Green clashes: cultural dynamics of scales in sustainability transitions in European peripheries

Abstract

A multi-level perspective (MLP) in studying sustainability transitions has proved its relevance in explaining the institutionalisation of sustainability ideas. However, MLP does not offer tools to grasp the dynamics of culture between knowledge regimes that occur in different loci in global-local scales. The article introduces a framework for cultural analysis by creating a crossover conceptual approach to culture in different spatial scales combining elements of MLP logic with Thomas Eriksen’s idea of the ‘clashes of scales’. Scalar dynamics related to sustainability transitions are explored through the centre–periphery patterns by reanalysing empirical data from the authors’ previous projects, which examine local responses to meet the ideas or assignments given by upscale actors. The article shows that culture is a factor that does not stick to one level of development but crosscuts through spatial scales, thus providing transitional corridors. Through various representations, culture anchors floating sustainability to a certain mentality of rule and constitutes an implicit element of the whole transition process, providing a challenge for the traditional grammar of pro-environmental diffusion. In this process, peripheral states of mind tend to mediate and integrate different ideological motivations into a local cultural reaction to sustainability transition.