Holding the Future Together: Towards a Theorisation of the Spaces and Times of Transition

Abstract

Social scientists often use the notion of 'transition' to denote diverse trajectories of change in different types of bodies: from individuals, to communities, to nation-states. Yet little work has theorised how transition might occur across, between or beyond these bodies. The aim of this paper is to sketch out a multiple, synthetic and generative (but by no means universal) theory of transition.Primarily drawing on the British context, we explore and exemplify two contentions. Firstly, that the notion of transition is being increasingly deployed to frame and combine discourses in terms of community development, responses to environmental change and the individual lifecourse.Specifically framed as transition, such discourses are gaining increasing purchase in imagining futures that reconfigure, but do not transform, assumed neoliberal futures. Our second contention is that these discourses and policies must try to 'hold the future together' in one or more senses. They must wrestle with a tension between imminent threats (climate change, economic non-productivity) which weigh heavily on the present and its possible futures, and the precarious act of redirecting those futures in ways that might better hold together diverse social groups, communities and places.

Societal transformation in response to global environmental change: A review of emerging concepts

“…Some strongly delineate transformation from transition (Pelling 2011;Brown et al 2012), while for others (e.g., Griffith et al 2010;De Haan and Rotmans 2011), the former is seen as a building block or particular type of the latter. Similarly, some scholars draw sharp distinctions between the ideas of 'transformation' and 'resilience' (e.g., Pelling 2011), while for others, transformability is a fundamental characteristic of a resilient system (Walker et al 2004;Folke et al 2010).…”

“…Theoretical and methodological debate around transformation is in its infancy (e.g., Shove 2010a, b;Brown et al 2012;Kates et al 2012;O'Brien 2012;Park et al 2012;Wiek et al 2012;Brown et al 2013;Mustelin 2013;O'Brien and Sygna 2013), and to the best of the author's knowledge, no attempt to systematically characterize the concept has been made so far. This paper aims to make some first steps in that direction.…”

Opening and Closing the Future: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Scenario Planning

“…Nevertheless, twenty years later, it appears that its vision or warnings have not been heeded, in keeping with reported difficulty in applying scenario insights to present-day decision making. Instead, the 'green economy' turn of the UNCSD suggests that reality most closely reflects the market forces scenario, with even the term 'transition' now generally used to refer to "futures that reconfigure, but do not transform, assumed neoliberal futures" (Brown et al, 2012(Brown et al, , page 1607. This is despite the fact that, in the great transitions modelling, the market forces scenario leads to barbarisation.…”

The German energy transition as a regime shift

“…[…]. In contrast, transition is more widely used to denote iterative, incremental processes of change, towards uncertain futures" (Brown et al 2012(Brown et al : 1608.…”