(Dette seminaret vil bli holdt på engelsk, og teksten er derfor på engelsk i denne presentasjonen.)
Fall has arrived, and it’s time for season II of the CREDS webinar series. This season, we plan to organize seven webinars that covers a broad range of topics related to sustainability and digitalization, and we are excited to feature a mix of invited speakers from INN University and international institutions. Please feel free to spread the word and invite colleagues both near and far.
The first session of the fall will be a workshop “Emotions in Sustainability Transitions” hosted by our invited guest, senior lecturer Kristina Bogner from Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute in the Netherlands.
About the seminars
Professor Johan Kask is responsible for the digital seminar series which starts on 19 January, and runs every second Thursday from 13.00 - 15.00. For the spring semester, 8-10 seminars are planned.
Would you like to participate in the CREDS webinar series in the fall?
Sign up and we will send you an invitation to each individual seminar a week before they are held.
About the workshop
Kristina introduces the workshop as follows: Sustainability transitions are long-term transformative processes that radically change dominant practices, structures and cultures at the level of complex societal systems such as agriculture, healthcare or energy systems (Grin et al., 2010). These transitions are shaped and moderated by changes at different levels, for example, when transformative innovations (e.g., in the form of innovations that foster new ways of doing, thinking and organising our lives) challenge, alter or replace current dominant practices, structures or cultures. Within transitions, we tend to differentiate several phases and think in terms of patterns of emergence and build-up of new, but also breakdown and phase out (Hebinck et al., 2022). This means there is a focus on finding a new direction towards a sustainable future and building up the sustainable, but also on transforming, breaking down and phasing out existing (unjust or unsustainable) practices, structures, and systems (Hebinck et al., 2022; Loorbach et al., 2017).
Sustainability transitions studies so far focus on novelty and meso-level developments, which is influenced by the fact that “people are biased towards novelty in solving problems and systematically overlook subtractive changes (Adams et al. 2021)” (Hebinck et al., 2022). Even though the importance of breakdown and phase-out has been acknowledged in transition processes (Hebinck et al., 2022), a stronger focus on as well as an understanding of how these breakdowns and phase-outs manifest as “transitions in everyday lives” (Köhler et al., 2019) is lacking. Therefore the “intimately personal dimensions of transitions” (Feola & Jaworska, 2019) are undervalued. Being so focused on the ‘new’ (alternative means, technologies or even futures to move towards) might lead us to forget that change processes also require actively letting go of or even unmaking of unsustainable existing practices, structures, and cultures (van Oers et al., 2023) and that this letting goes might come with pain (Bogner et al., forthcoming). One promising lens for researching phase-out and the intimately personal dimensions of transitions are emotions.
The 2021 protests of Polish miners against the decision of the European Court of Justice to fine the Polish state for keeping open the Turow coal mine, as well as the ongoing protests of Dutch farmers since 2019, are vivid examples of the display of strong individual and collective emotions (anger, grief) and coping responses (e.g. resistance or opposition) in transitions-in-the-making – particularly in phase-outs. In this context, Rinscheid and colleagues (2021) point to the political difficulty of phase-outs, as they “intensify preexisting societal inequalities, contribute to right-wing populism, and fuel resistance to sustainability transitions” (p. 29). Governance interventions in phase-outs are strongly related to questions of power, political legitimacy, and justice, as they require actors to abandon well-established habits, routines, rituals, values, structures, and orders (Hebinck et al., 2022). Hence, phase-outs are likely to evoke perceptions of loss, inflicting psychological pain and causing a variety of emotions. Scholars have acknowledged that emotions can be both mobilizing and paralyzing in change or transition contexts (Knipfer & Kump, 2019; Ogunbode et al., 2022), and how people (re)act in transitions may vary depending on the nature and strengths of their emotions (Martiskainen & Sovacool, 2021). Still, emotions and ways to cope with them are largely overlooked in the varieties of transformationist discourses (Feola & Jaworska, 2019). So how can we use an emotional improve our understanding of processes of sensemaking, agency and behaviour in sustainability transitions?
About the seminars
Professor Johan Kask is responsible for the digital seminar series which starts on 19 January, and runs every second Thursday from 13.00 - 15.00. For the spring semester, 8-10 seminars are planned.
Om CREDS digitale seminarrekke
Professor Johan Kask er ansvarlig for den digitale seminarrekken som starter 19. januar, og går annenhver torsdag fra kl 13.00 – 15.00. For vårsemesteret er det planlagt 8-10 seminarer.
Har du lyst å delta på CREDS webinarrekke til våren?
Meld deg på og vi sender deg invitasjon til hvert enkelt seminar en uke før de arrangeres.
Kontaktinformasjon
- E-post
- johan.kask@inn.no
- Telefon
- +47 62 43 01 82