24.1 Introduction
Most scholars will agree that understanding and catalysing sustainability transitions require insights and engagement from across disciplines. Nevertheless, establishing an understanding or working across disciplinary boundaries is seldom easy. Even scholars who work within socio-technical traditions may quarrel over questions such as ‘when innovation is environmental’ or ‘what constitutes societal transition’ (Stirling, Reference Stirling2011: 82). One of the reasons for this is that different theoretical perspectives and research approaches are anchored in different ontologies, that is, ‘foundational assumptions about the nature of the (social) world, and its causal relationships’ (Geels, Reference Geels2010: 496). Further, scholars operate within different epistemologies, namely different ways of understanding ‘what constitutes valuable knowledge’ (Hazard et al., Reference Hazard, Cerf, Lamine, Magda and Steyaert2020). Spelled out differently, this means that how we understand reality, combined with our methods, theories and evaluations of normative questions, feeds into the production of knowledge, resulting in distinctly different styles of research that are not always easily compared, combined or integrated.
Within sustainability transitions research, such dynamics have been exacerbated by the research community growing rapidly over the last decade. With this growth, the focus of transition scholars has expanded. From its beginnings, sustainability transitions research studied patterns of technological change and stability, with the underlying question being how new and more sustainable technologies could replace existing, environmentally harmful ones (e.g. Kemp, Reference Kemp1994). This was done through conceptualising sectors like energy supply, water supply or transportation as socio-technical systems, alongside an understanding of socio-technical transitions as ‘a set of processes that lead to a fundamental shift in socio-technical systems’ (Markard, Raven and Truffer, Reference Markard, Raven and Truffer2012: 956). An example is the study of the processes that advance or impair a shift from fossil fuel energy systems to renewable energy systems. Today, such system-internal inquiry is accompanied by research that probes sustainability transitions but from different angles. Examples include studies of the justice and ethical implications of transitions, non-technological transitions (e.g. through sufficiency) or research on the interaction between multiple sectors and systems as a consequence of transitions (e.g. Köhler et al., Reference Köhler, Geels, Kern, Markard, Onsongo, Wieczorek and Wells2019; Khmara and Kronenberg, Reference Khmara and Kronenberg2020; Ryghaug and Skjølsvold, Reference Ryghaug and Skjølsvold2021; Solbu et al., Reference Solbu, Ryghaug, Skjølsvold, Heidenreich and Næss2024; Andersen et al., Reference Andersen, Geels, Coenen, Hanson, Korsnes, Linnerud and Wiebe2023). Hence, transition studies have experienced an expansion in what we can call their epistemological and ontological focus: what they recognise as important knowledge and what the key building blocks of that knowledge are.
Through exploring ontological and epistemological debates, this chapter seeks to advance reflections about some of the different ways that we can know sustainability transitions and about the relationships between these ways of knowing. The ambition is on the one hand to facilitate navigation of an increasingly complex field, but perhaps also to help make sense of some of the confusions and frustrations that may emerge as part of working in an interdisciplinary reality. I will argue that the epistemological and ontological diversity that is currently emerging within sustainability transitions research is a strength that should be embraced, rather than pursuing a strategy of consolidating a uniform style of research where disciplinary boundaries are tightly policed and competing understandings of what matters pushed out.
24.2 Epistemological and Ontological Debates in Sustainability Transitions Research
Ontological and epistemological debates within sustainability transitions research have typically emerged around what we can call the dominant frameworks in the tradition. Geels (Reference Geels2022) notes that a ‘first wave’ of transition studies emerged during the 1990s and early 2000s, and that this wave served to establish frameworks such as the multi-level perspective (MLP), strategic niche management (SNM) and technological innovation systems (TIS). With the addition of transition management (TM), these are what have become the four dominant frameworks within early sustainability transitions research (Markard, Raven and Truffer, Reference Markard, Raven and Truffer2012; Zolfagharian et al., Reference Zolfagharian, Walrave, Raven and Romme2019). For much of the research during this early phase, the MLP served either as a basis for the research conducted or as a reference point. Today, the MLP arguably serves as what sociologists of innovation have called an obligatory passage point (see, e.g. Callon, Reference Callon1986) within the transition community, that is, a prism that shapes debates, and that scholars often relate to whether they use the perspective or not (Zolfagharian et al., Reference Zolfagharian, Walrave, Raven and Romme2019). Given its centrality in the field, and because SNM, TM and the MLP all circle around the basic concepts of niche, regime and landscape, the MLP will serve as the starting point and basis for the following discussion.
24.2.1 The Epistemological and Ontological Building Blocks of First Wave Sustainability Transitions Research
The MLP (e.g. Geels, Reference Geels2002), as it emerged during the first wave of transition studies, started from a distinct interest in technology and in understanding the potential role of technologies in rendering the world a more sustainable place. Early contributions were agnostic about the contribution of technologies in making a sustainable world, highlighting that the outcome would depend on developments, for example within population growth and natural resource use. Nevertheless, pioneers such as Kemp (Reference Kemp1994) were instrumental in establishing a dominant narrative where the goal of transition studies was to analyse ‘[…] The possibilities of inducing large-scale technological transitions, i.e., an change in our basic technologies of production, transport and consumption’ (ibid.: 1024). This interest in technology and large-scale technological changes was operationalised through the introduction of what are today household concepts within transition studies, such as niches, regimes and landscapes (Kemp, Reference Kemp1994; Kemp, Schot & Hoogma, Reference Kemp, Schot and Hoogma1998; Rip and Kemp, Reference Rip, Kemp, Rayner and Malone1998).
This core interest in technological change as the central process to achieve sustainability resulted in a strong focus on what was understood to be the introduction of sustainable innovations. The classical narrative that follows from this way of thinking is that sustainable innovations, typically conceptualised as emerging in niches, face an uphill battle against existing socio-technical regimes. These regimes are understood to be path dependent and locked in to established modes of operation guided by stable rules and infrastructures. In terms of change, regimes tend to produce incremental innovation for efficiency gains or end-of-pipe solutions while serving as an effective barrier for radical shifts. Activities within both niches and regimes are seen as impacted by developments within what the MLP calls the landscape. These are exogenous, macro developments that are difficult to affect, for example, climate change and geopolitics.
The MLP, then, sees socio-technical transitions as the outcome of alignments between processes across these three levels. First, protected niches build up, for example, through processes of learning, policy support or an increase in investments. Once achieving momentum, niches can begin affecting, changing and potentially destabilising regimes. These developments can become exacerbated by landscape developments (which if they are intense and immediate are often referred to as ‘shocks’). From these processes, regimes become pressured, and what scholars refer to as windows of opportunities for expanding niche innovations may emerge.
It is important in this context to note that the MLP is not meant as ‘an ontological description of reality, but an analytical and heuristic framework’ (Geels, Reference Geels2002: 1273). This means that it constitutes a lens that primarily exists so that scholars can understand the dynamics of technological innovation journeys and their challenges when focusing on niches or on ‘regime shifts (transitions) and the factors that lead to the destabilisation of existing regimes and the emergence of new regimes’ (Markard, Raven and Truffer, Reference Markard, Raven and Truffer2012: 956). That lens has been constructed by a mix of foundational ontological and epistemological assumptions borrowed from different academic traditions.
Many of the ontological and epistemological discussions of first-wave transition studies circled around what the relevant types of knowledge are for understanding such innovation journeys or how to sharpen the lens for understanding regime shifts. Later, however, the challenges have become more fundamental, for example, by questioning if technological change should be at the core of analysis or how we can really know that a new technological regime is sustainable. Nevertheless, let us first discuss some of the original ontological and epistemological building blocks that have shaped transition studies before scrutinising some early tensions and resulting expansions in what transition scholars have tended to view as relevant knowledge.
The first wave of transition studies was characterised by ‘single case studies of longitudinal innovation and transition processes’ (Geels, Reference Geels2022). It combined insights from evolutionary economics (e.g. Dosi, Reference Dosi1982) with perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS) (e.g. Pinch and Bijker, Reference Pinch and Bijker1984). These perspectives share an interest in technology and technological change but are rooted in distinct foundational ontologies, which have different understandings of transitions, both in terms of how one should understand the agents that produce change and the mechanisms that lead to change. Evolutionary economics provided a focus on the broad dynamics and patterns of technological stability and change. In evolutionary thinking, the key causal agents are understood as individual agents that are part of a broader population (Geels, Reference Geels2010, building on Mahoney, Reference Mahoney2004). The key agents in question are firms. Through processes of variation (e.g. R&D investments, competence building and knowledge flows) and feedback from the selection environment (e.g. the market, green policies), a process of technological change gradually evolves.
