity thinking to explore both the history and possible futures of Indigenous Maori social innovation as shaped by Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper frames Te Tiriti as a structural attractor for social innovation in Aotearoa-New Zealand and explores the dynamics at play in the social and economic activities related to Te Tiriti and the ongoing settlement process in Aotearoa-New Zealand. This paper outlines this as an illustrative case study detailing the relevant contextual spaces and dynamics that interact and the emergence of social innovation.
Findings
This paper suggests that the convergent, divergent and unifying dynamics present in a structural attractor provide a useful framework for building ongoing engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people whereby Indigenous worldviews are given space to be articulated and valued.
Originality/value
In spite of the increase in research into social innovation, including in Indigenous contexts, the “context” of “postcolonial” context remains under-theorised and people’s understanding of the power dynamics at play here limits the understanding of how the mechanisms of Indigenous–settler partnerships structure social innovation and its impact.
... There a many definitions of SI (Edwards-Schachter and Wallace, 2017). In this paper, we adopt a broad understanding of SI as new ideas meeting social needs with intentional change of social practices (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017) that are inherently part of political processes (Ayob et al., 2016). ...
... In this paper, we adopt a focus on SI as an intentional change of social practices (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). Such an approach overcomes the still prevailing focus on innovation as technological novelty for commercial use. ...
There are calls for social innovation to help with the effort to halt biodiversity loss. However, research on social innovation and biodiversity is dispersed and covers a multitude of disciplines. A systematic overview of research on social innovation and biodiversity is missing and this paper contributes by focusing on social innovation to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss and unsustainability. The paper reviews research on social innovation in changing land use (agriculture, forestry, aquatic ecosystems and cities), in tackling exploitation of organisms (fishing, hunting, harvesting), and in addressing threats of climate change, pollution and invasive species. Across these drivers, we find a) a strong emphasis on social innovation as civic action for changing practices in addressing unsustainability, b) that social innovation research tends to focus on local experimentation although there are bodies of literature on policy-driven innovations and consumer/producer-driven innovations, and c) that there is very little research taking a critical perspective to explore negative or unintended consequences of social innovation. Drawing on the review, we propose three cross cutting issues that can be a focus for future research, practice and supportive policy: social innovation for nature-based solutions, social innovation for participatory governance, and social innovation for technology that tackles biodiversity loss.
... It calls for rethinking practices across sectors and users to transform our current ways of producing and consuming. Intentional change in practices is at the core of social innovation (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). Moving beyond a narrow understanding of innovation as technical novelty for commercial use, social innovation refers to intentional change in practices within and across sectors of social actors (business, civil society, public administration, etc.) . ...
Even though halting biodiversity loss is enshrined in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), current drivers tend to enforce tendencies in the direction of biodiversity loss and unsustainability. A focus on tackling direct drivers of biodiversity destruction surfaces social innovations relevant to management education. However, the central contribution of management education for biodiversity protection is critical engagement with indirect drivers and current ways of “doing business”. To this end, the chapter proposes biodiversity thinking for management education as comprised of reflection on values, environmental literacy, and the joint exploration of both in service-oriented learning, and a novel educational approach based on individual assignments, lectures and foresight work in groups. A case evaluation shows the approach to enable critical reflection on biodiversity values at the levels of individuals, but also that instrumental values prevail in group work. Fostering biodiversity thinking requires embedding course work in a long-term, whole-of-university sustainability approach.
... Aunque existe una extensa literatura alrededor del carácter controvertido de la innovación social, algunos autores sugieren que es importante profundizar en los antecedentes y limitaciones de este concepto, debido a que existen pocas investigaciones dirigidas a entender las capacidades de los individuos que materializan este fenómeno (Ferreira Batista y Nóbrega Correia, 2021;Howaldt y Schwarz, 2017;Manohar, 2022;Tiwari, 2017;Yeşil y Doğan, 2019). No obstante, otros autores han realizado avances en esta materia por medio del análisis del emprendimiento social (Alvarez De Mon et al., 2021;Díez et al., 2023;Guo et al., 2020;Stypińska et al., 2019). ...
Introducción: Ante los retos que demanda el escenario social, surge la necesidad de profundizar tanto en la comprensión del concepto de innovación social como en establecer las capacidades y habilidades de los innovadores sociales. Metodología: Esta investigación consiste en una revisión de literatura enfocada en artículos científicos de la base de datos Scopus. Resultados: Los principales resultados evidencian que, a nivel conceptual, la innovación ha experimentado una evolución desde una perspectiva económica hacia una orientación social más amplia, que destaca la colaboración intersectorial entre actores heterogéneos. Discusión: Se señala la importancia de establecer los limites teóricos entre la innovación social y el emprendimiento social, debido a que la literatura científica se ha centrado en mayor medida en el entendimiento de este último. Conclusiones: Se identificó que el liderazgo, el pensamiento creativo, la tolerancia al riesgo, el capital psicológico, las habilidades políticas, son capacidades y habilidades que integran la dimensión humana de la innovación social. Para facilitar la apropiación de estas capacidades y habilidades se generó un marco de referencia que permite clasificar los aportes de la literatura en cuánto al tema considerando tres factores: psicológico, sociológico y demográfico.
... Despite the growing recognition of the importance of SI, there is no widely accepted, sound SI definition; a great variety of approaches and definitions can be found: "A plethora of vastly diverging subject matters and problem dimensions as well as expectations for resolving them are subsumed under the heading of social innovation (…)." (Howaldt and Schwarz 2017: 166) The concept lacks clarity and a consistent theory as there is no consensus about its relevance and its specific meaning (Howaldt and Schwarz 2017;Pol and Ville 2009;van der Have and Rubalcaba 2016). ...
Rising inequalities and deprivation have been important drivers for social innovation (SI). We understand SIs as novel initiatives or novel combinations of known solutions, aimed at tackling a societal problem or creating new societal opportunities, applied in practice. SIs success requires enabling institutional framework that facilitate collaborative agency for its design and implementation. However, authoritarian governance undermines such framework conditions. Authoritarian regimes feed on social polarisation, centralisation of power, strengthening of hegemonic governance modes, weakening transparency, accountability, and the rules of law. Hungary has become a prime example of democratic backsliding with socio-spatial disparities intensified by perverse public policies and clientelist patterns of relations. By presenting two SI cases from Hungary, this paper illustrates different ways, in which 'insider' and 'outsider' SI practitioners can interact with, and operate in, an authoritarian system. It discusses how agents' different positions influence their SI practices and strategies and offers theoretical and practical implications.
... The predominant understandings and definitions of SI have largely been shaped by practitioners who are actively engaged in addressing practical social challenges, rather than by scholars theorising on the subject (Choi and Majumdar, 2015: 8). Nevertheless, there is a consensus among many theorists that sustained, positive social change is an essential element of SI (Cajaiba-Santana, 2014;Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017;Voorberg et al., 2015). This paper reviews SI in the specific context of Australian universities, and for the purpose of framing this discussion, SI is defined as the interrelation of a socially constructed concept and an agentic mindset that empowers its actors to create positive social change. ...
Social innovation (SI) is a response to societal challenges that aims to improve the welfare and well-being of individuals and communities. Whilst there is no consistent conceptual definition of SI due to its multidisciplinary nature, this paper defines SI as the interrelation of a socially constructed concept and an agentic mindset that empowers its actors to create positive social change. Through the lens of theory adaptation, this paper explores the interconnectedness of SI and the equity agenda in the Australian university sector. This paper presents the Social Innovation Change Model and argues in favour of three key notions: 1) enabling programmes are 'incubators for change', 2) enabling educators are 'agents of change', and 3) equity students have the potential to be 'catalysts for change'. Firstly, this paper argues that enabling programmes serve as a form of SI in action, addressing the complex issue of inequality in higher education (HE). Secondly, educators within the enabling sector play a crucial role as agents of change, empowering students to cultivate a proactive and agentic mindset through transformative learning approaches. Finally, equity students, with their first-hand understanding of the challenges faced by their communities, possess a distinct advantage as social innovators to bring about societal change.
