Chapter 2
What Political Economy Adds
to Transformation Research
The continuous striving for improvements in material welfare is threatening to surpass the
limits of the natural resource base unless there is a radical shift towards more sustainable
patterns of consumption and production and resource use. Persistent inequalities and
struggles over scarce resources are among key determinants of situations of conflict,
hunger, insecurity and violence, which in turn are key factors that hold back human
development and efforts to achieve sustainable development. Business as usual thus cannot
be an option and transformative change is needed. As the challenges are highly interdependent, a new, more holistic approach is needed to address them.
UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, Realizing the Future
we Want for All (2013: 1).
Particular narratives are produced by particular actors and so co-construct particular
pathways of response. Some are dominant; shaped by powerful institutions and substantial
financial backing—these are the ‘motorways’ that channel current mainstream environment
and development efforts. But these can often obscure and overrun alternatives; the smaller
by-ways and bush paths that define and respond to different goals, values and forms of
knowledge.
Leach, Scoones, und Stirling, Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social
Justice (2010: 5).
So, if the changes envisioned by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda are
supposed to be transformational in quality, how do we work toward this quality?
This chapter provides the analytical perspective of a system-thinking, environmentally aware political economist with a sober appreciation of technological
innovation. It defines two concepts and one heuristic that lie at the core of this view:
engaging with the materiality of ideas and radical incremental transformation
strategies enables a repurposing of our current development systems. This analytical framework emerged from my transdisciplinary quest to find out why humans
collectively create societies that individually they would like to change. This quest
has always been connected with sustainable development: no one I know is not in
favor of peace, of letting nature thrive and enabling every person and animal to live
a life of dignity. So why is this not possible?
My search for answers led me to combine academia and research with political
engagement and activism. For a long time it seemed that this made me something of
© The Author(s) 2016
M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_2
13
What Political Economy Adds
to Transformation Research
The continuous striving for improvements in material welfare is threatening to surpass the
limits of the natural resource base unless there is a radical shift towards more sustainable
patterns of consumption and production and resource use. Persistent inequalities and
struggles over scarce resources are among key determinants of situations of conflict,
hunger, insecurity and violence, which in turn are key factors that hold back human
development and efforts to achieve sustainable development. Business as usual thus cannot
be an option and transformative change is needed. As the challenges are highly interdependent, a new, more holistic approach is needed to address them.
UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, Realizing the Future
we Want for All (2013: 1).
Particular narratives are produced by particular actors and so co-construct particular
pathways of response. Some are dominant; shaped by powerful institutions and substantial
financial backing—these are the ‘motorways’ that channel current mainstream environment
and development efforts. But these can often obscure and overrun alternatives; the smaller
by-ways and bush paths that define and respond to different goals, values and forms of
knowledge.
Leach, Scoones, und Stirling, Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social
Justice (2010: 5).
So, if the changes envisioned by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda are
supposed to be transformational in quality, how do we work toward this quality?
This chapter provides the analytical perspective of a system-thinking, environmentally aware political economist with a sober appreciation of technological
innovation. It defines two concepts and one heuristic that lie at the core of this view:
engaging with the materiality of ideas and radical incremental transformation
strategies enables a repurposing of our current development systems. This analytical framework emerged from my transdisciplinary quest to find out why humans
collectively create societies that individually they would like to change. This quest
has always been connected with sustainable development: no one I know is not in
favor of peace, of letting nature thrive and enabling every person and animal to live
a life of dignity. So why is this not possible?
My search for answers led me to combine academia and research with political
engagement and activism. For a long time it seemed that this made me something of
© The Author(s) 2016
M. Göpel, The Great Mindshift, The Anthropocene:
Politik—Economics—Society—Science 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43766-8_2
13