27.1.1 Unreflectiveness: Neutrality

The neutrality thesis, still prevalent in various forms within societal debates, assumes that knowledge represents a universally valid and faithful reflection of the world. According to this view, regardless of who conducts the research or the context in which it occurs, one inevitably arrives at the objective truth about reality. Similarly, technologies are viewed merely as instruments, with their societal impact being determined by how they are used by individuals or societies. In other words, technology is seen as a neutral means to an end, with ethical or social implications arising from the intentions and actions of its users, rather than being inherent to the technology itself.

From this perspective, there is no need for a remedial movement. Technological innovation and knowledge production should instead embrace the position of the disinterested researcher and be guided solely by scientific objectivity and technical efficiency. Drawing from our own experience, this attitude is exemplified by technology-oriented actors who claim to be developing ‘merely a technology’, implying that their social responsibility ends at that point. For instance, it is objectively established that hydrogen can store energy at high density and produces no carbon dioxide upon combustion. From an unreflective viewpoint, the focus of hydrogen technology researchers should be on deploying and optimising this lab-proven technical efficiency. In this view, it is the responsibility of legislators, policymakers and social scientists to address the legal, political, market, psychological and other barriers to ensure that the technology reaches its full potential. Unreflectiveness thereby subscribes to a linear model of progress in which the best possible technology and knowledge are developed upstream in the seclusion of the lab, with the expectation that they will lead to the best possible solutions to societal problems downstream.

27.1.2 Reflectiveness: First-Order Non-neutrality

The first-order claim about the non-neutrality of technology and knowledge rests on the idea that, as human practices, they are inherently imperfect. Non-neutrality is considered negative because it stems from unintended and potentially avoidable influences and limitations in the concrete research design and its all-too-human execution. These influences lead to incompleteness and bias in the knowledge produced. With respect to technology, this claim points to the unintended consequences, societal implications, cross-cutting aspects and socio-technical issues associated with introducing technology into society.

In this approach, the imperfection of technology and knowledge can be addressed with an attitude of reflectiveness. Here, multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches are used to anticipate the implications of technological innovation. Stirling (Reference Stirling, Voss, Bauknecht and Kemp2006) uses the metaphor of a mirror to describe reflectiveness as striving for a ‘faithful reflection of all that lies in the field of view’ (p. 227), whereby all possible implications have to be considered before using a particular technology. To stay with our hydrogen example, reflectiveness starts from the recognition that deploying hydrogen as an energy carrier will have economic, environmental, geopolitical and other societal implications. These include the need for massive and hitherto unavailable amounts of renewable energy to produce green hydrogen, the potentially disruptive effect on geopolitical power relations and the need for new infrastructure, markets and regulations (Hanusch & Schad, Reference Hanusch and Schad2021; Van De Graaf et al., Reference Van De Graaf, Overland, Scholten and Westphal2020). Reflectiveness thus expands the societal responsibility of hydrogen technology researchers from merely developing the most efficient technology possible (as per the unreflective attitude) to anticipating and addressing these socio-technical implications.

While reflectiveness and the integration of ethical and societal considerations into technology and knowledge are essential, this approach maintains the ideal of completeness and neutrality, albeit as an aspirational goal. In this sense, reflectiveness should be seen as a form of knowledge acquisition on the same epistemological level as the original technological innovation practice. The aim is to obtain the most complete representation possible of the system under study, now claimed to be understood not merely in narrow technical terms but as an encompassing socio-technical entity. Here, inter- and transdisciplinarity are viewed as methods that allow for stitching together fragmented knowledge from different scientific domains and societal spheres into a comprehensive picture (Smith & Stirling, Reference Smith and Stirling2007). As such, reflectiveness operates in a linear model of progress, in which more technology and knowledge lead to better solutions.