... The practice-oriented focus of social innovation appears to be particularly interesting for the transformation discourse, not only because it opens up a broad space for social innovation action, but also because this approach can be grounded in practice theory (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017), whereby elements of "behaviour" and "behavioural change" as well as "intentionality" and "agency" can both be considered and analysed. In practice theory, social practices can be scrutinised on different levels between action and structure, which, in addition to the structural context that expresses cultural knowledge, norms or values, also takes the subjective perspective into account. ...
This paper endeavours to show why social innovations should also be included in challenge- and goal-oriented research agendas and how the latter need to be conceptually expanded to ensure that this inclusion is successful.
... While transformation can happen spontaneously in the development process, transformative SI is focused on the transformation or change intentionally initiated by game changers (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). ...
This paper investigates how Social Innovation (SI) empowers local government to cultivate a culture shift or transformation towards accelerating Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, learning from the experiences of the Asivikelane a civil society organisation, as they addressed water and sanitation issues in various informal settlements throughout South African municipalities. SI in water delivery brings about more sustainable, community-driven and cost-effective solutions. It is scrutinised in response to its transformative agenda and growing relevance in the face of contemporary global challenges and the fast-approaching 2030 Agenda dateline. Access to clean and safe water is not just a necessity but a fundamental human right with profound implications for public health and overall well-being. SI emerges as a pivotal player in the quest to increase access to clean water by introducing imaginative and sustainable solutions to tackle the multifaceted challenges faced by communities, especially those residing in underserved informal settlements. It empowers communities, promotes environmental sustainability and contributes significantly to attaining global goals, notably SDG6 (clean water and sanitation).
... Economic and philosophical theories supporting the capabilities approach seek to promote human development by expanding the freedom and choices of individuals throughout the world to pursue the types of lives that they independently deem valuable [24]. The capabilities approach offers a way of understanding the systematic ways in which the world's poor are ignored by global economic development programs while simultaneously demonstrating how the poor can become the primary agents of future change and promotion of well-being [25]. ...
Drug addiction poses a significant threat to society, affecting millions of people worldwide. Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in Europe, followed by cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and opioids. In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the increasing prevalence of drug use among young people in Europe, with cannabis and cocaine being the most commonly abused substances. North America and Oceania have the highest drug usage rates, particularly in the Andean region where cocaine use is prevalent. Drug abuse leads to severe health, mental, and social issues, as well as increased crime and financial burdens. Drug abuse also has a negative impact on the economy, as it decreases productivity and increases healthcare costs. This review paper examines drug abuse problems in Asian and Western countries, focusing on social, economic, and health consequences, and presents treatment strategies for drug addiction, including definitions, distinctions, and diagnoses. Further research is needed to understand the cultural differences in drug abuse and addiction between Asian and Western countries. Furthermore, it is crucial to examine the socioeconomic factors that contribute to the prevalence of drug abuse and addiction in both Asian and Western countries, as these factors may play a significant role in the development and treatment of substance use disorders.
... The paper proposes SI-based multi-sectoral cooperation as a way to transform South African service delivery as it takes SI to be the driving force for social change (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). However, using SI as an approach to service delivery is uncommon in South African local governments, despite growing evidence that it could be achieved (Chomane and Biljohn, 2021a;Weaver et al., 2019b). ...
Purpose of the envisaged paper: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 aims at ensuring clean water and sanitation for all. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that some communities globally, amongst which a vast section of the South African population, still did not have equitable access to potable water. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, population growth and other societal challenges have compounded the global community's water-related problems. In the aftermath of this pandemic, the water challenges that loom large require innovative and collaborative governance solutions. Social innovation (SI), which is grounded in collaborative governance, fosters community engagement, collaboration, empowerment, and transformation and emerges as a powerful instrument that does not only address immediate water-related concerns. Moreover, it is critical to contribute to creating resilient systems that can withstand future water-related challenges. Against this background, this paper explores a conceptual framework for using SI as an approach to water delivery in the case of the City of Ekurhuleni in South Africa. Design/methodology: Underpinned by a qualitative research design, document analysis was performed through content analysis to answer the research question: What could be a conceptual framework for using SI as an approach to water delivery in the case of the City of Ekurhuleni in South Africa? Through content analysis, document analysis comprised a literature review and analysis that entailed identifying and analysing documents containing relevant information about the phenomenon being researched. From this analysis themes were developed. Main findings: There are significant challenges in South Africa's adoption of SI as an approach to water delivery. These challenges are particularly evident in the limitations related to community 2 participation and collaborative governance. Attributes that underpin SI, such as common goals, collaboration, empowerment, and transformative change, are critical to a framework to deliver water in a post-COVID-19 environment. Practical implications: Municipalities have a transformative role in fostering a collaborative culture in the administration. Through the application of SI, the City of Ekurhuleni should prioritise the creation of collaborative alliances with stakeholders, partners and communities, both internally and externally. This municipality should ensure that SI attributes (such as collaborations and a bottom-up governance approach) are deeply embedded in the city's water management strategies. Lastly, this municipality should invest in capacity-building initiatives to equip municipal staff with the skills needed to implement SI effectively and strategies that empower local communities with the knowledge and tools required to participate actively in the collaborative governance of water management. Originality/value: As South Africa navigates a future where water scarcity is an escalating concern, the findings of this research emphasise the urgency of adopting socially innovative approaches embedded in collaborative governance. As they harness communities' collective intelligence and creativity, such approaches can potentially create adaptable, context-specific solutions to build water-resilient systems.
... The ongoing unsustainable tendencies in economies across the world have yielded a call for a transformation of current production and consumption systems (Díaz et al. 2019). As part of this call, there is interest in conceptions of innovation that move beyond the prevailing focus on technical novelty for commercial use in markets to social innovation and the possibilities of changing practices of production and consumption (Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). Social innovation calls for a focus on both the ends and outcomes of innovation processes, and on the process and potential change in relations (Chiappero-Martinetti et al. 2017). ...
Urban mobility infrastructures have a major impact on the everyday life of city residents. Not only their mobility, but also their health, enjoyment of life and development of lifestyle preferences are affected by them. However, inclusive participation in infrastructure planning processes is difficult to achieve. We explore a foresight approach that develops desirable urban visions that involve residents in the preparation of decisions that will impact their lives. We propose future-oriented co-design workshops for the operationalisation of a capabilitarian focus on conscientisation, conciliation and collaboration to involve citizens in the visioning of infrastructure planning. The study is based on future-oriented codesign workshops held in Montreal in 2022–2023. Residents were invited to evaluate and discuss various future scenarios that re-imagine a highway currently cutting through the city. The results show the capabilitarian co-design workshops to promote critical thinking, vision creation and to a lesser extent collaboration in the discussions triggered by the future-oriented codesign workshops. The results also reveal the difficulties of making such discussions truly inclusive, as well as their ambivalent relation to urban planning processes.
... So the quality of the graduation internship is particularly important to the school's responsibility to the students. Papanek [2] in a very early time saw the future design trends, so based on the direction of these design theories, and then combined with the development of the current society as well as the current design education missing part of the design trend in the future will inevitably be the trend of the social design, which will be from the value of the society, ethical, duties and other aspects of the development in combination with human needs, and expand to sustainable design, inclusive design, participatory design, and the establishment of innovative thinking models of design management, etc., numerous disciplines are linked to make the direction of the design profession become rich and colourful [4]. ...
This study examines the gradual evolution from traditional design paradigms to today's socially orientated design in the field of traditional design education. Traditional types of design exist in numerous industries, such as architecture, interior, apparel, and graphic design. However, much of the past design paradigm has been practically orientated. In contrast, the design industry and its processes are slowly becoming more socially relevant. After all, the advancement of society requires a greater consideration of the needs of the user. Therefore, there is a huge challenge in the transition to social design. From the perspective of design education, the most fundamental problem can be solved by implanting the traditional concept of design education into the concept of human-centred design. This study not only provides an in-depth theoretical and case study for the transformation of design education but also provides an outlook on the trend of this path in future research on human-centred social design education. This research supports the development of more creative and socially responsible designers in the future.
... This paper introduces "Hokkhi," a product prototype resulting from an exploratory Product Service System Design (PSSD) project with a focus on social innovation (SI) values in marine conservation. The primary value of SI in this initiative lies in its capacity to stimulate bottom-up actions, compensating for the inefficiency parts of top-down government services (Scott-Cato & Hillier, 2010;Manzini, 2015;Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017). The SI project aims to drive a sustainable transformation by creating accessible "commons" -shared resources and spaces for the community while fostering new relationships (Mies;Manzini,2019). ...
... This study was carried out within a systemic program of urban regeneration, methodologically inspired by long-term criteria of social and environmental sustainability, and by human development theories according to the capability approach (CA) [17,18,21]. The program represents an experiment of social innovation to address the problem of emergency housing through the CA [30]. This study is an attempt to empirically measure the integrated sustainability impacts of an emergency housing intervention. ...
Cities have a growing role to play in ensuring environmental transition while addressing issues of social inclusion and social sustainability. The aim of this study was to evaluate a multidimensional policy of the city of Messina, in southern Italy, aimed at experimenting a sustainable model of urban regeneration to overcome its shantytowns after the 1908 earthquake. The impact indicators of a pilot program of urban generation were collected in terms of environmental, social, and economic criteria, while the real experiment focused on the mechanisms of choice related to the housing of extremely marginalized people. In the end, two slums were demolished, and 205 households had a home without additional land consumption. Attitudes toward social cohesion were measured through 29 interviews and the administration of a pre–post structured test. According to the individual payoffs over time, it is possible to correlate housing choice mechanisms with components not related to short-term economic rationality. The development of a positive attitude toward the future and trust in others are associated with the development of the riskiest option, which is also the one that can have the highest payoff. The program strategy reduced reliance on social welfare measures and enforced institutional capacity building and skills for sustainable urban development.
... In recent years, the capability approach has been used in several fields of both research and policymaking; in social and health policy for youth and children, with participatory processes and action research (Hart and Brando, 2018;Shearn et al., 2021), in social innovation and management work (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017;Batista and Correia, 2021) and the field of education (Walker and Unterhalter, 2007). ...
Introduction
This paper reports the findings of research activity carried out as part of the UPLIFT project in Corby, United Kingdom. The project aimed to understand young people's experiences of education, employment and housing, and determine how young people navigate these domains, make choices and develop strategies within what is available to them. Through understanding the opportunities and strategies that young people employ across these domains, our aim was to consider how young people might engage locally to co-create a reflexive policy agenda.
Methods
We worked with peer researchers in Corby and interviewed local people ( n = 40) and policy makers ( n = 7) about the local context in Corby, and analyzed data, exploring themes.
Results
Findings highlighted the importance of young people understanding how systems work locally and suggest that young people, and their families, need greater support understanding how they can engage with and change systems.
Discussion
There needs to be better, easily accessible guidance developed around the support and opportunities that are available locally. Our research underlines the need to engage with young people in policy making to develop effective robust policy that works in a real-world context.
... Namely that peripheral regions do have actors with a diverse set of skills and capabilities who are not passive recipients or even victims of structural changes but rather persons who act upon such changes. In the tradition of the capability approach to social innovation (Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017), we conceptualize social innovation actors as proactive agents of change who have specific abilities and who turn these into risk-taking, entrepreneurial action through innovative entrepreneurship, who aim to change existing structures and organizations through institutional entrepreneurship and who mobilize and connect with other actors through place-based leadership. ...
We examine the role of change agency in social innovations. Agency in social innovations can create new resources and capacities for transformative change in a region. To date, there is a lack of empirical studies investigating how agency manifests itself in social innovations. In particular, research has not yet investigated the detailed activities of social innovation actors throughout the phases of social innovation processes. In this paper we apply the concept of trinity of change agency to investigate the activities of social innovation actors. Using innovation biographies and data from 61 interviews for 11 case studies of social innovation in a peripheral mountain region in Switzerland, we analyse the social innovation process from an actor-oriented perspective. Our findings show that the various types of change agency are highly present in social innovations. The significance of change agency alters throughout the innovation process. Our analysis shows that all kinds of actors performed change agency during the social innovation process. Interestingly, same actors performed different types of change agency during the social innovation process. The findings suggest that change agency is as a significant element in social innovations and that we need to consider it as a transformative element of social innovation processes. When policymakers take change agency into account in creating an environment in which social innovations can flourish, there is a great chance that social innovations can contribute to changing regional development paths and perhaps even to regional transformation.
... Rather than being used as a speci¯cally de¯ned specialist term with its own de¯nable area of study, social innovation is used more as a kind of descriptive metaphor in the context of phenomena of social change and the modernisation of society (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017). However, the fact that social innovation is contested, conceptually imprecise and used in ways which we may see as disagreeable should not dissuade us from engaging with the concept (Ayob et al., 2016). ...
The purpose of this study is to analyse the structure of social network co-occurrence and co-authorship of scientific documents of social innovation which are indexed in Scopus database. By using scientometric and network analysis techniques, the records were retrieved and integrated. It has been used a combination of software packages, including VOSviewer, Gephi, HistCite, Publish or Perish and NodeXL, for data analysis and mapping. Analysing all keywords shows that the most important keywords, based on frequency distribution, are innovation, sustainable growth and social entrepreneurship. Thematic mapping of the keywords using co-words analysis technique indicates that the topics innovation, social services and social change had top ranking in degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness indicators. The analysis of the co-authorship network of the field demonstrated that it is disconnected and sparse. Moreover, the total number of citations was 8,350. Mapping the knowledge structure of social innovation papers extracted from Scopus database could help to represent and visualise the thematic structure of research in the field of Social Science and Knowledge Studies and identify more specific research focuses within this field. It should be noted that in this study, the importance of concepts such as innovation, sustainable development and social entrepreneurship has been confirmed by reviewing the literature on these issues.
... The connection between SI and social change is thus often studied and conceptualised at broader institutional or systems levels or in terms of community-based bottom-up processes. The agency of actors is acknowledged, starting with socially generated ideas how to better satisfy needs and problems that need collective implementation, adaptation and configuration (Howaldt, Kopp, and Schwarz 2015;Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). The TSI framework includes narratives of change that take the form of sets of ideas, concepts, metaphors, discourses or story lines about change and innovation. ...
The aim of this article is to establish a conceptual connection between social innovation (SI) and utopia. Both refer to change in the future, imply an intent to bring about or envision a better state of affairs and therefore offer some critique of the present. Current concepts of SI lack focus on thecritiques, hopes and imaginaries that underlie SI initiatives. The paper turns towards the concept of utopia to fully understand SI as a tool for social change and engages with how utopia can become part of a social theory of change.
