Talk
Social innovation and prefigurative networks: new governance experiences in community-led initiatives
Felipe Quintão (Quintão, F.); Amandine Gameiro (Gameiro, A.);
Event Title
15th International Social Innovation Research Conference
Year (definitive publication)
2023
Language
English
Country
Portugal
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Abstract
The Transition movement is a well-studied social innovation initiative grounded in the economic imaginary of degrowth (Longhurst et al., 2016). Starting in 2016, the movement developed a shared governance model based on sociocracy and holocracy principles aiming to distribute power, resources, and responsibilities transparently across a growing international network. To do so, the knowledge about a set of governance techniques was shared to strengthen an organising culture that reflects a just and sustainable society. This recent governance experience has not been deeply analysed by scholarly work. To better understand how this shared governance experience can contribute to just sustainability transitions, this paper aims to analyse how a just organising culture was developed by the network by looking at their practices and the normative/epistemological references that support these practices. The following guiding questions will help to achieve this objective: 1) What kinds of engagements and resistances to the new governance model were expressed by different network members? 2) Did processes of resistance generate a counter-creative process of organising in specific contexts?; 3) How did this transformation in the governance culture contribute to strengthening or weakening the connections between the local level and the international instances of the network?; 4) What were the consequences of these dynamics regarding power distribution and the ability to practice the network’s just sustainability intentions? Conceptually, we focus on a prefigurative politics approach (Monticelli, 2021; Monticelli et al., 2022), looking at the practices of a prefigurative organising (De Coster & Zanoni, 2022; Parker, 2021; Reinecke, 2018; Schiller-Merkens, 2022; Skoglund & Böhm, 2020) and the democratic innovations that might emerge from the experimentation of systems of ideas, theories, and strategies as part of an epistemic struggle that can produce and transmit knowledge within collective endeavours that challenge traditional forms of understanding and have potential to influence social and political change (della Porta & Pavan, 2017; Icaza & Vázquez, 2013). Data will be provided by documents about governance, in-depth semi-structured interviews with key actors of the Transition Network, National Hubs and local initiatives from at least 10 different European countries, and participant observation in different levels of the network, including the international decision-making instances. For this article, a multi-positional and collaborative ethnographic triangulation (Miyahara & Fukao, 2022) will be used. The authors will combine reflexivity and data collection of field observation-participation and in-depth participant-experience roles within the network’s organisation and relevant coordination circles.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
  • Political Science - Social Sciences
Funding Records
Funding Reference Funding Entity
PTDC/SOC-SOC/2061/2020 Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia