Detecting Social Innovation agency:Methodological reflections on units of analysis in dispersed transformation processes

Considering that it is important for the social innovation research field to confront its methodological challenges, this contribution addresses the challenge of choosing appropriate units of analysis. In processes of transformative social innovation, the agency is distributed and therefore fundamentally difficult to detect and ascribe. This contribution addresses the challenge to develop methodologies that are consistent with this relational ontology, critically evaluating the three main unit of analysis choices that guided an international comparison of 20 transnational SI networks and their local manifestations. Methodological lessons are drawn on the actors that SI can be ascribed to, on the transnational agency through which it spreads and on the relevant transformation contexts involved. This provides SI research with methodological tools to handle the elusiveness of SI agency, a methodological challenge that becomes particularly pressing in attempts towards systematic comparison of cases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Transitions towards new economies? A transformative social innovation perspective

There are numerous social innovation networks and initiatives worldwide with the ambition to contribute to transformative change towards more sustainable, resilient and just societies. Many of these have a specific vision on the economy and relate to alternative visions of a ‘New Economy’. This paper highlights four prominent strands of new economy thinking in state-of-the-art discussions: degrowth, collaborative economy, solidarity economy, and social entrepreneurship. Taking a perspective of transformative social innovation, the paper draws on case studies of 12 social innovation initiatives to analyse how these relate to new economies and to transitions toward new economic arrangements. The 12 cases are analysed in terms of a) how they relate to narratives of change on new economies, b) how they renew social relations, and c) how their new economy arrangements hold potential to challenge established institutional constellations in the existing economy

TRANSIT Working Paper # 7

A previous version of this paper has been part of TRANSIT Deliverable 3.3 (July 2016), the second prototype of TSI theory.[Abstract] This working paper presents a set of propositions about the agency and dynamics of transformative social innovation (TSI) that have been developed as part of an EU-funded research project entitled “TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory” (TRANSIT; 2014-2017). These TSI propositions represent first steps towards the development of a new theory of TSI, taking the form of proto-explanations of the agency and dynamics of TSI, based on the bringing together of our empirical observations on TSI and the project's theoretical reviews and theoretical framings. Ideally this working paper should be read in conjunction with the working paper entitled “A framework for transformative social innovation” (Haxeltine et al 2016) which presents in skeletal terms the theoretical and conceptual framing of TSI developed in the TRANSIT project. This TSI framework builds on sustainability transition studies, social innovation research, social psychology studies of empowerment and other several other areas of social theory to deliver a bespoke theoretical and conceptual framework that is grounded in a relational ontology and which is being employed as a platform for the development of a middle-range theory of TSI. Next we provide a very brief overview of some key elements of the framework, in particular how we conceptualise social innovation, transformative change, and transformative social innovation. Propositions were developed for each of four relational dimensions implied by the TSI framework with also a brief statement of the topic addressed by each of the twelve propositions.This article is based on research carried out as part of the Transformative Social Innovation Theory (“TRANSIT”) project, which is funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) under grant agreement 61316