TY - JOUR

T1 - Towards a thick understanding of sustainability transitions - Linking transition management, capabilities and social practices

AU - Rauschmayer, Felix

AU - Bauler, Tom

AU - Schäpke, Niko

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

N2 - Scientific activities which are targeted to engage and enact on societal problems - and governance of sustainability transition itself is one such activity - are necessarily prescriptive endeavours, have to recognize the fundamental normativity of sustainable development, need to be based on a thick description of the issues to change, and should embrace the multi-dimensional importance that individuals take in societal change. Societally relevant research on and for sustainability transitions therefore has to produce systems, target, as well as transformative knowledge. The challenges of sustainability transitions require furthermore that the individual and the societal levels have to be linked as to relate individual agency and structural change within the different knowledge types. Taking transition management as a rather obvious starting point to enrich the concept of sustainability transitions, the paper elaborates that its conceptual basis is too thin to address the first two types of knowledge. In its current elaborations, transition management does furthermore not cover individual agency as potential driver of transitions. We therefore suggest complementing transition management approaches with the more descriptive practice theory and the more normative and individualistic capability approach. We suggest a heuristic combination that places individuals back into the study of sustainability transitions.

AB - Scientific activities which are targeted to engage and enact on societal problems - and governance of sustainability transition itself is one such activity - are necessarily prescriptive endeavours, have to recognize the fundamental normativity of sustainable development, need to be based on a thick description of the issues to change, and should embrace the multi-dimensional importance that individuals take in societal change. Societally relevant research on and for sustainability transitions therefore has to produce systems, target, as well as transformative knowledge. The challenges of sustainability transitions require furthermore that the individual and the societal levels have to be linked as to relate individual agency and structural change within the different knowledge types. Taking transition management as a rather obvious starting point to enrich the concept of sustainability transitions, the paper elaborates that its conceptual basis is too thin to address the first two types of knowledge. In its current elaborations, transition management does furthermore not cover individual agency as potential driver of transitions. We therefore suggest complementing transition management approaches with the more descriptive practice theory and the more normative and individualistic capability approach. We suggest a heuristic combination that places individuals back into the study of sustainability transitions.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - conceptual framework

KW - governance approach

KW - knowledge; sustainability

KW - Sustainable development

KW - theoretical study

KW - management practice

KW - transition management

KW - capability approach

KW - practice theory

KW - transdisciplinarity

KW - sustainability transitions

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84949117714&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.11.018

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.11.018

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 109

SP - 211

EP - 221

JO - Ecological Economics

JF - Ecological Economics

SN - 0921-8009

ER -