of creative destruction’ that unsettle incumbent regimes – a theme picked up by
Mazzucato, Spratt and Newell in this book.
Histories often involve the co-evolution of policies, institutions, infrastructures
and even whole political systems with technologies and material resources. As
Mitchell (2011) argues in relation to coal and then oil, for example, forms of
democracy are deeply entwined with particular material energy resources. In this
sense, politics is co-constructed with sociotechnical systems and particular resources,
whether coal or oil, water or land. Some types of transformation are thus affected
by the biophysical, material qualities of those resources, with water, for example,
being described as the ‘un-cooperative commodity’ – its fluidity making it difficult
to govern (Bakker, 2010). The materiality of resources can also provoke an
unravelling of political systems, technologies and infrastructures built around them,
as is claimed for peak oil and its ability to destabilize incumbent power (Leggett,
2014). Unravelling such co-constructed complexes of technology, infrastructure,
institutions and politics and creating alternative pathways is therefore a central
challenge of the politics of green transformation. Opportunities may emerge during
periods of crisis (or interregnum) in which a new politics of transformation
becomes possible.
The politics of transformation also involve the politics of knowledge and
culture. Building more sustainable pathways involves transformations in behaviour
at personal and collective levels, underpinned by convictions that change is necessary
and desirable. Green transformation thus requires transformative knowledge
(Hackmann and St Clair, 2012). Yet as longstanding experiences and literatures from
the sociology and anthropology of science and policy tell us, such knowledge cannot
just be imposed from above by expert science; to have traction, it must make sense
to people in diverse settings (Jamison, 2001; Jasanoff and Martello, 2004). There is
a politics to the ways that different people and groups, with different cultural
backgrounds, invoke particular forms of knowledge to define and contest the nature
of environmental problems, why they matter and to whom, and what should be
done about them. The intensity of these knowledge politics is picked up in different
ways in Chapter 2 by Leach, Chapter 3 by Millstone, Chapter 4 by Stirling and
Chapter 7 by Smith and Ely. They underscore the potential of grassroots and citizenbased knowledge to contribute to green transformations, and the need for
transformations in the ways different knowledge producers and holders interact in
order to enable this.
Underpinning these different conceptualizations of transformation, and how and
when they occur, different emphasis is placed on the desirability and possibility of
incremental institutional change and transitions within capitalism as against the need
for more radical transformations of capitalist structures and relations (Kovel, 2002).
This raises a series of entrenched and contentious questions about strategy: how
much change is ‘good enough’; whether reform or more radical revolution is the
appropriate strategy, and whether the urgency of delivering green transformations
necessarily prioritizes immediate incrementalism over longer term, more radical
restructuring. It underscores the very different visions of sustainability which run
8 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach
Mazzucato, Spratt and Newell in this book.
Histories often involve the co-evolution of policies, institutions, infrastructures
and even whole political systems with technologies and material resources. As
Mitchell (2011) argues in relation to coal and then oil, for example, forms of
democracy are deeply entwined with particular material energy resources. In this
sense, politics is co-constructed with sociotechnical systems and particular resources,
whether coal or oil, water or land. Some types of transformation are thus affected
by the biophysical, material qualities of those resources, with water, for example,
being described as the ‘un-cooperative commodity’ – its fluidity making it difficult
to govern (Bakker, 2010). The materiality of resources can also provoke an
unravelling of political systems, technologies and infrastructures built around them,
as is claimed for peak oil and its ability to destabilize incumbent power (Leggett,
2014). Unravelling such co-constructed complexes of technology, infrastructure,
institutions and politics and creating alternative pathways is therefore a central
challenge of the politics of green transformation. Opportunities may emerge during
periods of crisis (or interregnum) in which a new politics of transformation
becomes possible.
The politics of transformation also involve the politics of knowledge and
culture. Building more sustainable pathways involves transformations in behaviour
at personal and collective levels, underpinned by convictions that change is necessary
and desirable. Green transformation thus requires transformative knowledge
(Hackmann and St Clair, 2012). Yet as longstanding experiences and literatures from
the sociology and anthropology of science and policy tell us, such knowledge cannot
just be imposed from above by expert science; to have traction, it must make sense
to people in diverse settings (Jamison, 2001; Jasanoff and Martello, 2004). There is
a politics to the ways that different people and groups, with different cultural
backgrounds, invoke particular forms of knowledge to define and contest the nature
of environmental problems, why they matter and to whom, and what should be
done about them. The intensity of these knowledge politics is picked up in different
ways in Chapter 2 by Leach, Chapter 3 by Millstone, Chapter 4 by Stirling and
Chapter 7 by Smith and Ely. They underscore the potential of grassroots and citizenbased knowledge to contribute to green transformations, and the need for
transformations in the ways different knowledge producers and holders interact in
order to enable this.
Underpinning these different conceptualizations of transformation, and how and
when they occur, different emphasis is placed on the desirability and possibility of
incremental institutional change and transitions within capitalism as against the need
for more radical transformations of capitalist structures and relations (Kovel, 2002).
This raises a series of entrenched and contentious questions about strategy: how
much change is ‘good enough’; whether reform or more radical revolution is the
appropriate strategy, and whether the urgency of delivering green transformations
necessarily prioritizes immediate incrementalism over longer term, more radical
restructuring. It underscores the very different visions of sustainability which run
8 Ian Scoones, Peter Newell and Melissa Leach