24 Sustainabilty Transition

Feola Abstract

Sustainability transition research (STR) has failed to engage in any significant analyses or cri- tiques of capitalism. This article argues that capitalism is not a ‘landscape’ factor, but rather permeates the workings of socio-technical systems in ways that must be recognised both for elaborating rigorous accounts of transition trajectories and for enhancing the capacity of STR to support future societal sustainability transitions. This argument is developed specifically in re- lation to the three challenges of STR: the analysis of the actual sustainability of sustainability transitions, the application of transition theory to cases in the Global South, and the move to- wards a forward-looking STR. The article identifies three main implications of this argument with respect to interdisciplinarity, the validity of current theoretical frameworks, and the practice of STR. Ultimately, the article invites STR scholars to be more openly reflexive not only about possible theoretical biases, but also regarding their own roles in society.

Feola Memo

As a scientific field with roots in innovation, science and technology studies, and evolutionary economics, STR has essentially taken capitalism for granted. In carving out its space at the ‘meso-level’, STR has generally viewed capitalism at the landscape level in the much used multi-level perspective (MLP) framework (Geels, 2002). This strategy might help to distinguish STR from other approaches to studying societal transitions and transformations (Feola, 2015). Indeed, STR has achieved great depth of understanding of transitions from this perspective, thus complementing the understandings generated by other approaches to studying non-linear societal change (e.g., Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans, 2009; Hölscher et al., 2018). However, I contend that STR omits capitalism at its own peril. Capitalism is more than an additional ‘landscape’ factor, and its core elements are not neutral givens, but rather defining elements of capitalist socio-technical systems (Kostakis et al., 2016; Wilhite, 2016). Capitalism permeates the workings and logics of socio-technical systems in ways that are critical both in the elaboration of rigorous accounts of transition trajectories and for the capacity of STR to support future societal sustainability transitions. To take capitalism as an implicit given in STR implies the impossibility of a serious analytical examination of its economic, political, social and cultural conditions and dynamics, its diversity, its influence on sustainability transitions in different contexts, and the possibility that sustainability transitions might involve potentially fundamental changes in the capitalist system. Blindness to capitalism also risks a return to an idealised image of the capitalist economy, which will constrain, rather than support STR.

Capitalism Definition Capitalism is defined in this paper as an historically specific form of social and economic organisation, which is characterised economically by the private property of the means of production, the freedom to pursue economic gains through production and the market, the transformation of labour power into a commodity, the owners’ control of the means of production and the destination of value generated through production, and the generalisation of production and exchange of commodities.

Capitalism Dynamics The most fundamental dynamics of capitalism relate to the imperative of capital accumulation. Strategies for capital accumulation include the externalization of costs, the lowering of labour costs, and the search for surplus value through the penetration of capitalist relations (commodification) in biophysical and human bodily and emotional life spheres. Privatization and commodification are often accompanied by the enclosure of biophysical and other resources in processes of ac- cumulation by dispossession, which may entail economic and extra-economic means, including violence. The process of accumulation is characterized by the concentration of capital and by exclusionary social relations and rising levels of inequality. Other strategies for capital accumulation are the geographical expansion of the market economy and the displacement of capital over space and time. Capitalism is ‘constituted’ by space-time arrangements in which ‘time and space work together in ways particular to the capitalist mode of producing, distributing, selling, consuming and disposing of commodities’

Capitalism Architecture Capitalism also entails a ‘more comprehensive cultural, social and political architecture’. In other words, accumulation depends not only on economic structures and strategies, but on extra-economic ones. Culturally, capitalism permeates and shapes individual and collective identities and relations beyond the economic sphere, and includes the principles of competition, individualisation, rationalisation, commodification of human and non-human beings, and the imaginary of progress based on endless accumulation. Politically, capitalism rests on state structures that participate in its reproduction both in periods of stability and crisis. The state in a capitalist system is a ‘strategic field’; it reflects and mediates capitalist power relations through regulation, discourses, and material resources; it often undertakes unprofitable activities that capital does not undertake, and it obtains revenues from taxation thus ultimately depending on continuous economic growth for its stability.

Feola (2021) Capitalism in sustainability transitions research: Time for a critical turn? (pdf)