27.1.3 Reflexivity: Second-Order Non-neutrality

As discussed in Section 27.1.2 on reflectiveness, the first-order claim only brings the social, cultural and material embeddedness of the research practice into focus to the extent that it negatively influences technological innovation and knowledge production by diverting it from an ideal of neutrality. By contrast, the second-order claim focuses on the researcher and their – now affirmatively understood – embeddedness from which they delineate and construct their research object. With this second-order claim, the image of the disinterested scientist is set aside and the researcher now appears as an always already engaged individual (Goeminne et al., Reference Goeminne, Kolen and Paredis2011). According to Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1990), this engagement involves an ‘objectifying relationship’ with the object of knowledge, whereby it is ‘the value-orientation of the scholar [that] directs them toward what is culturally significant, narrowing the field and enabling them to ‘make sense’ of the empirical context’ (Collyer, Reference Collyer2011, p. 322). As a culturally embedded individual, a researcher’s engagement is thus imbued by the ways in which they interrelate with others, reality, and themselves, and by what they consider to be true, real and good in these interrelationships. In other words, knowledge is always already engaged, or ‘situated’ as Haraway (Reference Haraway1988) puts it,Footnote ¹ encompassing inextricable epistemological, ontological and ethical dimensions. In what follows, we will use ‘engaged’ and ‘situated’ interchangeably. Although they cover the same conceptual ground, ‘situatedness’ may be more suited when discussing the contextuality of non-neutrality, whereas ‘engagedness’ is more easily associated with directionality. That said, it is crucial to understand that we do not use ‘engaged’ in a voluntaristic sense. Rather, we employ it, somewhat provocatively, to underscore that knowledge, being situated, inherently carries a specific value orientation.

From this perspective on the non-neutrality of technology and knowledge, more – and something different – is required than mere reflectiveness. First, it reveals how researchers, as intrinsically engaged actors, can hold incommensurable framings, rendering problematic any straightforward inter- or transdisciplinary aggregation (Smith & Stirling, Reference Smith and Stirling2007). Second, despite their aspiration for inclusiveness, reflective approaches, being contextually embedded practices, will remain partial by their very nature. This constitutes the typical inclusion-exclusion mechanism of knowledge production: a scientific perspective allows for certain considerations but necessarily excludes others, rendering them irrevocably unknowable. To remain within the terms of Stirling’s (Reference Stirling, Voss, Bauknecht and Kemp2006) mirror metaphor: you have to hold the mirror up and look into it, otherwise you will see nothing. This means not only that you have an active part in creating the reflection but also that no matter how you turn the mirror, you will never be able to fully see that active part (i.e. oneself). Whereas reflectiveness aims to broaden the view and account for unintended consequences and implications, reflexivity turns the gaze inward, to how those implications are intertwined with the socio-cultural context of the concrete research practice. Reflexivity entails questioning one’s own engagement. It includes introspection on the part of the researcher, both individual and collective, and ideally provides the means to assess the extent and nature of social and cultural elements in the research process. It is from this introspective movement, and the learning process that accompanies it, that the opportunity arises for transition researchers to actively shape their engagement in a reflexive manner.

In the case of hydrogen technology research, reflexivity thus directs attention to the ‘objectifying relations’ from which this field of research derives its purpose and meaning. We suffice here by raising a few questions as potential starting points for an in-depth introspection that traverses the economic, spiritual, emotional, existential and political ties that the research domain and each of its members maintain with its social fabric. For instance: What vision of sustainability aligns with a technological quest for hydrogen-based ‘sustainable fuels’? Who benefits from this research and who finances it? As a researcher with a specific positionality – informed by race, gender and cultural and social background – whose voices do I respond to in formulating my research questions? What socio-ecological relationships give ‘hydrogen’ the sense that it takes in my research? What human-nature relations are presupposed in a project involving resource-intensive technologies such as electrolysers and industrial-scale solar farms? Does this not risk reinforcing a technological solutionist approach that perpetuates neo-colonial power relations through unequal ecological and value exchange (Andreucci et al., Reference Andreucci, García López, Radhuber, Conde, Voskoboynik, Farrugia and Zografos2023)?

In sum, while reflexivity is possible to a certain extent, it does not offer a meta-perspective from which to approach things neutrally. Engaging with different frameworks and stakeholder perspectives, as well as conducting reflexive exercises, can enhance reflexive awareness, but the incompleteness is irreducible: you can encounter it, you can encircle it, but you cannot erase it with more knowledge. Reflexivity cannot be instrumentalised as a conscious, organised and planned activity as proposed by the reflective approach (Beers & Van Mierlo, Reference Beers and Van Mierlo2017). As such, reflexivity demands modesty and openness, which will be discussed in Section 27.3.