... Several authors stress the growing complexity of social innovation as regards the challenges addressed, the innovation process and the context of their emergence (cf. Goldstein, Hazy, & Silberstang, 2010;Howaldt & Schwarz, 2017;Moulaert, Mac-Callum, & Hillier, 2013), which resonates with transition research. Hence, transition management seems to be a useful analytical framework and management concept to cope with 'wicked' problems in complex systems; its coordinated and targeted application, however, is still at an early stage. ...
... The focal actor is not exposed to others and outcomes Bengtsson et al., 2018;Rammelt and Gupta, 2021): Strong SDG 5. Normative influence via education systems, such as by incorporating reflexive ecocentric approaches to sustainability in curricula (Allen et al., 2019) and support to social innovation (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2017) would be among mechanisms aiming at bottom-up processes, but direct intervention and institutional reforms are also needed on, e.g., commercial advertising, company taxation and the way financial and labour markets distribute economic wealth. Strong SDG 4 and 5 would promote new solutions for organization and distribution to complement and sometimes replace corporations, markets, and money (Seyfang and Longhurst, 2013), which prioritise financial wealth over basic needs, and transformation and accumulation over preservation and satisfaction. ...
Sustainable development has been an important policy goal for the international community for over three decades. Still, the state of the planet continues to worsen. This conceptual article considers the failure largely a result of structural obstacles and the so-called weak sustainability discourse, popularized by the Brundtland report and manifested today in The 2030 Agenda. The article adopts a strong sustainability perspective for examining structural distances between actors and the consequences of their acts. We argue that these impede responsible action and that policy should aim to reduce or eliminate distances in the four dimensions of space, time, functions and relations. The article concludes by suggesting Strongly Sustainable Development Goals, which could help transitioning humanity towards sustainability, lower the anthropogenic environmental impact on the planet, and enable the continuity of diverse life on Earth.
... Even though sociological analysis emphasizes that social innovations are not good for society per se, but ambivalent in their effects in principle, these two perspectives can be mutually supportive with regard to a deeper theoretical foundation (Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). Research Centre at TU Dortmund University, and many more. ...
... Innovation as a driver of economic development thus appeared in need of qualification. Social innovation emerged, and with it a shift in focus from change in products to change in practices (Howaldt and Schwarz 2017). In parallel, economists and philosophers called for a shift away from development as economic growth in favour of a focus on human development based on the capability approach (Sen 1999;Nussbaum 2000). ...
Purpose
This study aims to assess the state-of-the-art on social innovation research in the global south.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a systematic review, we answer the questions: how is social innovation conceptualized in global south studies; by what methods has the concept been investigated in global south studies; what is the scope of things described as social innovation and what are the implications of these for future research on the topic of social innovation particularly in the global south?
Findings
The study reveals (1) the interdisciplinary convergence of social innovation with intersecting fields such as Business Economics, Environmental Science, Psychology and Health Sciences; (2) a pronounced disparity in research output between the Global North and South highlighting the need for increased empirical studies and collaborative efforts to address knowledge imbalances; (3) the trajectory of research from 2002 to 2024 shows significant growth phases, reflecting the field’s evolving recognition and response to global challenges.
Originality/value
The analysis emphasizes the critical role of community engagement, institutional frameworks and socio-economic conditions in fostering social innovation. By examining analytical perspectives at the individual, institutional and ecosystem levels, the paper underscores the importance of integrative approaches and context-sensitive studies.
Social innovation (SI) research still struggles with problems of definition (Edwards-Schachter and Wallace 2017) and lacks a shared analytical framework and measurement methods. This lack of coherence is reflected in two bold, diametrically opposing views on SI research. "SI is an eclectic area, since differences still prevail also within the same research communities, revealing some intra-group fragmentation." (van der Have and Rubalcaba 2016: 1932) In contrast, other authors propose that SI can-and should-be the main building block of a new, comprehensive innovation paradigm. (Howaldt 2019) The sheer number of SI definitions tends to confirm the former view: 252 definitions are identified in Edwards-Schachter and Wallace (2017). This paper argues that despite this plethora of SI definitions there is a need for a new SI definition for two major reasons. First, most of the extant definitions suffer from at least one of the following conceptual flaws: (i) the purpose and the nature of innovation are conflated; (ii) diffusion of SI is 'required'; (iii) positive impacts of SI is stipulated; and (iv) different levels of change (unit of analysis) are specified in the definitions. Second, SI definitions seek to capture the essential features of SI. However, there are as many types of 'essence' as angles to analyse SI purposes, processes, and impacts. The abundance of SI definitions forcefully illustrates that it is impossible to construct a generic and essentialist SI definition. Therefore, the paper proposes a generic and nominal (non-essentialist) SI definition and discusses its analytical, policy, and practical relevance.
En el presente artículo, se plantea que el desarrollo humano y la innovación están estrechamente relacionados, generando dinámicas convergentes de gran alcance. En este contexto, esta investigación analiza comparativamente los niveles de desarrollo humano y de innovación a nivel mundial. Se recolectaron datos de 132 países, para el año 2021, sobre el Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH) y el Índice Mundial de Innovación (GII), respecto a entradas (input) y salidas (output) del proceso de innovación. Los datos fueron analizados utilizando métodos estadísticos descriptivos, la técnica de agrupamiento K-medias y regresiones lineales múltiples. Los resultados revelaron disparidades en el proceso de innovación, relacionadas con el desarrollo humano de los países. Se identificaron tres clústeres con diferencias significativas en el nivel de desarrollo en términos de innovación. Se encontró que el capital humano y la investigación tienen un impacto transversal en el nivel de desarrollo humano alcanzado. Como conclusión, se destaca la importancia de formular estrategias enfocadas en fortalecer la masa crítica de investigadores y fomentar la inversión en Investigación y Desarrollo, con una colaboración estrecha entre universidades e industrias, para abordar los desafíos clave del bienestar general de la sociedad.
Purpose
The study explores the connection between foresight and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods in a community within an environment of social instability in Colombia. It aims to contribute to research on aligning these methods for future-shaping, with the goal of enhancing shared governance, peer learning and collective learning among traditional decision-makers and local communities in emerging countries. The study seeks to foster a community of social actors who are likely to engage constructively in strategic dialogues. To enhancing shared governance and learning a hybrid model is synthesized, combining foresight and computational intelligence.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study explores the integration of computational intelligence and foresight through Gaston Bachelard's (Bachelard, 1936) phenomenology concept of ante-perception. The mathematical representation of the cone of scenarios provides a structured way to explore multiple future pathways, allowing communities to visualize and compare different trajectories and make informed decisions amid uncertainty. The model facilitates critical reflections on present assumptions, deepening insights into future scenarios. Ante-perception challenges traditional approaches to foresight by encouraging a break from established experiences, allowing for novel insights into possible futures. When enriched by computational intelligence, this reflective process is further strengthened by quantitative approach scenario modeling.
Findings
This research develops and tests a proposal that includes the logic and methods for constructing a mathematical representation of the cone of scenarios. This process, which is interactive and deliberative, is driven by anticipation and combines qualitative and quantitative approaches within a context of high uncertainty. By combining the critical reflection facilitated by ante-perception with the predictive power of computational intelligence, the model allows communities to transcend established thought patterns and explore innovative future possibilities. This integrative approach helps them envision and work toward social self-transformation.
Research limitations/implications
The article aims to identify the creation of scenarios in contexts of high uncertainty, to respond to the needs of communities in emerging countries to manage change.
