Search results for "Sustainability transition"
showing 10 items of 21 documents
Hypes and the birth of new sustainable market categories – a socio-cultural perspective on the emergence of the meat substitute category in Finland
2022
Hypes can be a significant contributor in the mainstreaming of sustainable products. Former research on hypes has been supplier oriented, and thus little is known of their effect on new market formation. Our paper contributes to this research gap by examining the establishment of the ‘meat substitute’ category in Finland using press articles, retailer interviews and consumer panel data. We show how the emergence and legitimation of the meat substitute category depended heavily on the hype arising around a single product, called Pulled Oats (PO). This hype was anchored in its association with trendy and socio-culturally relevant values and practices. We further discover that the hype had pos…
Socio-cultural lock-ins and the difficulty of sustainability transition in fertilization : response to Struckman
2021
This commentary discusses the socio-cultural context of farming and proposes ways to break related lock-ins in the context of sustainability transition research. To be able to change farming practices and design policies to promote the changes, it is essential to understand what actually needs to change. Do we need to change the ways farmers think, the ways that food markets operate, the requirements of plant varieties or the requirements related to protecting water quality? In a complex situation the needed change emerges from the intertwinement of many different issues, which simultaneously work to create the locked-in situation. A focus on people and their practices provides a good start…
Reilu ruokamurros : Polkuja kestävään ja oikeudenmukaiseen ruokajärjestelmään
2022
Ruokajärjestelmämme kärsivät monista yhteen kietoutuneista kestävyysongelmista. Ongelmia ei korjata yksittäisillä teknologisilla ratkaisuilla, vaan muutoksia tarvitaan läpi koko ruokajärjestelmän. Muutosten laajuuden vuoksi on syytä puhua järjestelmän perustavanlaatuisesta muuttamisesta eli ruokamurroksesta. Tässä julkaisussa tarkastelemme, miten ruokajärjestelmän ilmastopäästöjä voitaisiin vähentää Suomessa siten, että ruokaturva ei vaarannu. Arvioimme ilmastotoimien toteutusta eri murrospoluilla, jotka keskittyvät maankäytön, ruokavalioiden, maatalous- ja ruokateknologioiden muutoksiin. Arvioimme eri murrospolkujen vaikutuksia maatalouteen eri alueilla ja eri väestöryhmien ravitsemukseen.…
Applying transdisciplinary sustainability transitions research in international social work doctoral training
2022
In the last 15 years, transdisciplinary research of sustainability transitions has become an increasingly powerful approach. We discuss it as a perspective for social work discipline, and as a theoretical-conceptual frame of a new international doctoral training and research programme in social work taking place in seven European countries. In our qualitative study, we investigate how the participating social work doctoral students reflect upon transdisciplinarity and understand the interconnectivity between environmental, ecological, and social sustainability transitions—which is widely recognised as a highly complex challenge of sustainability. The data used included the students’ learnin…
Agri-Food Markets towards Sustainable Patterns
2020
In recent decades, the confluence of different global and domestic drivers has led to progressive and unpredictable changes in the functioning and structure of agri-food markets worldwide. Given the unsustainability of the current agri-food production, processing, distribution and consumption patterns, and the inadequate governance of the whole food system, the transition to sustainable agriculture and food systems has become crucial to effectively manage a global agri-food market able in supporting expected population growth and ensuring universal access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for all. Based on a critical review of the existing international literature, the paper seeks to…
The impact of COVID-19 on alternative and local food systems and the potential for the sustainability transition: Insights from 13 countries
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major stress test for the agri-food system. While most research has analysed the impact of the pandemic on mainstream food systems, this article examines how alternative and local food systems (ALFS) in 13 countries responded in the first months of the crisis. Using primary and secondary data and combining the Multi-Level Perspective with social innovation approaches, we highlight the innovations and adaptations that emerged in ALFS, and how these changes have created or supported the sustainability transition in production and consumption systems. In particular, we show how the combination of social and technological innovation, greater citizen involvement,…
Water-smart circular economy – Conceptualisation, transitional policy instruments and stakeholder perception
2022
Highlights • A concept for a water-smart Circular Economy (CE) is introduced. • Elements of a water-smart CE are presented. • Instruments to support the transition to a water-smart CE are analysed. • Drivers for and barriers to the transition to a water-smart CE are identified. The Circular Economy (CE) is a concept that has gained considerable global attention during the past decade amongst private and public sector actors, politicians and policymakers, citizens and media, and scientific communities. Water and water-related ecosystems, despite their vital role in practically all human activities, have been largely missing from conceptualisations and scientific definitions of the CE. Theref…
Introduction to the special issue on just food system transition : Tackling inequalities for sustainability
2023
This special issue builds understanding of just transitions by looking at specific dynamics in food system transitions. The articles in the special issue apply a multi-dimensional understanding of justice, which stress that in addition to distributional matters, also recognition and procedural justice require attention in transitions. The current injustices in the food system emphasize the interrelatedness of these dimensions. The special issue includes eight articles that scrutinize food system transition in various contexts from Finland to Brazil and from farm-level decision-making to the UN food system summit. The papers demonstrate the focality of recognition justice for interpreting co…
Ecosocial Innovations and Their Capacity to Integrate Ecological, Economic and Social Sustainability Transition
2019
The article contributes to sustainability transition research by indicating the significance of transformative grassroots innovations in the context of social work research. We introduce the integrative concept of ecosocial innovation in order to demonstrate how grassroots innovations can successfully combine social, ecological and economic aspects of a sustainability transition. By ecosocial innovations, we refer to social innovations with a strong ecological orientation (e.g., recycling workshops, urban gardening, participatory unemployment projects and new local economies). The data consists of 50 examples of ecosocial innovations in Finland, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the UK. We invest…
Reconfigurations in sustainability transitions : a systematic and critical review
2021
Two streams of literature have become especially prominent in understanding social change toward sustainability within the past decades: the research on socio-technical transitions and applications of social practice theory. The aim of this article is to contribute to efforts to create dialogue between these two approaches. We do this by focusing on the concept of reconfiguration, which has become a much-used, but poorly defined notion in the discussion on sustainability transitions. To understand what is defined as reconfiguration in systems and practices, and how the understanding of reconfiguration in regimes could benefit from insights about reconfiguration in practices, we conducted a …