The concept of the Anthropocene as a game-changer: a new context for social innovation and transformations to sustainability
By P. Olsson, M. Moore, Frances Westley, Daniel McCarthy. 2017
166 citations recorded by the source corpus.
After tracing the antecedents of the concept and considering its intersection in social innovation research, we put forward the argument that the Anthropocene concept points to three areas of thought that are strategically imperative and must be accelerated if social innovation theory and practice is to prove transformative and respond to the challenges associated with the Anthropocene. First, we contend that the current debate on social innovation for sustainability lacks a deeper focus on human-environmental interactions and the related feedbacks, which will be necessary to understand and achieve large-scale change and transformations to global sustainability. Many innovations focus on only the social or the ecological, and we believe a more integrated approach will be needed moving forward. Second, social innovation research must confront the path-dependencies embedded within systems, and we propose that the act of “bricolage,” which recombines existing elements in novel ways, will be essential, rather than single variable solutions, which currently dominate social innovation discussions. Finally, we put forward the idea that confronting the cross-scalar nature of the Anthropocene requires revisiting both the scope and temporal nature of social innovations that are most typically focused upon by scholars and funders alike. We believe the concept of the Anthropocene creates new opportunities for social innovation scholars to imagine new possibilities.
Subfields: Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8f2cce6e7727457a990fc3b7756bb8407ea1493e
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In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Is the 1.5°C target possible? Exploring the three spheres of transformation (2018, background): “A variety of social theories on transformation can be used to both critique existing approaches to climate change mitigation, and offer alternatives [9 ,10,11 ,12,13 ,14 ,15,16].”