Science and Technology Studies, on the other hand, is rooted in a constructivist or interpretivist ontology. This perspective highlights that different individuals and social groups have different interpretations of new technologies and that a key challenge for the stabilisation and growth of technologies is to close controversies that arise from such interpretations. Through such a perspective, society, typically operationalised as social groups, interests and networks, makes sense of, adapts, domesticates, uses and through all of this, embeds technologies in society. The key agents of change, then, are individuals or social groups with different interpretations and understandings. Within such a perspective, processes of shared meaning-making through interaction and the closure of controversies through debate between societal interests are central to the development of new technologies (Geels, Reference Geels2010). Through this combination of evolutionary and constructivist thinking, Geels (Reference Geels2010: 505) argues that scholars can combine ‘evolutionary interest in long-term patterns (trajectories, speciation, invasion, extinction) with an interpretive interest in social enactment, sense-making, and cognitive learning’, in a framework that is fundamentally socio-technical in its analysis of the challenges that new, sustainable technologies face.
24.2.2 Epistemic and Ontological Challenges to First Wave Transition Theories
The MLP and associated theories of transition have been subject to at least two types of criticism. First, a large body of literature has called for a broadening of the epistemic focus of transition studies. Many of these criticisms did not pose foundational challenges to how transition scholars of the first wave understood and explained transitions but have rather called for shifts or broadenings in the types of questions asked and the types of insights that the tradition understands as valuable knowledge. Examples of this include calling for the study of transitions beyond technological innovation (e.g. Shove and Walker, Reference Shove and Walker2007), the incorporation of spatial and geographic perspectives (e.g. Hansen and Coenen, Reference Hansen and Coenen2015), a stronger focus on the role of actors and agency (e.g. Bjerkan et al., Reference Bjerkan, Ryghaug and Skjølsvold2021), an increased interest in the role of politics (Meadowcroft, Reference Meadowcroft2009) and a similar call for the inclusion of studies of power (e.g. Avelino and Rotmans, Reference Avelino and Rotmans2009). From such challenges, at least two trends can be observed. First, a tendency for MLP and the other core perspectives of sustainability transitions research has been to build such considerations into existing frameworks, thereby making the MLP more complex (see, e.g. Geels (Reference Geels2019) for a discussion or Sorrell Reference Sorrell2018 for a criticism). Second, however, Zolfagharian et al. (Reference Zolfagharian, Walrave, Raven and Romme2019) note that there has been a tendency of transition scholars turning to other social scientific frameworks and borrowing insights from them to make transition analyses with a different flavour. Geels (Reference Geels2022) recognises this and maintains that this outreach to and consolidation with the broader social sciences is what characterises a second wave of transition studies.
The second challenge that the MLP and associated theories have received is anchored in ontology, questioning the ‘foundational assumptions about the nature of the (social) world’ within dominant transition studies. During the relatively early stages of transitions research, one such strand of criticism was fronted by scholars advancing variants of what we can call flat ontologies (e.g. Shove and Walker, Reference Shove and Walker2010; Jørgensen, Reference Jørgensen2012; Schatzki, Reference Schatzki, Spaargaren, Weenink and Lamers2016). Anchored in theories such as actor-network theory (ANT) (e.g. Callon, Reference Callon1986) and social practice theory (e.g. Cetina, Schatzki and Von Savigny, Reference Cetina, Schatzki and Von Savigny2005), researchers within such perspectives note that the three levels mobilised in the MLP, SNM and TM are ‘ontologically suspect’ (Schatzki, Reference Schatzki, Spaargaren, Weenink and Lamers2016). Such perspectives reject the idea of predetermined levels of structuration and hierarchy and rather focus on how stability and change are constantly produced and reproduced through concrete actions and interactions between actors and technologies. As Schatzki (Reference Schatzki, Spaargaren, Weenink and Lamers2016: 16) writes: ‘What the MLP distinguishes as the micro and the meso “levels” are really just different components of a single plenum embracing spaces of innovation’. Within these perspectives, there is a strong focus on what actors do or on the enactment of practices. This lends itself to studies of innovation ‘in action’, for example, through translation processes to build and mobilise new actor-networks to advance innovations.