27.2.1 The Non-neutrality of Sustainability

Transition researchers often focus on ‘deep transitions’ (Kanger & Schot, Reference Kanger and Schot2019), ‘big picture questions’ (Köhler et al., Reference Köhler, Geels, Kern, Markard, Onsongo, Wieczorek, Alkemade, Avelino, Bergek, Boons, Fünfschilling, Hess, Holtz, Hyysalo, Jenkins, Kivimaa, Martiskainen, McMeekin, Mühlemeier and Wells2019) or ‘deep transformative change’ (Loorbach, Reference Loorbach2022). Efforts are made to distinguish, for example, socio-technical transitions and sustainability transitions (Loorbach et al., Reference Loorbach, Frantzeskaki and Avelino2017) or transitions and transformations (Hölscher et al., Reference Hölscher, Wittmayer and Loorbach2018) to make room for explicitly relating the desired changes to sustainability. Yet within STR, the emphasis often is on historical reconstructions of transition processes, the underlying dynamics and the emerging patterns of change (Grin et al., Reference Grin, Rotmans and Schot2010; Köhler et al., Reference Köhler, Geels, Kern, Markard, Onsongo, Wieczorek, Alkemade, Avelino, Bergek, Boons, Fünfschilling, Hess, Holtz, Hyysalo, Jenkins, Kivimaa, Martiskainen, McMeekin, Mühlemeier and Wells2019), typically leaving substantive and normative aspects underexposed. In what follows, normative categories of STR are elucidated by drawing inspiration from the literature on the politics of sustainability.

Sustainability problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality underscore the need for transitions (Richardson et al., Reference Richardson, Steffen, Lucht, Bendtsen, Cornell, Donges, Drüke, Fetzer, Bala, Von Bloh, Feulner, Fiedler, Gerten, Gleeson, Hofmann, Huiskamp, Kummu, Mohan, Nogués-Bravo and 514Rockström2023). However, ongoing discussions about sustainability, particularly regarding the what, when and how of transitions to sustainability, highlight the politics of sustainability. In this context, scholars show how stakeholders such as researchers, policymakers, industry and NGOs all have their specific concerns related to sustainability. They present different problem definitions and solutions, harbour competing interests and hold conflicting values, necessitating analyses of who defines sustainability for whom and to what ends and effects (Blythe et al., Reference Blythe, Silver, Evans, Armitage, Bennett, Moore, Morrison and Brown2018; Scoones et al., Reference Scoones, Newell, Leach, Scoones, Leach and Newell2015). Correspondingly, other scholars highlight that these discussions reveal the characteristics of sustainability problems, namely incomplete and fragmented expert knowledge and high levels of uncertainty (Block et al., Reference Block, Goeminne and Van Poeck2018; Rittel & Webber, Reference Rittel and Webber1973). Hence, sustainability emerges as a highly political and contested concept.

To explore the politics of sustainability, scholars have proposed several classifications with system-affirming approaches on the one hand and system-breaking approaches on the other (e.g. Block & Paredis, Reference Block, Paredis, Van Poeck, Östman and Öhman2019; Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2005). Based on Hopwood (Reference Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien2005), Block & Paredis (Reference Block, Paredis, Van Poeck, Östman and Öhman2019) distinguish three views on the nature and scope of change: status quo, reformist and transformative views. According to status quo approaches, sustainability can be achieved within existing networks of political, cultural and economic power. Currently, this perspective is linked to eco-efficiency, international competitiveness, economic growth and free markets as well as concepts such as ‘ecological modernisation’ and ‘green growth’. Reformist approaches seek to preserve but thoroughly reform existing power relations, assigning a crucial role to regulative and redistributive governance. According to transformative approaches, finally, fundamental change is needed as sustainability problems are ‘located within the very economic and power structures of society’ (p. 45) and in ‘how humans interrelate and relate with the environment’ (Hopwood et al., Reference Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien2005, p. 45). Consequently, solutions and transition pathways must be sought outside dominant networks of power and beyond eco-efficiency. Here one can think of sufficiency, redistribution and decommodification, as well as transformative approaches like environmental justice, degrowth and an economic system that defines serving the common good as its principal goal (e.g. D’Alisa et al., 2015; Feola et al., Reference Feola, Vincent and Moore2021; Schlosberg, Reference Schlosberg2007).

