{"id":259,"date":"2014-09-30T07:47:19","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T07:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sussexnrggrp.wordpress.com\/?p=259"},"modified":"2024-01-10T14:49:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T14:49:04","slug":"the-second-big-transition-or-the-struggle-for-inclusive-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/sussexenergygroup\/2014\/09\/30\/the-second-big-transition-or-the-struggle-for-inclusive-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Big Transition or the Struggle for Inclusive Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A blog by Johan Schot, following the fifth International Sustainability Transitions conference, Utrecht, August 29 2014<\/h2>\n

It was a great pleasure to present a keynote address at the fifth\u00a0International Conference on Sustainability Transitions<\/a>, for two reasons. First, some 15 years ago when John Grin, Jan Rotmans, myself, and many others were putting together the\u00a0Dutch transition network<\/a>\u00a0and were developing a new research agenda, we discussed the need for the emergence of a new interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary field. It is a huge satisfaction to see that this happen, and the International Sustainability Transitions Network is flourishing. Second, as incoming Director of SPRU, one of the institutions that made important contributions to the field, I have a keen interest in bringing the research agenda to a new level.<\/p>\n

SPRU is developing a new research programme provisionally entitled: Transformative Change and Innovation (and we are\u00a0hiring three new professors<\/a>\u00a0to work on this). The ambition is that this programme will, on the one hand, deliver new fundamental knowledge on the nature and governance of long term transformative change, and on the other hand, practical ideas, perspectives and solutions for intervening in this long term change process. Transitions research always has been dedicated to do both and I believe rightly so since there is nothing as practical as deep and fundamental theoretical insights.<\/p>\n

In my keynote address, I explored a number of important themes for the new agenda. The overarching message is that although transition studies as a field is built upon the notion that transitions are long term processes (with the basic understanding that they take at least fifty years, and encompass entire societies and economies), many studies focus on the short term and individual subsystems, such as mobility, energy, food provision systems. This is also true for the transition theory I am involved in developing: Multi-level Perspective (MLP).<\/p>\n

There are sound theoretical and practical reasons for a focus on individual subsystems, yet it is also true that a sustainability transition ultimately does not need a change in one system, but a much broader change in many systems. I propose we refer to this change of multiple systems as a Big Transition.\u00a0 A main question then becomes how can we characterize and conceptualize a Big Transition? Here we can learn from work of Freeman and Perez. Their work moves beyond the level of individual innovations or systems and takes a genuine long term historical perspective. Based on their work, I would like to propose the following hypotheses:<\/p>\n