Practical implications
This article explores a novel approach to using foresight for address collective intelligence by developing a shared future vision in high-uncertainty contexts within local communities in emerging countries. The application of the hybrid model demonstrates that foresight is a key innovative social tool for developing long-term strategic reflection and planning for territories.
Social implications
In developing long-term reflective processes, explaining phenomena, mechanisms and correlations requires the use of value judgments. This set of value judgments requires a representation that facilitates their treatment, helps to account for their behavior during the inference process to form a shared future vision. Consequently, ensuring the recognition of the opinions of local communities through participatory discussion spaces and their subsequent refinement, from a technical perspective, aims to illustrate the development of this social construction process. While similarities exist, differences add value through a transfer process, often subconscious. This process stimulates collective learning and builds capacities as knowledge is developed through inquiry, evaluation, interpretation and generalization.
Originality/value
This research provides a unique hybrid model that fosters collective learning and engagement by integrating local community perspectives with advanced computational intelligence methods. By facilitating both reflective and quantitative approach future-shaping, it offers a practical framework for addressing uncertainty while empowering communities to shape their own futures. It underscores the importance of recognizing local community views through bottom-up participatory discussions, thereby widening the stakeholder community to active engagement in addressing broader societal issues. The case study focuses on community collaboration in Puerto Gaitán, a Colombian municipality.
Purpose. The Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI), launched by the EU (European Union), represents a financial instrument with the objective of addressing a range of policy analysis areas, as follows: (I) social protection and innovation; (II) social exclusion and social policies; (III) living and working conditions; and (IV) employment, job conditions, mobility, and social entrepreneurship settings under the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+). Objectives. Therefore, the current research aims to structure and analyse in a comparative framework a wide range of EU policies and governance applied to the EaSI reports launched in the period 2015-2022, considering the policy context, key actors, policy content, legal instruments, implementation and governance structures and impact assessment of societal challenges, the role of human factors and the need for social innovation. Methodology. The analysis utilises both quantitative and qualitative methods, building on the comparative legal analysis and developing a triple evaluation: social, economic and political. In order to monitor and review the policy outcomes contained in the EaSI reports, the current study will use the Text-Based Diagramming of the programme Mermaid v10.9.0 Live Editor. Results and findings. The results of the analysis will evaluate and measure the extent to which the three EaSI reports launched in the period 2015-2022 have met the requirements of social innovation by assessing the policy and governance implementation mechanisms and tracking the relevance of two determinants: EU societal challenges and human factors. Conclusion. The framework of the EaSI reports provides the evaluation findings on multi-level policy and strategy approaches and summarises the findings and broader perspectives of the three reports on the effectiveness of social innovation governance. The research findings highlight the societal challenges in the EU, the interdisciplinary circumstances and the evidence-based interplay between the policy framework and the adaptability of multi-level governance.
The urgent need to address climate change requires widespread behavioural changes and structuralreforms. However, the adoption of low-carbon practices is limited by individual, social and structuralconstraints. Carbon capability (CC) is an interdisciplinary, integrative framework which bridges the gapbetween individual-level behaviours and systemic change. This article develops a new theoreticalframework for CC, with insights from the capability approach, social practice theory, and recent workin environmental psychology. Drawing on a nationally representative survey from the UK, CC isevaluated across six key domains of practice: energy, transport, food, shopping, influence, andcitizenship. Our revised theory emphasises the diverse forms that CC can take, highlighting themultiple roles that individuals (and other actors) can play in driving climate action, as consumers,influencers, organisational members, and citizens. Results show that the UK population is becomingmore carbon capable over time, with increasing knowledge about climate change and some adoptionof low-carbon practices. However, transformative change is still lacking. The study highlights theimportance of reorienting systems of provision to enable low-carbon practices and set capabilityceilings to limit excessive consumption
(PDF) Carbon capability revisited: Theoretical developments and empirical evidence. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382841727_Carbon_capability_revisited_Theoretical_developments_and_empirical_evidence [accessed Oct 14 2024].
This article proposes that human development and innovation are closely related, generating far-reaching convergent dynamics. In this context, this research comparatively analyzes the levels of human development and innovation worldwide. Data was collected from 132 countries in 2021 on the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Global Innovation Index (GII), regarding inputs and outputs of the innovation process. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical methods, the K-means clustering technique, and multiple linear regressions. The findings highlight disparities in the innovation process, related to the human development of countries. Three clusters with significant differences in the level of development in terms of innovation were identified. It was found that human capital and research have a cross-cutting impact on the achieved level of human development. In conclusion, the importance of formulating strategies focused on strengthening the critical mass of researchers and promoting investment in Research and Development, with close collaboration between universities and industries, is highlighted to address key challenges in the general well-being of society.
This chapter introduces social innovation (SI) as a concept of social change. After introducing conceptual work of recent years that situates SI in a democratic tradition of systemic change, particularly Transformative Social Innovation theory, we explore the relevance of utopia as additional element of a theory of social innovation as social change. While multi-level system approaches try to provide analytical tools to measure the impact of SI efforts over time they do not elaborate enough on the role of initial motivations, worldviews and hopes of social actors who decide to engage in SI processes, inspired by dreams and visions of alternatives. Human desire and imagined possibilities are considered key drivers of action but they are under-estimated in SI research with transformational interest. To bring their role to the fore we suggest working with Levitas’ distinction of content, functions and form of utopia to help operationalise the utopian dimension in relation to motivations and goals of SI. Utopia helps to formulate and reformulate a critique of the present, which can motivate SI but in Levitas’ approach it also encourages ongoing critical reflection on change actions and efforts. Used in a theory of change together with more system-centered approaches like TSI we make a conceptually derived argument that utopia can help towards a more integrated understanding of SI and social change by keeping focus on the role of actors throughout SI process and outcomes.
Purpose
Social innovation is a nascent field. Within research on social innovation, the context of higher education has largely been ignored. To better understand social innovation, it is important to explore factors that facilitate social innovation in universities’ context. There is little research on enablers of social innovation in universities and the impacts of social innovation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the enablers of social innovation in the Saudi Arabian context. Moreover, the impacts of social innovation projects are also explored.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was used to carry out this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, and content analysis was performed.
Findings
Data revealed that institutional commitment, mission, active collaborations, curriculum, support, training, community university engagement offices, university social impact offices and reward and evaluation were among critical enablers. The impact of social innovation in terms of social, institutional, economic and community specific was also reported.
Originality/value
Research on the enablers and outcomes of social innovation in the higher education context is limited. This study adds to the innovation literature by investigating what processes and factors (enablers) can help universities to engage in social innovation initiatives and what are the outcomes (impact) of engaging in social innovation. Findings of the study have important policy implications.
This Guidebook is the final deliverable of the work package 4 (WP4) of the UPLIFT project. The overall aim of this work package was to explore how young people’s voices can be put at the centre of youth policy. In order to do this, we carried out four parallel policy co-creation processes with young people in four different locations across Europe, each with a different focus – education, housing and NEET youth. The process took the best part of three years and involved several institutional stakeholders, as well as dozens of young people. This deliverable
is a comprehensive outlook of the WP4 work in all four locations – Tallin, Sfântu Gheorghe, Barakaldo and Amsterdam.
This work presents the results of an experimental socio-economic study conducted in two shanty towns of Messina as part of a systemic urban regeneration and fight against poverty program called Capacity. The study has shown that the development of a positive attitude towards the future and the confidence in others are associated with the development of the riskiest option, which is the one that can give the highest pay-off. The paper also illustrates the expected and unexpected outcomes of projects for individuals and the community, as well as the economic benefits for the public administration and the society of a strategy that reduces the reliance on social welfare measures as well as the local control exercised by organized crime.