Geels (Reference Geels2010) positions these perspectives under the umbrella of relationism and highlights that it might be difficult to find fertile ground if one attempts to reconcile the MLP-style work with this tradition. In part, this has to do with the mobilisation of an analytical style that increases the complexity of the social world compared to the MLP, but Geels also relates this difficulty to what he sees as a lack of interest in stability among scholars working within flat or relational perspectives. That said, ideas from ANT have frequently found their way into MLP-style studies, for example, through a focus on the role of translation in niche development (Raven and Verbong, Reference Raven, Verbong, Schilpzand and Witkamp2011). Further, work has also been done to bring ideas from practice theory in dialogue with the core transition studies frameworks (Hargreaves et al., Reference Hargreaves, Longhurst and Seyfang2013; Svennevik, Reference Svennevik2022). This suggests that while the fundamental ontological differences between such perspectives are too large for strong integration, pragmatic mobilisation of concepts across these spheres can be, and has been, fruitful.
While scholars adhering to a flat ontology may find the analytical style of the MLP too rigid, recent years have also seen a different type of ontological debate. Writing from a critical-realist perspective, several scholars have argued that the MLP and its process-oriented and narrative analyses primarily describe but do not really explain transitions (e.g. Sorrell, Reference Sorrell2018). Critical realists see the social world, and therefore also transitions, as consisting of three layers. First, a surface or empirical layer, which consists of events that can be experienced, observed or measured directly. Second is the actual layer. Here, one can find all events and processes that happen in the world. These can sometimes be observed, but sometimes these are also not observable. Finally, the real layer consists of causal structures and mechanisms, which underlie and cause the events in the actual and empirical layers.
Sorrell (Reference Sorrell2018) notes that this understanding of the world poses some challenges to the MLP. First, he notes that the case study-driven research of MLP scholars has focused on the directly observable, but that it is lacking in terms of understanding underlying mechanisms and structures. Further, the types of epistemic expansions noted earlier in this chapter are considered a problem, because they create unnecessary complexities, which might make key causal mechanisms and structures more difficult to see. Whereas the tendency among relationist scholars will be to increase the complexity and ‘messiness’ of transition analysis, critical realists will gravitate towards reducing complexity, seeking more formal explanations (Svensson and Nikoleris, Reference Svensson and Nikoleris2018). These discussions also carry over into debates about epistemology in the form of methodology and representation. Also here, critical realists have advocated for more formal methods, such as agent-based modelling (see, e.g. McDowall and Geels (Reference McDowall and Geels2017) and Sorrell, Reference Sorrell2018 for discussions), the argument being that that such modelling exercises might enable the identification of key causal mechanisms in transition processes.
24.3 Beyond Studies of Transitions as Innovation and Technology Journeys
In the discussions raised over the last pages, I have provided some pointers to ontological and epistemological debates within first-wave transition studies. Here, transitions were seen through processes where niches bump against regimes. With research questions along such lines, the MLP and associated frameworks provide a basic ‘plot for the study of transitions’ (Geels, Reference Geels2011; Sorrell, Reference Sorrell2018). Stirling (Reference Stirling2019) notes that there has been a tendency within this tradition of reifying concepts such as ‘incumbency’ or ‘regimes’, that is, treating these ideas as if they are solid material entities that exist in the world. This tendency, he notes, might result in blind spots, leading the community of transitions researchers to overlook crucial phenomena that lie beyond what concepts such as the ‘regime’ may explain. Through relying too much on a reified standard narrative, transition studies may end up in a paradoxical position, where they see possibilities for change within discrete socio-technical systems while rendering the rest of society and its power dynamics stable, or, as Haugland (Reference Haugland2022) noted, promoting ‘innovation for preservation’. Perhaps as a reaction to the reification of concepts and a basic transition plotline, sustainability transitions research has become populated with scholars that contest these ideas. Reviewing papers from the last decade published within the journal Environmental innovations and Societal Transitions, Truffer et al. (Reference Truffer, Rohracher, Kivimaa, Raven, Alkemade, Carvalho and Feola2022: 335) note that ‘Gender and different forms of power and conflict constellations are receiving increasing attention and, alongside with that, critical perspectives have gained increasing salience in the field’. In the following, I will discuss three of the many epistemological strands of research that coexist with the first-wave traditions.