It is clear that STR’s key normative categories are non-neutral, particularly sustainability, which is a highly political and contested concept. Reflexivity, in this respect, requires transition researchers to acknowledge this political dimension in an open and critical manner while remaining aware of the assumptions, concerns, problem definitions, interests and values they include or exclude. Researchers may then not only ask what kind of socio-technical systems and transition pathways their research embeds and incites but also which systems and pathways they intend to shape, and where and when? Before further exploring such a reflexive stance in Section 27.3, the chapter delves into the non-neutrality of STR’s descriptive categories.

27.2.2 The Non-neutrality of Transition Frameworks

While it may be evident that normative categories and sustainability in particular are not neutral, the descriptive categories in STR are also far from neutral. Each transition framework contains rationales, logics, assumptions and concerns that, often implicitly, touch upon the question of what the world should look like.

Frameworks like the multi-level perspective, strategic niche management, technological innovation systems (TIS) and transition management, for example, each offer a specific ‘systemic’ lens that highlights certain issues and concerns while overlooking others. The multi-level perspective has a theoretical basis in social constructivism, evolutionary economics and neo-institutional theory (Geels, Reference Geels2020), which manifests itself, for example, in a focus on the interaction between hierarchical levels as different degrees of structuration (e.g. the landscape, regime and niche levels), at the expense of considering actor (inter)actions (De Haan & Rotmans, Reference De Haan and Rotmans2018) or the dynamics of social practices in everyday life (De Roeck & Van Poeck, Reference De Roeck and Van Poeck2023; Laakso et al., Reference Laakso, Aro, Heiskanen and Kaljonen2021). Interestingly, Keller and colleagues (Reference Keller, Noorkõiv and Vihalemm2022) note that, when combined, both approaches are useful for uncovering the reasons why change derails or fails. Similarly, inclusion-exclusion mechanisms play a role in TIS. While TIS analyses have provided valuable theoretical and empirical insights into the dynamics of technological innovation (Bergek et al., Reference Bergek, Jacobsson, Carlsson, Lindmark and Rickne2008; Hekkert et al., Reference Hekkert, Suurs, Negro, Kuhlmann and Smits2007), they are also criticised for their ‘inward-looking’ nature with insufficient consideration of contextual factors that can influence the success or failure of a technology (Edsand, Reference Edsand2019; Markard & Truffer, Reference Markard and Truffer2008). As Edsand (Reference Edsand2019) illustrates, a lack of reflexivity makes it so that what becomes external context receives little attention. Hence, TIS researchers have to decide for themselves where the boundaries of the focal innovation system lie, illustrating the non-neutrality of the TIS approach.

More fundamentally, transition frameworks are imbued with ontological, epistemological and ethical assumptions. Rather than a faithful mirror of the world (cf. Section 27.1.2), STR concepts and frameworks (e.g. niche, regime, landscape, transition pathways, incumbents) are models and metaphors that represent a particular understanding of the world – they are situated concepts. For example, a few studies indicate that STR has been structured by a rather modernist worldview based on dualistic separations between subject vs. object, human vs. non-human, nature vs. culture and emotion vs. rationality (cf. Chapter 25 by Pel & Stirling; Stirling, Reference Stirling, Scoones, Leach and Newell2015). Along these lines, STR is increasingly challenged because it separates science and action (Shove & Walker, Reference Shove and Walker2007), it neglects culture in the co-evolution of technology and culture (Genus & Coles, Reference Genus and Coles2008), and it may fail to understand colonially accumulated power relations (Ghosh et al., Reference Ghosh, Ramos-Mejía, Machado, Yuana and Schiller2021; McGowan & Antadze, Reference McGowan and Antadze2023). Additionally, concerns have been raised about the dominance of capitalist nature-society relations (Feola, Reference Feola2020) and the failure to engage with the pluriverse, which acknowledges the potential of diverse ways of being and knowing (Arora & Stirling, Reference Arora and Stirling2023; Escobar, Reference Escobar2015). In this context, it becomes pertinent for transition researchers to explore these and other, hitherto excluded, paradigms and worldviews as well as to allow for a different imaginary of politics.

Let us attempt to illustrate the potential implications through the lens of human-nature relationships. The ‘modern’ view typically separates humans from nature, implying that non-human actors (e.g. ecosystems, animals, plants) lack agency, leaving the capacity for action, control or management solely to humans, which is an assumption that is engrained in transition frameworks. However, what if transition researchers also took inspiration from scholars like Haraway (Reference Haraway2016), Stengers (Reference Stengers2015), Latour (Reference Latour2018) or Pohl (Reference Pohl2020) as well as from indigenous perspectives (Arora & Stirling, Reference Arora and Stirling2023; Escobar, Reference Escobar2018) to experiment with alternative paradigms that acknowledge the interconnectedness of beings and the agency of non-human actors?