The article discusses and evaluates ‘social innovation’ projects
(SIPs) in/for local governments and communities, that have been undertaken
by the government, civil society organizations (CSOs), international donors
such as UNDP/UNV ‘Social Innovation and Volunteerism in Uzbekistan’
Project with development assistance of UNDP and Partnership for Innovation
(P4I) Project supported by USAID. It contributes to knowledge on the concept
of social innovation through the yet missing critical analysis of social
innovations in local governments and communities of post-Soviet
Uzbekistan. Theoretical and empirical analysis is achieved by applying social
practice and human development theories to theoretically formulate, and
empirically apply the concept of social innovation.
This book evaluates the evolution of social innovation in post-Soviet Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Caucasus. Following the dissolution of the USSR, organisations such as the UNDP have encouraged local communities and governments to innovate in order to find solutions to existing social problems. This book demonstrates that progress with social innovations has varied, with countries with low government support such as Uzbekistan struggling, whereas countries with better government support and a more active civil society, such as Armenia and Ukraine, have seen more positive results. Covering the period 2012-2020 and a broad range of countries, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, this book provides an impressively broad-ranging critical analysis of post-Soviet social innovation. Including social innovations emerging as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, this will be an important comparative study for researchers and practitioners working on social innovation, and to those with an interest in post-Soviet development.
Given the paucity of quantitative studies investigating the potential of E-Government (EGOV) in enabling national development, our study first attempts to explore EGOV as a potential tool for countries to fulfill their Human Development goals. Toward this, we employ modernization theory and human development perspective to draw the theoretical linkages between EGOV and Human Development. Acknowledging the influence of contextual factors on differential EGOV impacts, we further make use of Schwartz’s cultural values theory to understand the influence of national culture on the EGOV-Human Development relationship. Using archival data for 70 countries, our study specifically provides empirical evidence of EGOV as a significant enabler of Human Development. Besides, our results also highlight the negative moderating influence of Autonomy-Embeddedness on the EGOV-Human Development relationship. Our findings, therefore, suggest the need for appropriate management of contextual factors. Based on these findings, we derive theoretical and managerial implications and identify avenues for future research.
Given the complexity of current social issues, Social Innovation (SI) entails cross-sector partnerships, including those between non-profit organizations and public and private sectors. However, our knowledge of the co-creation process through SI and its driving forces as well as the challenges one might face in cross-sector partnerships remains limited. The present study aimed to present a detailed analysis of SI implementation in marginalized societies to cover some of the gaps in the literature. To achieve this goal, the “Poultry Self-sufficiency” project implemented in two neighborhoods of Tehran to facilitate the operations of a social company established to alleviate poverty and empower the underprivileged and vulnerable populations was analyzed using the action research case study method. The AR process was conducted in three phases: (1) Identifying the solution; (2) Planning and pilot testing the solution; (3) SI scale up. Based on the empirical findings, the authors developed a conceptual model to describe co-creation in the social innovation life cycle. Through this co-creation between researchers, local citizens, a non-profit organization, and public and private sectors. Local citizens in the aforementioned areas witnessed a noticeable improvement in their living conditions. Ultimately, using the results derived from the codified data, six driving forces and three challenges influencing cross-sector partnerships in SI were identified and analyzed.
Das Erkennen der sozialen und gesellschaftlichen Dimensionen von Umweltpolitik ist ein wichtiger Schlüssel zu ihrer erfolgreichen und sozialverträglichen Umsetzung. Vor diesem Ausgangspunkt präsentiert der Bericht Ergebnisse einer Literaturstudie zur Systematisierung der sozialen Dimensionen von Umweltpolitik und widmet sich dabei unterschiedlichen Facetten des Themas. Zunächst werden zentrale Konzepte und verschiedene Zugänge zu sozialer Nachhaltigkeit beleuchtet. Anschließend wird exemplarisch auf die sozialen Dimensionen in der Verkehrs- und Energiepolitik eingegangen und dabei zwischen ihren sozialen Effekten (bspw. „Energiearmut“ oder „gesundheitliche Belastungen durch Verkehr“) und ihrer sozialen Bedingtheit (bspw. aufgrund gesellschaftlicher Zeit-, Raum- und Siedlungsstrukturen) differenziert. Es wird zudem beleuchtet, welche sozialen Aspekte im Rahmen bestehender Instrumente zur Politikfolgenabschätzung konzeptionell als auch praktisch berücksichtigt werden. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt widmet sich verschiedenen Transformationsforschungs-Perspektiven und nimmt soziale Dimensionen gesellschaftlicher Wandelprozesse und Dynamiken von Umweltpolitik in den Blick.
Nowadays, many users share their ideas and opinions with others on various social networks. The mass volume of raw data generated on social networks has made them a repository full of ideas, thoughts and concerns of countless users noticing which can play a decisive role in micro and macro decisions. Therefore, the present study seeks to identify people's social concerns by using text analysis methods on Twitter to be included in future plans for social innovation and social entrepreneurship. To achieve this goal, tweets related to social innovation and social entrepreneurship were extracted from Twitter in a new way and analyzed using text mining techniques and algorithms such as topic modeling of LDA and sentiment analysis. The text mining findings showed that users in the field of social entrepreneurship generally focused on issues such as the need to pay attention to employment in Chabahar, holding free events to identify ideas, and opportunities and the problems of raising capital in entrepreneurial projects. Also, in the field of social innovation, users have paid more attention to issues such as the need to care for the disabled, construction of dental centers, the establishment of greenhouses in the southern regions of the country, and empowerment of women. In addition, the analysis of Persian tweets' sentiments about social entrepreneurship and social innovation showed positive results. Given the positive results of analyzing people's feelings towards social entrepreneurship and social innovation and the identified topics, programs and decisions can be considered in future planning to address people's concerns, which can ultimately increase people's satisfaction and their level of well-being.
The CRESSI project explores the economic underpinnings of social innovation with a particular focus on how policy and practice can enhance the lives of the most marginalized and disempowered citizens in society.
This project has received funding from the European Union‖s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 612870. Acknowledgements
This chapter concerns how social innovation relates to the social production of space. Usually, the scholarly literature on local welfare, social work, and ‘social cohesion’ at the urban level mostly fails to consider the relevance of space. The spatial dimension of a socially creative strategy is constituted in physical and symbolic boundaries, in the built environment, in situated objects and relationships. Space can significantly contribute to stigma and exclusion, notably in segregated places. In fact, space performs: it has social effects on people’s opportunities and on their self-esteem . Nonetheless the space is itself a social product; it is the object of strategies. Most social innovators invest in space, trying to shape it, to modify it, to make it more inclusive. They aim to use it as a lever for social innovation. Some such innovations use art as a tool to produce change in the spatial configuration for deprived groups. In this chapter we observe a case of a socially creative strategy in which a par- ticularly difficult housing problem was solved thanks to a holistic approach to the production of space. More specifically, we observed how a network of NGOs was able to manage a situation of housing exclusion for some highly stigmatized roma families. Yet the true character of this social innovation lay precisely at the level of the production of space. The main problem that the network sought to address was the issue of segregation that housing for roma usually reproduces. Welfare provisions for roma in Italy are traditionally part of the problem they are supposed to solve: they maintain segregation and fail to support roma inclusion in broader urban life. This network therefore decided to design a project and implement it in a very collab- orative way. They did not provide a specialized shelter for evicted roma people, or for roma housing emergencies; rather, they invented a participative path within the Turin metropolitan area to produce a space that could also, but not exclusively, welcome Roma families, without labelling them and without separating them from the wider local community.
