Week 7 Flashcards
Why do we need transformative social innovation?
Because in order to have a just sustainability transition we also need to tackle systemic societal challenges. Technological innovations is not sufficient for this
Social innovation
Changing social relations by:
- New doing (technologies, practices, materiality)
- New organizing (modes of organization governance)
- New thinking (knowledge, meaning, visions and images)
Transformative when it challenges, alters or replace the dominant structure
Examples for new doing, new organizing, new thinking
new doing: cleaning solar panels
new thinking: creating new words (pro-sumer)
new organizing: cooperative (one member, one vote)
Renewal of old things
Important!
Innovation does not always have to be new things it can also revise old ways of doing
Social movements
informal networks of interaction, based on shared beliefs and solidarity, mobilized around contentious themes through the frequent use of various forms of protest
Examples social movements
Participatory budgeting
The impact hub
Eco villages
Sociocracy
Fab lab
Fields of study for social innnovations in energy transition (6)
- Cooperatives
- Gamification and city-level competitions
- Innovative financing
- Participatory incubation and experimentation
- Framing against fossil fuel energy
- Local electricity exchange
Common princicples for transformative social innovation (1-4)
- Physical and mental space for learning and experimentation is a necessary condition.
- We require alternative and diverse economies.
- Innovation is just as much about shaping the new as it is about reframing the old.
- We need to experiment with alternative social relations and relational values.
Common principles transformative social innovation (5-8)
- Social & material change are intertwined: we need both social & technological innovation.
- Transformative change requires hybrid combinations of civil society, state and market.
- Social innovation should never be an excuse to dismantle necessary public services –> still needed
- Translocal empowerment is a promising response to the challenges of globalization (false dichotomy between globalized and localized)
Common principles transformative social innovation (9-13)
- Social innovation is about fostering a sense of belonging, autonomy and competence.
- Transparent and inclusive decision-making is a necessary condition for change.
- Alternative and diverse narratives are needed to drive change.
- More mutual recognition and strategic collaboration is needed –> calling for trans local and intersectional solidarity
- Embracing paradoxes is key to transformative social innovation.
Tranformatice power =
prefigurative + countervailing + reinforce
Prefigurative
Capacity to prefigure new ways of doing, thinking and organizing
Countervailing
Capacity to challenge, dismantel existing structures and institutions
Reinforcive
capacity to (re)produce (existing and new) structures and institutions
Nudging factor of power, challenge
people do not believe that they have any power
challenge: power literacy and giving a sense of power
Dominant way of deciding who has power
Composition of society: state, market and community
Triple helix: acedemia, government and industry (can add community, environment and nature)
Paradoxes of innovation and societal change
making it mainstream will loose innovation
The multi actor perspective of mainstreaming:
- marketized and commodified (market)
- bureaucratized and standardized (state)
- socialized and communalized (community)
How to deal with the paradox?
- prepare for dialectics of innovation ‘capture’
- develop flexible repertoire of diverse strategies incl. trojan horse tactics
- translating to mainstream context while also nurturing the radical core.
Wittmayer et al 2020
New conceptual framework for social innovation
Technical: generation, distribution and consumption.
Social: values, beliefs, affordability.
Institutional: formal and informal rules, norms, power relations.
Wittmayer et al 2020
Social innovation is normatively complex
- Involving values and beliefs will have to include that in the end the innovation is really ethically and socially responsible –> looking at the unintended consequences
- multistakeholder concept, difficult to see them all
Wittmayer et al 2020
How to ‘fix’ the normative complexity in social innovation in the energy system
- the normative complexity of the concept: understand values and behavior
- the multi actor nature: inclusive and participatory processes
- socio-material intertwinement: understanding the unintended consequences
- experimentalism-based intervention logics: keep experimenting to find a better alternative
Van der Have 2016
Different categories of social innovation
Community psychology
Creativity research
Social and societal challenges
Local development
Van der Have 2016
Community psychology
Systematic strategies or models to introduce change in society/behavioral change
Outcome: behavioral change
Focused on process
Van der Have 2016
Creativity research
Understangin how social innovations are generated and implemented by organizations to reach a goals
Outcome: new social relationship or change organization
Focused on process
Van der Have 2016
Social and societal challenges
Social innovation as a solution for social and technical challenges
Outcome: regime transition or specific solutions
Focused on outcome
Van der Have 2016
Local development
Satisfying human needs by changing relation with government
Outcome: social cohesion and change
Focus on both process and outcome
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Prosumerism
Increased involvement of customers in the production process, typified by the use of customer feedback and direct design request in high-tech industries
Helps with the decarbonization
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Prosumerism in energy market challenges
- necessary technology
- governance and participation
- normative aspects: energy justice and democracy
- economics aspects: end of the energy markets
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Prosumerism was first a niche innovation how to become regime
Needed: cultivated, nurtered and mainstreamed. Breaking the status qua by active participation
- social learning and improvement
- raising awareness and cultural normalization
- enlargment and diversification of innovation networks
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Politics of mainstreaming Prosumerism
The power plays and relations will change. Actors will also change. The whole game will be different.
-engage citizens
- engage politically oriented entrepreneurship
- crowdfunding or local ownership
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Things that are needed in mainstreaming for different perspectives
State: taxation and administrative burdens (passive citizen, active citizen) bureaucratization & standardization
Market: requires expert knowledge and investments marketization & commodification
Community: searching for a more competent and relatedness institutional arrangments socialization and communalization
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Major issue hybrid institutional arrangments in the energy system
trade-off between burdens and benefits between non-profit, for-profit and not-for-profit institutions
Hybrid does give a combination of informatlity and institutional dependence (informal orientation) +
instutional shelter to secure resources (formal orientation
Wittmayer and Avelino 2021
Some combinations of hybrid that might be a solution
Re-municipalization of energy utilities
Combine private capital with open access
Allienaces between energy cooperatives and mainstream energy companies
Transformative social innovation vs social innovation
to what extent the innovation alters, replaces or challenges the dominant structure and power relations.
normal innovation does not necessary has to change things.
Van der Have
two core conceptual elements SI
- a change in social relationships, systems or structures
- such changes serve a shared human need/goal or solve a socially relevant problem
Wittmayer and Avelino
Multi actor perspective power relations
state, market, community and non-profit
across:
formal and informal
profit-non-profit
public-private
Logics behind state, market and community
State: redistribution and accessibility through standardization
Market: effective and profitible to gain profit
Community: mainstreaming of shared beliefs and values
Social innovation movements what we could do
About sharing knowledge and teaching people
–> try to improve network to gain countervailing power + spreading awareness
