Not more but different: A comment on the transitions research agenda

• DOI: 10.1016/j.eist.2019.11.008
• Publication Date: 2019-12-25T16:10:15Z
• Authors: Debbie Hopkins; Johannes Kester; Toon Meelen; Tim Schwanen
• Keywords: Pluralism; Openness to experience; Ethos; Transition Management; Empirical Research

Abstract The sustainability transitions research network research agenda reflects the impressive growth and diversity of sustainability transitions scholarship, premised on an ethos of interdisciplinarity and openness to other research traditions and informed by increasingly diverse empirical case studies. Nonetheless, an inclination to integrate concepts, ideas and logics from elsewhere into foundational core sustainability transitions research (STR) frameworks (e.g. Multi-Level Perspective, Technological Innovation Systems) can be observed. This potentially constrains the development of new concepts, ideas and logics within transition research. We therefore stress the importance of theoretical pluralism and in particular of starting the analysis of transition processes from within alternative frameworks and working through transition processes with those frameworks on their own terms. The risks and opportunities of more radical theoretical pluralism in STR are considered, and preliminary examples are presented from Foucauldian and post/decolonial traditions.