Lecture #3 - part 1 | Flor AVELINO | "The transformative power of social innovation for just sustainability transitions"
This talk discusses the role of social innovation in just sustainability transitions, with a particular focus on power dynamics. How do conceptualise and empirical investigate social innovation and changing power relations in the context of just sustainability transitions? How can we understand and operationalise the notion of ‘transformative power’, and (how) can research on this issue contribute to increasing the transformative power of social innovations? This seminar will tackle these questions and share recent and ongoing research on these topics.
Lecture #3 - part 2 | Derk LOORBACH | "Designing radical transitions"
Now that we have arrived in the transition moment where the urgency, awareness and opportunity come together, we have the opportunity to design desired transitions. To work against the mainstream tendency of greening the existing and to empower and institutionalise the just sustainability alternatives that have developed over the past decades. To do so requires strategies that combine the strengths of transition research, social movement theory, design and social learning. Building on the exhibition ITS ABOUT TIME, this lecture will position us in times of transition and sketch how we could use the momentum for radical transitions to just, sustainable futures.
Part of the 2022/23 StadsSalonsUrbains lecture series 'moving cities forward, leaving no one behind. toward fair & sustainable transitions'. Full programme available here.
Lectures will be streamed on this channel!
Prof. Dr. Flor Avelino is a researcher and lecturer on just sustainability transitions and social innovation. She is currently a full professor of Organisations & Sustainability at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. Previously, she worked at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) and at the Department of Public Administration & Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. With a background in political science, she specialises in power theories and has a particular interest in how people, organisations and networks are (dis)empowered to contribute to just sustainability transitions.
Derk Loorbach is director of DRIFT and Professor of Socio-economic Transitions at the Faculty of Social Science, both at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Derk is one of the founders of the transition management approach as new form of governance for sustainable development. He has over one hundred publications in this area and has been involved as an action researcher in numerous transition processes with government, business, civil society and science. He is a frequently invited keynote speaker in and outside Europe.
Reading:
- Avelino, F. (2021) Theories of Power and Social Change. Power Contestations and their Implications for Social Change Research, Journal of Political Power, 14:3, 425-448, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2021.1875307.
- Tessa de Geus, Flor Avelino, Lara Hendrikx, Vaishali Joshi, Naomi Schrandt, Derk Loorbach (DRIFT) and Marta Strumińska-Kutra (Kozminski University) (2021), “Unlocking the Transformative Power of Social Innovation in Energy: A Guide on the Transformative Power of Social Innovations in Energy”, SONNET-project: https://sonnet-energy.eu/power-guide/
- Avelino F. & Wittmayer J.M. (2019) “The transformative potential of plural social enterprise: A multi-actor perspective”, chapter 10 in Eynaud P., Laville J.L., Dos Santos L.L.., Banerjee S., Hulgard H., Avelino F. (2019), Theory of social enterprise and pluralism: Social Movements, Solidarity Economy, and Global South, Oxfordshire: Routledge Publisher, pp. 193-222.
- TRANSIT (2017) Manifesto for Transformative Social Innovation, https://tsimanifesto.org/