An interdisciplinary perspective on scaling in transitions: Connecting actors and space
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Authors
The question of how sustainable innovations and how niche experimentation lead to systemic changes are a core motivation of sustainability transitions research. As an inherently interdisciplinary field, although this question is addressed from different academic perspectives, the dominant understanding of relevant scaling processes is grounded in concepts of growth, diffusion and expansion. This article contributes to the discussion of more nuanced understandings of scaling, acknowledging the value of ontological levels for analytic purposes, but also drawing on knowledge from socio-psychological and spatial perspectives. Alternative understandings of spatial and agency-related scaling approaches are discussed and compared. An integrative socio-spatial framework is developed, providing a mid-range framework capable of supporting analysis of transitions that connects different disciplinary perspectives within a level-based ontology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions |
| Volume | 42 |
| Pages (from-to) | 170-183 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| ISSN | 2210-4224 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.03.2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge joint funding for parts of this work from the Robert Bosch foundation (Project: Towards an interdisciplinary understanding of scales and scaling in sustainability transitions (InterScale)). Paula Bögel also received funding for this project from the Volkswagen Foundation (Project: Dual-mode participation: Window of Opportunity for Inclusive Real-Worlds Labs). Karoline Augenstein and Meike Levin-Keitel received funding for parts of this project from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of its Research for Sustainable Development Framework Program/Social-Ecological Research (Projects: UrbanUp and MoveMe). We would like to thank all participants of the Dialogue session on “Scales and scaling in transitions'' at the 11th International Sustainability Transitions conference for a very inspiring exchange. We would also like to thank Gesa Pflitsch and two anonymous reviewers and the editor for very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.
Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge joint funding for parts of this work from the Robert Bosch foundation (Project: Towards an interdisciplinary understanding of scales and scaling in sustainability transitions (InterScale)). Paula Bögel also received funding for this project from the Volkswagen Foundation (Project: Dual-mode participation: Window of Opportunity for Inclusive Real-Worlds Labs). Karoline Augenstein and Meike Levin-Keitel received funding for parts of this project from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of its Research for Sustainable Development Framework Program/Social-Ecological Research (Projects: UrbanUp and MoveMe). We would like to thank all participants of the Dialogue session on “Scales and scaling in transitions'' at the 11th International Sustainability Transitions conference for a very inspiring exchange. We would also like to thank Gesa Pflitsch and two anonymous reviewers and the editor for very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
- Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
Sustainable Development Goals
- Actors, Scaling, Socio-spatial, Spatial analysis, Urban transitions
- Sustainability Science