Multi-actor networks and innovation niches: university training for local Agroecological Dynamization

Abstract

The global environmental and social-economic crises of industrialized agriculture have led to the emergence of agroecology as an alternative approach aiming to increase the ecological, social and economic sustainability of agri-food systems. The 'multi-level perspective' is now a widely used framework to understand and promote the upscaling of local innovation niches, such as agroecology, to broader scales (e.g. regional, national, international), thus reconfiguring the dominant socio-technical regimes. Additionally, emergent 'hybrid forums' can provide a space between niche and regime where niche innovators can become important actors in scaling up and out emergent innovations. In this paper, we examine a university training program (postgraduate diploma in Local Agroecological Dynamization at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), to better understand its role as a 'hybrid forum'. Our analysis focuses especially on how the program, as an example of a hybrid forum, worked to reconfigure practices, concepts, and tools of local development practitioners. We also assess to what

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“…While theories of transformative learning often focus on individual learning processes, our approach was to conceptualise learning as an integral part of the process of social movement building. This resonates strongly with other contributions in this special issue where learning focuses on territorial integration (McCune and Sánchez 2019) or a process of local dynamization (López-García et al 2019). In this context, the four key processes described here could provide a tool to for social movements to strategically and reflexively systematize and strengthen a transformative learning approach.…”

Introduction to the symposium on critical adult education in food movements: learning for transformation in and beyond food movements—the why, where, how and the what next?

“…These programs and people are guided by a commitment to community engaged learning and research, traditions of participatory action research, or more general commitments to the wellbeing of marginalised peoples in and beyond their locale. In this regard, programs like the university training program presented in this issue by López-García et al (2019), provide examples of university anchored programs that can help to promote agroecological transitions in territories.…”

The Contribution of Traditional Agroecological Knowledge as a Digital Commons to Agroecological Transitions: The Case of the CONECT-e Platform

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