While it is impossible to theorise what this implies for STR at this stage, it does create an opportunity for transition researchers to question their own practices in a reflexive manner. Using a pluralistic perspective and acknowledging the legitimacy and value of other ways of knowing, the following ideas can be explored: What socio-technical futures could STR envision if it no longer perceives ‘(m)Other Nature’ (Pohl, Reference Pohl2020) as ‘out there’ or as the harmonious and stable background, but rather as an actor on stage disrupting current relations (Latour, Reference Latour2018)? How might STR give voice to non-human actors to delve deeper into the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans? And how can STR integrate their agency into theorising possible transition pathways? Moreover, should STR continue to focus on multi-level perspective analyses from different levels (niches, regime, landscape) within one system if everything is fluid and interconnected through relational networks (Contesse et al., Reference Contesse, Duncan, Legun and Klerkx2021)? If anthropocentrism and techno-optimism fade into the background and people are seen as more humble terrestrials among other terrestrials (Latour, Reference Latour2018), how then could STR reconsider and redefine some of its key concepts and assumptions about ‘commons’ and property rights over natural resources and land? And how might STR reconceptualise the boundaries of a TIS by including the role of non-human actors and their agency?

27.3.1 Research Orientation: Where Am I Going?

Consider the following example of an early-career transition researcher: A transition researcher embarks on a study focusing on oil majors with the intent of showcasing these actors as regime members impeding change. After scrutinising the annual reports of oil majors against the Paris Agreement’s reduction targets, the researcher’s first publication illustrates that these companies are, indeed, villains when it comes to sustainability. Presenting these findings to the industry, the researcher hopes to influence their behaviour by portraying them as, at best, incrementalists. Continuing this effort in a second study, the researcher conducts interviews within the industry. The belief in their own sustainable technology is strong and their rhetoric sounds powerful. Still, the researcher observes that a lot of these oil folks at least say that they support radical sustainability agendas. However perplexing and inconsistent these observations are, they prompt the researcher to reassess the initial results, revealing that actors who were previously categorised as regime actors are, in hindsight, more diverse and complex. Infused with doubt and vulnerability stemming from the first two studies, the researcher starts a third study focused on engaging with the industry through several workshops. Here, the researcher balances between the findings of the first and subsequent studies. Specifically, the researcher feels compelled to highlight the concerns of other actors with divergent assumptions. Yet it is a struggle to use an equally powerful rhetoric and introduce clear alternatives. Throughout this balancing process, the researcher continuously reflects on existing research that highlights the significant role of oil majors in impeding much-needed shifts to sustainability, assumptions about regime actors in STR, his own partial discoveries and personal views.

In each new study, our researcher encounters an irreducible incompleteness as well as a multitude of perspectives, interests and concerns. The first study challenges very powerful actors’ views, while an open-ended and perhaps vulnerable approach in the second study not only calls these findings into question but also challenges STR’s core concept of the regime. In the third study, the researcher balances between these findings, existing literature, stakeholder views and their own values and position. Overall, this leads the researcher to adopt a modest stance. Over time, he acknowledges and navigates the situatedness of other actors’ perspectives and assumptions, his own findings as well as STR concepts. Yet such navigating does not come easily, the circumstances of the researcher’s study, particularly the overwhelming messiness and uncertainty, often evoke feelings of anxiety and vulnerability. Indeed, every reflexive effort will be met with new uncertainties and full reflexivity is an elusive goal. Still, the researcher overcomes anxiety and carefully and continuously interrogates, and balances between, theory, the empirical settings and one’s own findings and feelings.