While first-wave transition studies circled around technology, new work challenges the epistemic primacy of this focus, calling for epistemic and normative engagement with more fundamental traits of contemporary societies. Critique along these lines notes that the basic plotline of the MLP has made sustainability transitions scholars ‘blind’ to phenomena such as capitalism (Feola, Reference Feola2020). Feola argues that sustainability transitions research tends to treat capitalism as a landscape phenomenon, and therefore neglects to analyse it. On the one hand, this externalisation is problematic because there are a variety of capitalisms across different territories that might have different bearings on transitions (see also Loewen, Reference Loewen2022). Further, Feoloa argues that the blindness to capitalism makes it difficult to assess to what degree the transitions studied by sustainability transitions scholars are actually sustainable, because with ‘endless accumulation of capital and economic growth, gains in efficiency are likely to be accompanied by rebound effects’ (Feoloa, Reference Feola2020: 243). This line of critique, then, challenges both how we evaluate transitions (e.g. the diffusion rate of electric vehicles vs. the evaluation of social, economic and environmental consequences of a strategy that replaces combustion engines with batteries) and how we understand how transitions come about. It also comes with its own plotline, which emphasises that the central activity in social scientific inquiry is to expose how a capitalist mode of organisation leads to negative environmental, social and economic effects, as opposed to a plot that emphasises niche innovation.
This critique of sustainability transitions research is echoed in work that foregrounds the role of coloniality both in upholding unsustainable societies, and in influencing and shaping the ways that research understands transitions (e.g. Hopkins et al., Reference Hopkins, Kester, Meelen and Schwanen2020; Arora and Stirling, Reference Arora and Stirling2023). Such work, often done under the banner of de-colonialism, emphasises how coloniality as a deep power structure, together with other intersecting structures (e.g. patriarchy), constitutes broad developments such as capitalism and modernity. This critique carries with it the notion that core theories of sustainability transitions research have been developed within the context of western societies, and that they come with distinct packages of understandings that explain, for example the way firms and individuals behave. These packages of generalised knowledge, then, carry with them values that are not neutral or objective but which reflect historical priorities made in those societies. Arora and Stirling (Reference Arora and Stirling2023) discuss such dynamics with respect to the regime concept in the MLP, concluding that ‘the preoccupation with defining dominant rules can mean that plural and marginal voices are side-lined not only in the ‘objects’ of research, but also in subjective processes of analysis’ (11). Hence, this line of epistemological critique emphasises that the challenge is not only to expand on the themes and topics that sustainability transitions research engages with (e.g. by shifting from the study of regimes to the study of capitalism) but also to cultivate a more reflexive style of research that does not merely reflect dominant interests (see also Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff2018). As Hopkins et al. (Reference Hopkins, Kester, Meelen and Schwanen2020) notes, this is particularly important when conducting research in non-western contexts.
Together with exposing and challenging power relations, de-colonial analysis tends to promote ethical evaluations rooted in concerns for justice in transitions. Around sustainability transitions, several strands of research have emerged, which provide a different plotline than that of the MLP, rooted in ideas of justice. Built on the social justice theories of John Rawls, the notion of energy justice proposes a set of principles or tenets by which one can assess the justice implications of transition activities. First is the notion of distributional justice, which concerns the distribution of burdens and benefits of transitions within and across societies, generations, social groups and so on. Second is the procedural justice, which points towards a focus on the ways that decisions are made in transition processes. Third is recognitional justice, which points towards a focus on who are recognised as legitimate stakeholders in such processes (see, e.g. Jenkins et al., Reference Jenkins, McCauley, Heffron, Stephan and Rehner2016). In terms of expansion, then, this style of research proposes a shift from asking how one can diffuse niche technology to asking who benefits, how the transition can be organised and who are recognised as legitimate participants. While there have been conceptual efforts to internalise energy justice concerns to the MLP (Jenkins, Sovacool and McCauley, Reference Jenkins, Sovacool and McCauley2018), crossovers between core transition theories and justice-oriented scholarship remain scarce. As Sareen and Haarstad (Reference Sareen and Haarstad2018) note, the explanation might be found in the fact that exploring such normative issues does not fit the basic ontological and epistemological underpinnings, or in other words, the main plotline of the MLP. This, Sareen and Haarstad note, brings with it a ‘silencing effect’ for concerns that reside outside that basic plot of activities across niche, regime and landscape.
