"The struggle of man (sic) against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Milan Kundera On 26th August 2006 the first "Camp for Climate Action" began, in the shadow of Drax power station in Yorkshire, then the biggest single point source of carbon dioxide in Europe. The camp (and the shorter name, "Climate Camp",... Continue Reading →
A couple of weeks ago the academic journal Globalizations published a new article. "Reforming global climate governance in an age of bullshit" by Dr Hayley Stevenson. I'm the social media editor of another academic journal, Environmental Politics, and I tweeted it from @Env_Pol. It got a lot of Twitter love... I asked Dr Stevenson, who... Continue Reading →
People of Colour are gonna be shocked - SHOCKED - to learn that rich white people are sock-puppeting them in an effort to stay rich. Because, you know, it's so unusual for powerful interests to totally disregard the actual long-term health of everyone else, and to claim to be benevolent while continuing to despoil and... Continue Reading →
How to minimise the growth in pressure for major/systemic change? If I were a technocratic boss, keen to insulate myself from calls for changes to the ways we do things - changes which would upset my cognitive equilibrium, changes which might upset people who provide me with party donations and a job once the voters... Continue Reading →
Nowt like having to give a presentation in a job interview (wish me luck) for focusing your reading.... (see last few blog posts). Two super useful empirical-and-conceptual papers worth giving a shout out to. First Johnstone, Phil, Rogge, Karoline S, Kivimaa, Paula, Fratini, Chiara F, Primmer, Eeva and Stirling, Andy (2019) Waves of disruption in clean energy transitions: sociotechnical dimensions of system disruption... Continue Reading →
Super-useful on DECC (RIP) and the "Community Energy" strategy - the costs of getting it. Should be read alongside that paper by Phil Johnstone Andy Stirling and Ben Sovacool about Policy Mixes for Incumbency Honest about risk of academic blindness from using one theory (SNM) and not paying close enough attention to interviewees, and what... Continue Reading →
The title: Building a middle-range theory of Transformative Social Innovation; theoretical pitfalls and methodological responses. The authors: Haxeltine, A., Pel, B., Wittmayer, J., Dumitru, A., Kemp, R., & Avelino, F. The journal: European Public & Social Innovation Review, 2(1), 59-77. The DOI: https://doi.org/10.31637/epsir.17-1.5 The abstract: This paper argues that there is currently a need for... Continue Reading →
This one is another good'un, albeit perhaps not entirely plausible in its 'how to solve the problems identified'... The title: Co-producing urban sustainability transitions knowledge with community, policy and science The authors: Niki Frantzeskakia Ania Rok The journal: Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions Volume 29, December 2018, Pages 47-51 The DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.08.001 The abstract: This... Continue Reading →
Heaps of good stuff - conceptually, methodologically, empirically, in here. Useful for mice who want to bell the cat (though the article itself doesn't suggest a particular way/particular ways). The title: The Acceleration of Urban Sustainability Transitions:A Comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm The authors: Franziska Ehnert, Niki Frantzeskaki , Jake Barnes, Sara... Continue Reading →
The title: Energy democracy as the right to the city: Urban energy struggles in Berlin and London The authors: Soren Becker, James Angel, Matthias Naumann The journal: EPA: Economy and Space The DOI: DOI: 10.1177/0308518X19881164 The abstract: In this paper, we argue that it is generative to link struggles around access to, control over, and... Continue Reading →