While these circumstances may induce modesty in the researcher, recognising the situatedness of the research practices, including the normative and descriptive categories of STR (cf. Section 27.2), is precisely what enables transition researchers to enrich this modesty with an immodest, engaged research orientation.Footnote ⁴ Such a modest immodesty (Goeminne & Block, Reference Goeminne, Block, Block and Goeminne2014), characterised by a continuous learning-by-doing attitude, allows transition researchers to commit to justice without adhering to fixed sustainability principles and to move between such principles and concrete settings. They can then navigate power dynamics in ways that do not unfold destructively (Caniglia et al., Reference Caniglia, Luederitz, von Wirth, Fazey, Martín-López, Hondrila, König, von Wehrden, Schäpke, Laubichler and Lang2021), especially by playing various roles (cf. Section 27.2.2). Furthermore, regarding the balancing between modesty and immodesty, STR allows to pursue a zone of nuanced positions and well-considered engagement. Here, transition concepts can serve as a starting point for overcoming lines of polarisation resulting from naive optimism and paralysing critiques of transitions. Against naive optimism, path dependence may highlight the heavy hand of the past; the institutional contradictions within a regime can be seized to create opportunities for change, leading away from both naive optimism and paralysing critiques; and niche–regime dialectics allow to illustrate how innovations diversify over time into brighter and darker variations (Pel et al., Reference Pel, Wittmayer, Avelino, Loorbach and De Geus2023).

Taken together, a reflexive research orientation involves transition researchers being continuously attentive to how their research trajectory unfolds with respect to sustainability (cf. Section 27.1.1), transition frameworks (cf. Section 27.1.2), empirical and institutional environments and their own views. To be sure, this process of introspection knows no end and is being shaped and co-shaped over time by, amongst other things, theory, empirics, research environments as well as personal views and experiences. Yet, while acknowledging their own situatedness calls for a degree of modesty, it also encourages transition researchers to shape their engagement in a reflexive manner. This engagement may encompass a range of more immodest research roles, to which we turn now.

27.3.2 Research Roles: How Can I Act?

Let us return to the example of our transition researcher: The third study engaged with the industry through workshops and revealed the conditions under which regime actors facilitate or impede transitions. Building upon this, a fourth study continues to explore this field by conducting additional interviews with NGOs and policymakers. This results in a paper that underscores the diverse views of the stakeholders regarding transitions rather than reproducing a single view of one actor. By discussing the results on several occasions with the different stakeholders, the researcher takes up the role of mediating between these diverse perspectives in an attempt to inform stakeholders about each other’s views. This task is demanding as the researcher does not only navigate stakeholder viewpoints but also his own and those found in the existing literature and those of colleagues. It may involve feigning neutrality, managing diverse expectations and facing accusations of bias. Yet, as the researcher gains confidence, stakeholders are brought together to facilitate a dialogue process geared towards learning. While the researcher identifies opportunities for long-term learning processes, the stakeholders express a desire for concrete solutions to real-world problems. In yet another workshop, the researcher gathers the confidence to actively intervene and challenge dominant views by not only elucidating the diversity of perspectives but also highlighting excluded views. The researcher balances between modest and immodest roles, risking criticisms of ambiguity once again.

This example illustrates how one researcher may intentionally adopt various roles within different academic, policy and empirical settings where STR is put to use. The researcher moves from the conventional role of a scholar to that of a knowledge broker, mediating between the different perspectives of stakeholders. Subsequently, the role of a process facilitator is played, establishing and facilitating collaborative learning processes with stakeholders. Eventually, a role akin to a change agent is adopted, particularly advocating for marginalised views. Over the past years, these and other roles of researchers have been identified and described in sustainability literature (Schrage et al., Reference Schrage, Barraclough, Wilkerson, Cusens and Fuller2023; Turnhout et al., Reference Turnhout, Stuiver, Klostermann, Harms and Leeuwis2013; Wittmayer & Schäpke, Reference Wittmayer and Schäpke2014).

Importantly, in addition to acknowledging and playing such roles, the researcher seizes the opportunity to take up a variety of engaged and more immodest roles to open up these settings to wider scrutiny. Balancing and juggling between different researcher roles (Balmer et al., Reference Balmer, Calvert, Marris, Molyneux-Hodgson, Frow, Kearnes, Bulpin, Schyfter, MacKenzie and Martin2015; Chambers et al., Reference Chambers, Wyborn, Klenk, Ryan, Serban, Bennett, Brennan, Charli-Joseph, Fernández-Giménez, Galvin, Goldstein, Haller, Hill, Munera, Nel, Österblom, Reid, Riechers, Spierenburg and Rondeau2022; Schuijer et al., Reference Schuijer, Broerse and Kupper2021), the researcher attempts to induce change while carrying out research. In the example, there is a move from sensibly brokering between knowledges and perspectives towards a more explicit commitment to elevating marginalised views and perhaps a transformative sustainability perspective (cf. Section 27.1.1). In other words, as ‘various positions and actions become differentially possible across space, types of engagement and over time’ (p. 16), there is potential to enable change by moving back and forth between roles and ‘play the chameleon’ (Balmer et al., Reference Balmer, Calvert, Marris, Molyneux-Hodgson, Frow, Kearnes, Bulpin, Schyfter, MacKenzie and Martin2015, p. 16).

