EMANCIPATING TRANSFORMATIONS: From controlling ‘the transition’ to culturing plural radical progress

Abstract

A starting point lies in a growing body of science warning that the world is faced with a perfect storm of environmental threats. The resulting nexus of new vulnerabilities interacts with multiple prevailing forms of insecurity and injustice. These scientifically framed threats are currently attracting unprecedentedly intense attention in global governance. The result is unusual high-level willingness to contemplate radical transformation in global practices, institutions and infrastructures for the provision of food, water and energy. If the rhetorics are taken at face value, possibilities are opening up for revolutionary kinds and scales of change. Such is the intensity of these developments that leverage is potentially emerging not just for serious technical, organizational and discursive change, but for even substantive political dislocations. The changes that occur may act in progressive ways, challenging concentrations of privilege and power. Crucial here, is that it often remains rather non-specific and ambiguous what exactly will constitute these widely mooted green transformations or transitions to sustainability.