This paper seeks to contribute to a conceptual perspective with which to approach the evaluations and explanation of social entrepreneurs as agents of social change. First, it discusses the capability approach as a comprehensive normative framework with which to articulate ‘the social’ in a way that deals with the triple challenge of specifying ‘the social’ in a context of conflicts of interests, value diversity and exclusive public spheres. Second, the paper proposes two explanatory hypotheses of innovation for social change: (a) social innovation as the carrying out of new combinations of capabilities; (b) social entrepreneurs as characterized by their capacity to imagine and carry out new combinations of capabilities. The combination of capabilities suggests a subset of human development where ethics meets innovation: a capability innovation pathway at the crossroads of long-term, societal perspectives on change (human development, Schumpeterian economic development) where innovation is social and capability advancement entrepreneurial.
In the 1960s, businesses and nonprofits trundled along on separate tracks, having little to do with each other. Over the past three decades, however, the paths of business and nonprofits have not just crossed; they have converged. Nonprofits and businesses are converging in the nature of the value they create, the stakeholders they manage, the structures of the organizations they form, and the financial instruments they use to fund their ventures. The era of convergence is upon us. Do you know how to take advantage of it?
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to argue that Joseph Schumpeter's views are influenced by the French social philosopher Gabriel Tarde who delivered a theory of social evolution based on technological change as its driving force.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper investigates the affinities in Schumpeter's and Tarde's respective theoretical and methodological approaches.
Findings
In this context, the paper finds striking similarities in their central visions.
Practical implications
Understanding Schumpeter's theories implies a deeper acquaintance with Tarde's oeuvre.
Originality/value
The paper concludes that several Schumpeterian insights appear to be less original.
Wenn von Innovation die Rede ist, dann sind in der Regel ökonomische Innovationen gemeint. Von Schumpeter bis zu aktuellen
Definitionen geht es um die Einführung und Verbreitung von neuen und verbesserten Produkten, Prozessen, Systemen und Geräten
zur kommerziellen Nutzung in der Ökonomie (z. B. Freeman 1974: 22; OECD 1997: 133). Aber gibt es in der Gesellschaft nicht
auch viele Innovationen von nicht-ökonomischer Art, die z. B. Wissenschaft und Bildung, Politik und Alltagsleben, Kunst und
Kultur folgenreich verändern?
The literature on sociotechnical transitions and their governance tends to concentrate on the introduction of new technologies and systems of supply. In this paper we seek to extend the scope of debate, introducing aspects of practice theory as a means of also conceptualising the dynamics of demand. Rather than treating ‘human need’ or ‘societal functions’ as given, we consider how variously sustainable practices come into existence, how they disappear and how interventions of different forms may be implicated in these dynamics. We use the two cases of daily showering and the congestion charging scheme in London to consider the distinctive challenges of understanding transitions in practice and of governing these so as to engender more sustainable ways of life.
The term ‘social innovation’ has come into common parlance in recent years. Some analysts consider social innovation no more than a buzz word or passing fad that is too vague to be usefully applied to academic scholarship. Some social scientists, however, see significant value in the concept of social innovation because it identifies a critical type of innovation. In this paper, we suggest one possible definition of social innovation and show that when its empirical meaning is distilled, the term is of great importance. We distinguish social innovation from business innovation, and identify a subset of social innovations that requires government support.
Die Kultursoziologie ist zu einem Brennpunkt der theoretischen und empirischen Öffnung der Soziologie geworden. Der Band lotet in einer Reihe von Studien die Potenziale einer solchen kulturwissenschaftlichen Neuorientierung der Soziologie aus. Mehrere Fragen stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt: Was kann das Konzept der Kultur als Beobachtungskategorie leisten? Inwiefern spielen »soziale Praktiken« für eine solche Kultursoziologie eine besondere Rolle? Wie lassen sich Subjektivierung und Identität im Rahmen einer Kultursoziologie der Moderne unter die Lupe nehmen? Welche Bedeutung erhält hier das Ästhetische? Schließlich: Wie kann die Kultursoziologie vom Poststrukturalismus profitieren?
Das Thema »soziale Innovationen« hat in den letzten 20 Jahren in westlichen Gesellschaften zwar immer größere Aufmerksamkeit erfahren, ist dabei aber sowohl begrifflich und konzeptionell als auch inhaltlich äußerst unscharf geblieben. Angesichts der wachsenden Bedeutung sozialer Innovationen ist eine konzeptionelle Weiterentwicklung des theoretischen Ansatzes von großer Bedeutung. Dieser Band diskutiert die Frage, was eine Innovation zur sozialen Innovation macht. Die Autoren gehen theoretischen Konzepten, empirischen Forschungsfeldern und beobachtbaren Trends nach und arbeiten die zentralen Dimensionen eines sozialwissenschaftlichen Konzepts sozialer Innovation heraus.
In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates.
Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way of the rhetoric of fear in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over too much connectivity, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview.
According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/virality
Zusammenfassung
Ausgehend von der jüngsten Diagnose eines ‚Practice Turn‘ in der Sozialtheorie und empirischen Forschungspraxis arbeitet der Artikel Strukturmerkmale einer ‚Praxistheorie‘ oder ‚Theorie sozialer Praktiken‘ im Vergleich zu alternativen Sozial- und Kulturtheorien heraus. Von besonderer Bedeutung erweisen sich dabei drei Grundannahmen: eine ‚implizite‘, ‚informelle‘ Logik der Praxis und Verankerung des Sozialen im praktischen Wissen und ‚Können‘; eine ‚Materialität‘ sozialer Praktiken in ihrer Abhängigkeit von Körpern und Artefakten; schließlich ein Spannungsfeld von Routinisiertheit und systematisch begründbarer Unberechenbarkeit von Praktiken.
In the context of seemingly intractable social challenges such as climate change, environmental destruction, youth unemployment and social exclusion, social innovation has emerged as a potentially sustainable solution. It is often assumed that social innovation can lead to social change (see, for example, Cooperrider and Pasmore, 1991; Mulgan et al., 2007; BEPA, 2010). However, the relationship between social innovation and social change remains underexplored:
Rather than being used as a specifically defined specialist term with its own definable area of studies, social innovation is used more as a kind of descriptive metaphor in the context of phenomena of real world problems, social change, and the modernisation of society. (Howaldt and Schwarz, 2010, p. 49)
The aim of this chapter is to investigate the possibility of combining human capital theory (HCT) and the capability approach (CA) in order to better understand and measure both the instrumental and the intrinsic values of education for individuals, and to trace its relative spillover effects on societies. HCT, pioneered by Schultz and Becker in the early 1970s, has since become an important part of the debate on economic growth and development. Recently, HCT has been criticised for the narrow instrumental role that it assigns to education (inasmuch as HCT disregards some of important non-material aspects of education), as well as for its inability to satisfactorily reflect the cultural, gender-based, emotional and historical differences that can influence educational choices and individual well-being.
In recent years, the human development and capability approach (HDCA) to development studies has gained increased attention from academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Its freedom-centred view of development, its accounting for interpersonal and intercultural variations, its emphasis on social justice and its stress on public discussion and deliberative democracy have rendered the capability approach (CA) a wider and more comprehensive framework for designing and assessing development policies.
In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnès HUBERT (Member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations).
Everyday life is defined and characterised by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this essential book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. In working through core propositions about social practices and how they change the book is clear and accessible; real world examples, including the history of car driving, the emergence of frozen food, and the fate of hula hooping, bring abstract concepts to life and firmly ground them in empirical case-studies and new research. Demonstrating the relevance of social theory for public policy problems, the authors show that the everyday is the basis of social transformation addressing questions such as:how do practices emerge, exist and die?what are the elements from which practices are made?how do practices recruit practitioners?how are elements, practices and the links between them generated, renewed and reproduced? Precise, relevant and persuasive this book will inspire students and researchers from across the social sciences.
The paper describes ten sets of theoretical sources that have either influenced social innovation or provide useful insights. It argues that although the field has been led by practice rather than theory it now needs stronger theoretical foundations in order to progress. The theoretical sources described include: theoretical perspectives on social plasticity and change; evolutionary theories; complexity theories; theories of entrepreneurship; theories of dialectical change; theories from innovation studies; theories of techno-economic paradigms; theories concerned with the ends of innovation, in particular well-being and capabilities; and epistemological approaches to social innovation. In each case I describe some of the main ideas and arguments, and their relevance to social innovation (and in some cases their key limitations). I then suggest ways in which these may be synthesized into an overall framework for social innovation that can generate useful and often testable hypotheses to guide practice.
The idea of social innovation has gained increasing attention over the last several years in political, academic, and practitioner’s discourses. However, the concept lacks a clear definition and has to date different meanings. The purpose of the chapter is to theoretically investigate the concept and to propose a conceptual understanding of social innovations that aim at positive social change. To this end, the chapter reviews literature from different fields and identifies three different meanings of the concept. The understanding of social innovation as aiming at positive social change by addressing pressing social needs is discussed in more detail in the paper. A conceptual understanding is proposed which suggests that social innovations comprise three dimensions: the dimension of (1) formalisation, (2) change processes, and (3) social outcomes. The chapter’s theoretical contribution is that it advances a clearer understanding of social innovation which may be useful in guiding future research on the topic.
The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change. The relationship between these two diff erent camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but we argue that they are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, through empirical analysis of two diff erent 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.
This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and Oakeshott. In bringing Wittgenstein's work to bear on issues of social theory the book shows the relevance of his work to a body of thought to which it has never been applied. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in political science and sociology, as well as some literary theorists.
With a growing and especially fragmented body of literature on social innovations, the demand for categorizing the field increases. This study analyzes the current use of the concept social innovation. Following a systematic conceptual literature review methodology, the authors reviewed articles and books. The elements were then grouped in coherent categories. The authors found seven categories of social innovation that are linked to a distinct understanding of the concept. After presenting the categories and major themes which are discussed within each category, the different categories are set in context with each other. Subsequently, the authors discuss how the most prominent conceptualizations meet the criteria of concept clarity. Finally, the authors point to some aspects that are necessary in the future in order to strengthen the clarity of the social innovation concept.
Innovationen pragen moderne Gesellschaften. Im Zentrum auch der rechtswissenschaftlichen Diskussion stehen meist nur technologische Innovationen. Der Beitrag legt dar, dass fur gesellschaftlichen Wandel, auch unter Nutzung technologischer Innovationen, soziale Innovationen unverzichtbar sind, etwa neue und veranderte Wege und Strategien zur Bewaltigung von Problemen, neue Organisationsformen, veranderte Einstellungen oder Lebensentwurfe. Nach einem evolutionstheoretischen Blick auf Innovationen werden Fragen aufgeworfen, die eine rechtswissenschaftliche Forschung zu sozialen Innovationen bearbeiten sollte. Anschliesend werden eine Reihe von Beispielsfeldern bezeichnet, in denen soziale Innovationen durch Recht in ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung beeinflusst werden, so im Bereich der Arbeitswelt, des Gesundheitswesens, der Teledienstleistungen und der open source- und open content-Entwicklung im Internet.
This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent.
In this new and brilliantly organized book of essays, Anthony Giddens discusses three main theoretical traditions in social science that cut across the division between Marxist and non-Marxist sociology: interpretive sociology, functionalism, and structuralism.
Beginning with a critical examination of the importance of structuralism for contemporary sociology, the author develops a comprehensive account of what he calls "the theory of structuration." One of the main themes is that social theory must recognize, as it has not done hitherto, that all social actors are knowledgeable about the social systems they produce and reproduce in their conduct. In order to grasp the significance of this, he argues, we have to reconsider some of the most basic concepts in sociology.
In particular, Giddens argues, it is essential to recognize the significance of time-space relations in social theory. He rejects the distinction between synchrony and diachrony, or statics and dynamics, involved in both structuralism and functionalism, and offers extensive critical commentary on the latter as an approach to sociology.
The book, which can be described as a "non-functionalist manifesto," breaks with the three main theoretical traditions in the social sciences today while retaining the significant contributions each contains. In so doing Giddens discusses a range of fundamental problem areas in the social sciences: power and domination, conflict and contradiction, and social transformation. He concludes with an overall appraisal of the key problems in social theory today.
Value is often viewed in either economic or social terms. The Blended Value Proposition asserts that true value is non-divisible, consisting of a blend of economic, social, and environmental components. This perspective requires us to re-examine our understanding of the nature of capital, the methodology for calculating rates of real return to investors, and the role of for-profit and nonprofit organizations in the value creation process.
Many commentators analyse green consumption as if it were an expression of individual environmental commitment. Such approaches suppose that the adoption of more sustainable ways of life depends upon the diffusion of "green" beliefs and actions through society. In this article, the author explores the idea that patterns of resource consumption (especially of energy and water) reflect what are generally inconspicuous routines and habits. Are such conventions evolving or standardising in ways that are increasingly resource intensive? In addressing this question with reference to three domains of daily life: comfort, cleanliness, and convenience, four simple models of change are outlined, two of which imply an inexorable escalation of resource consumption, two of which do not. The purpose of this illustrative exercise is to demonstrate the importance of understanding the systemic redefinition of "normal practice." Rather than taking individual behaviour to be the central unit of analysis, the case is made for an approach that concentrates on the construction and transformation of collective convention. This theoretical reorientation opens the way for programmes of research and policy informed by an appreciation of the technological and the commercial as well as the symbolic and cultural dimensions of more and less resource-intensive ways of life.
In environmental and consumer policy it has become common place to view the ‘critical consumer’ as the decisive agent for
a change towards sustainable consumption. Private consumption, however, cannot be understood adequately as a matter of ‘personal
choice’. Individualistic approaches do not take into account the complex socio-technical nature of consumption, its dependency
on ‘systems of provison’, its varying symbolic meanings across social milieus, and the systematic interlinkage of consumption
practices and conventions of everyday life. The paper contends that practice-theoretical approaches provide a better understanding
of these complex interdependencies. In a first section the basic assumptions of these approaches are summarized. Focused on
routine practices these approaches, usually, do not deal with the question of how consumption patterns can be changed intentionally
by political intervention, however. Based on an empirical case study on the German “Agrarwende” politics – an attempt to bring
organic food from the niche to the center of German food markets in 2001–2005 – in a second section, the paper therefore explores
the question in how far practice approaches can also be utilized for a better understanding of the problems of promoting sustainable
lifestyles by political measures.
KeywordsPractice theory-Sustainable consumption-Sustainable food policies-BSE-Greening of lifestyles
First ed. publ. under the title :"India: economic development and social opportunity". Incl. bibl., index.
Against the background of the recent diagnosis of a "practice turn" in social theory and cultural analysis, this article works out basic elements of what a "practice theory" can be in contrast to alternative social and cultural theories. Three features are of particular relevance for a theory of social practices: the "informal," tacit logic of practices and the location of the social in practical understanding and know-how-techniques; the materiality of practices as dependent on bodies and artefacts; finally, the tension between routinization and basic incalculabilities of social practices.