The example further shows that such role-playing faces serious challenges. Specifically for early-career scholars, it has been observed that the current academic system binds them to developing transformative knowledge rather than enabling change through stakeholder engagement or action research (Kump et al., Reference Kump, Wittmayer, Bogner and Beekman2023). Moreover, adopting multiple research roles requires social, organisational and, above all, navigational skills that go beyond the regular academic curriculum (Schuijer et al., Reference Schuijer, Broerse and Kupper2021). Other challenges that were identified in the context of playing different roles include role conflicts between engaged academic and project worker roles, established political settings that favour traditional research roles, and results and outcomes (e.g. Bulten et al., Reference Bulten, Hessels, Hordijk and Segrave2021; Thapa et al., Reference Thapa, Vermeulen and Deutz2022; Wittmayer et al., Reference Wittmayer, Huang, Bogner, Boyle, Hölscher, Von Wirth, Boumans, Garst, Hendlin, Lavanga, Loorbach, Mungekar, Tshangela, Vandekerckhove and Vasques2024). Notwithstanding these challenges, transition researchers can, in different contexts, intentionally and reflexively juggle between multiple roles to open academic and empirical settings to wider scrutiny.

27.3.3 Positionality: Where Do I Come From?

Let us return to our example of a transition researcher once more: as mentioned, the researcher’s first publication portrays oil majors as regime members. This led to attempts to change these actors by explaining to them how they are villains and block niche innovation. Yet, when wrapping up the four studies in a methodological chapter of the PhD, the researcher realises, in hindsight, that his gender, Western background, education, research group, progressive ideas and reading of early yet established STR may have shaped the research results. Specifically, being progressive and following STR, he may have uncritically assumed that all oil majors are regime members and thus villains. At the same time, as a Western man, he felt a degree of acceptance within an industry dominated by middle-aged men in suits, which may have facilitated roles such as knowledge brokering between the industry and civil society. Yet in doing so, this background may have made him a gullible researcher who neglected the industry’s historical roles and current delaying tactics.

This example not only illustrates the non-neutrality of the regime concept (cf. Section 27.1.1), making researchers see certain things and not others (e.g. all oil majors are villains by definition), but also underscores the persisting nature of reflexivity in relation to one’s own positionality. Reflexivity is not ‘a badge of honor’ (p. 17) that can be earned (Peshkin, Reference Peshkin1988), but rather a continuous inquiry into how one holds oneself as a responsible subject within the intricate web of personal characteristics (e.g. personality, capacities and specific histories) and research assumptions. The beginnings of such introspective reflections have begun to emerge in recent transition research (e.g. McGowan & Antadze, Reference McGowan and Antadze2023; Susur & Karakaya, Reference Susur and Karakaya2021) and can be found in the PhD theses of a few transition scholars (e.g. Ampe, Reference Ampe2022; Avelino, Reference Avelino2011; Bosman, Reference Bosman2022; Wittmayer, Reference Wittmayer2016). For instance, as ‘the only woman, wearing a pink scarf’, Avelino (Reference Avelino2011) notes a sharp contrast with ‘the crowd that predominantly consisted of middle-aged men in grey suits’ (p. 111) in her case studies, which is an observation that persisted throughout the research process. Likewise, one of us reflected on how personal, institutional and cultural contexts shaped the produced research (Ampe, Reference Ampe2022). These researchers attempt to bear witness to how their research findings are co-shaped by personal experiences with research roles, specific histories, institutional goals, resource-limited projects and normative ambitions, among many other factors. While such introspection is standard practice in fields like anthropology, ethnology and gender studies – where, for example, dedicating a full chapter to one’s positionality is considered an essential component of a PhD – it remains subject to dismissal in some academic circles as ‘unscientific’. Indeed, embracing vulnerability in this context requires both courage and determination.