Transformative Social Change Research Articles

Knowledge co‐production praxis in sustainability science: Insights from three contexts

AbstractKnowledge co‐production is needed as never before to support social change in the face of climate, water, biodiversity, and other sustainability crises. Co‐production brings together diverse groups and their ways of knowing to generate new knowledges and practices that reconfigure or generate transformative social changes and that invite reflexivity. Within sustainability sciences, tensions exist between descriptive, analytical framings of co‐production used to interrogate knowledge‐power relations and instrumental or normative framings used to build such relations. The former has been criticised for being overly descriptive and difficult to translate into policy outcomes and the latter for failing to sufficiently interrogate power dynamics and for perpetuating existing inequities. As researchers, how are we to navigate this tension? Co‐production praxis involves reconfiguring knowledge‐power relations for just and transformative social changes. I suggest what is needed is a critical lens on those relations to underpin and guide feasible and action‐oriented processes and outcomes for such changes. In three ways, I present and reflect on co‐production contexts with different temporal, spatial and epistemological characteristics. These contexts are analysing historical co‐production of knowledge of coastal freshwater floodplain Country of the Northern Territory, facilitating the Kunwinjku Seasons calendar and enabling reflexive co‐production praxis with sustainability science researchers at a national science institution. I demonstrate the need within each context to weave analytical, practical, and reflexive work to reconfigure fairer societal outcomes and to pay greater attention to socio‐institutional changes arising from our engaged work.

Pragmatic utopianism in the union cooperative movement: (Dis)Organizing transformative social change

ABSTRACT This paper adopts a critical pragmatist perspective to investigate how the union cooperative movement promotes transformative change. The study describes how 1worker1vote.org network leaders enact “pragmatic utopianism” by articulating an ambitious counter-narrative to extractive capitalism grounded in worker ownership, sustainability, and solidarity. This project expands the concept of pragmatic utopian organizing, describing how the movement mobilizes realistic hope for this idealistic vision by creating “plausibility structures.” First, leaders’ dialectical framing of perceived values-viability tensions rooted in the status quo contributed to innovations that served as reasons to believe. Second, advocates engaged improvisational strategic capacity building to manage doubts resulting from ongoing disorganizing forces. The conclusion discusses the implications for critical theorizing, alternative economy organizing, and transformative change from below.

FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: IMPLEMENTING SOCIAL INNOVATION INITIATIVES FOR TRANSFORMATION

Through the launch of social innovation projects with the potential to bring about revolutionary change, this study explores the critical function of social entrepreneurship in promoting long-term societal progress. This study set out to do one main thing: shed light on how social innovation fits into entrepreneurial endeavours with a social mission in order to attain longterm social development. Quantitative research was carried out in India through an online survey to examine the proposed links. Organisations across India that are involved in social entrepreneurship and social enterprises were surveyed for this data. The link between social entrepreneurship and long-term social progress can be mediated by social innovation, according to the research. Social innovation in social entrepreneurship projects has a major impact on long-term social progress, according to the research. Government agencies, lawmakers, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, educators with an entrepreneurial spirit, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) can all benefit from these discoveries. Policymakers, practitioners, and academics can benefit from this research because it sheds light on the mediating elements and pathways that allow social entrepreneurship to promote transformative social change. This research is important for sustainable development efforts.

The Emotional Labour of College Student Activism: An Interview-Based Study

Abstract Activism inherently involves emotional engagement, often stemming from personal experiences, connections to the issue, or fuelled by emotions like anger, frustration, and a drive for positive social change. This article builds upon Hochschild’s concept of emotional labour, expanding its scope to encompass the emotional dimensions of activism among college students. We delve into the lived experiences of 67 college student activists in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA, uncovering the emotional impetuses driving their activism, the challenges of activist burnout resulting from their emotional labour, and the strategies employed to navigate its emotional toll. By analysing the emotional narratives shared by these student activists, this article seeks to contribute to the understanding of academics and practitioners by constructing a comprehensive framework that illuminates how emotions affect their activism toward effecting transformative social change.

Returning to rebellious roots: What rebellious lawyering can offer progressive law in Australia

Over the last 50 years, the practice of progressive law in Australia has drifted from radical, change-focused origins to a more cautious and limited approach. The theory of rebellious lawyering offers an evolving and principled model that can assist a new generation of Australian lawyers seeking to build the power of grassroots movements for transformative social change. As progressive law in Australia emerges from decades of funding instability and contracting ambition, a return to our rebellious roots – through talking, writing, strategising and building connections between lawyers working with impacted communities – is exactly what is needed.