24.4 Concluding Discussion
This chapter has done three things. First, it has recapped the epistemological and ontological building blocks of first-wave transition studies. Second, it has illustrated some of the ways that this way of knowing transitions has been challenged. Third, it has pointed to epistemological approaches that probe transitions through asking different types of questions and highlighting knowledge on aspects beyond innovation as central for understanding transitions. First, the discussion illustrates a basic aspect of all knowledge production. Knowledge is always produced from within an epistemological and ontological position, which serves to highlight certain aspects of reality over others or to describe reality in different ways. Second, the discussion shows that the way scholars engage with sustainability transitions is reflective of empirical developments. The epistemological and ontological expansions within the field follow an empirical development where sustainability transitions have shifted from being a marginal phenomenon to being one that increasingly affects all aspects of society (see, e.g. Markard, Reference Markard2018). This brings with it more adverse consequences and the need to have more and different types of academic conversations about transitions.
The positions discussed in this chapter are far from exhaustive when it comes to potential ontological and epistemological positions. As an example, the contributions discussed in this chapter all share a rejection of ‘the core assumptions of positivism’ (Zolfagharian et al., Reference Zolfagharian, Walrave, Raven and Romme2019: 1277), which is one of the key ontological positions in science broadly (e.g. Hazard et al., Reference Hazard, Cerf, Lamine, Magda and Steyaert2020). Positivism ‘assumes an independent objective world, with deterministic relations between variables’ (McDowall and Geels, Reference McDowall and Geels2017: 46). Analysis within such a perspective tends to mobilise statistical data or formal models in analyses. I will not dive into positivism here, but simply note that it is important for researchers within the transitions community to know about it, especially for researchers involved in interdisciplinary and collaborative work, because such perspectives can also have a silencing effect. Geels et al. (Reference Geels, Berkhout and Van Vuuren2016) note that in integrated assessment models, a central tool in climate science, positivism is assumed, also when assessing societal processes. Such a view, the authors note, means that most social scientific inquiry will not fit, and therefore cannot be easily integrated into such models. In turn, this means that social elements are typically silenced within such frameworks.
Hopkins et al. (Reference Hopkins, Kester, Meelen and Schwanen2020) argue that there should be room for what they call radical theoretical pluralism within sustainability transitions research. This is basically an argument for embracing plotlines beyond those promoted by the core transition frameworks. This, they argue, has benefits and risks for sustainability transitions research as a research field. First, radical theoretical pluralism might result in what they dub a conceptual Esperanto, reducing shared worldviews and problematisations, as well as a loss in the sense of community among sustainability transitions researchers. Externally, it could reduce the recognisability of sustainability transitions research as a field. On the other hand, it can open up new, diverse insights as well as greater reflexivity and debate about black-boxed assumptions. Externally, this might foster the entry of new forms of scholars into transition studies, and the broadening of transition studies repertoire of policy-relevant insights.
I am sympathetic to the plea for epistemological and ontological diversity in sustainability transitions research. The challenges contemporary societies face are a complex and interrelated mix of social, technological and environmental. They cannot be reduced to narratives about introducing new technologies. Understanding, and acting on these issues in a meaningful way, requires engaging with knowledge that transgresses innovation journey plotlines. This can probably not be achieved through the integration of an ever-expanding set of issues in core theories that were designed primarily to grasp innovation journeys. From my perspective, current dynamics pose a strong argument for the study and conceptualisation of transitions from a broad range of disciplines and an open approach to epistemology and ontology. This, however, is not an argument for a retreat to disciplinary boundary lines, because there is a strong need for interaction between scholars and to understand the epistemological and ontological differences that produce very different analyses of related phenomena. Achieving this will make our field more open to the diverse ways that societies transition, what such transitions might entail and the deep societal consequences of such transitions.
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