Aircraft Innovation Trends Enabling Advanced Air Mobility

This study presents a comprehensive exploration of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft within advanced air mobility (AAM), examining the crucial challenges of integrating these innovative technologies into transportation systems. AAM promises transformational social change by enhancing transportation energy efficiency, safety, and operational effectiveness. This research utilizes a methodical approach that juxtaposes a systematic review of patents with an extensive analysis of the academic literature to map the innovation landscape of VTOL technology. This dual analysis reveals a dynamic progression in VTOL advancements, highlighting significant strides in aerodynamic optimization, propulsion technology, and control systems. The novelty of this study lies in its dual-method approach, combining patent analysis with the academic literature to provide a holistic view of VTOL technological evolution. The patent analysis reveals that companies have been most productive on innovations relating to VTOL aircraft transition efficiency, control enhancement, and energy management. The literature review identifies key trends such as the rise in electric propulsion technologies and the integration of AI-driven control mechanisms. These results provide new engineering knowledge that can guide future VTOL development and policy formulation. The original contributions include a detailed mapping of VTOL innovation trends, identification of key technological advancements, and a predictive lens into future directions. These findings offer a valuable resource for aerospace engineers, policymakers, and urban planners. This study contributes a detailed assessment of both theoretical foundations and practical applications, fostering a holistic view of the challenges and innovations shaping the future of AAM. By connecting research and practical development, this study serves as a critical tool for strategic decision making and policy formulation towards advancing the integration of VTOL aircraft into sustainable urban transportation networks.

Transformative incrementalism: Palestinian women’s strategies of resistance and resilience amid gendered insecurity and neoliberal co-optation

Palestinian women have envisioned and enacted resistance and resilience in different ways throughout the long-running Palestinian resistance movement. Strategies have ranged from direct collective actions to the resolute maintenance of everyday life in the face of ongoing occupation, settler-colonialism, displacement and violence. Palestinian women in the occupied West Bank have begun to develop tactics that attempt to negotiate a widespread aversion to ‘illegitimate’ and aid donor-prescribed actions, as well as to the gendered risks with which politically active women must contend. While this approach once encompassed the principle of resilience, recent times have seen the growing rejection of neoliberal resilience narratives in the belief that they normalize and entrench an oppressive status quo. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the West Bank, this article explores how women’s search for legitimate and feasible modes of resistance and resilience has generated tactics characterized by incrementalism, but which form part of a transformative social change strategy. In so doing, it reveals the dynamic ways in which women constantly renegotiate resistance to violence in Palestine. It also demonstrates how development models based upon neoliberal understandings of resilience exacerbate gendered impacts of insecurity while eroding women’s capacities to withstand them.

The oyster revolution: shell middens, shell temper, and settling down in North America’s Chesapeake region

Transformative social change occurred in the Chesapeake region with the intensification of oyster harvesting and the establishment of central places in estuarine settings at the outset of the Middle Woodland period (ca. A.D. 200). Accompanying the pivot toward estuarine living was the spread of shell-tempered ceramics indexing regional social networks from the Delaware Bay to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Survey and excavation data from the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown (NWSY) on the York River trace this process on Virginia’s lower York River. Here, Middle Woodland populations established central places around the lower embayed portions of tidal creeks. Communal shell middens anchoring these central places offer evidence of intensive oyster harvesting and a history of periodic overharvesting, adjustment, and long-term sustainability. We hypothesize that common pool resource management, i.e., collective action and stewardship in the management of the oyster fishery, was an important part of Native societies’ settling down in this region.

Paying for Freedom: Community Payment of Fines as Collective Resistance to Australia’s Criminalisation of Race and Class

Since colonisation, Australia’s criminal apparatus has targeted people on the basis of race and class through changing modes of legal control. This article explores two examples of collective resistance to this. In 2019, Sisters Inside’s FreeHer campaign enlisted community members to pay for the freedom of Aboriginal women imprisoned for non-payment of fines in Western Australia. Simultaneously, in the United States, bail funds enabled people to free those imprisoned due to inability to afford cash bail. In both examples, by paying for the freedom of strangers, the community inserts itself into otherwise opaque criminal processes, challenging the very reason for a person’s incarceration and disrupting the rhetorical divide between the community and the criminalised. Through the framework of demosprudence (ie, collective citizen mobilisations which are democracy-enhancing) and prison abolition, this article demonstrates the capacity for these forms of participatory resistance to contribute to transformative social and legal change.

Building Response-able Abstractions with Gullah/Geechee Nation

In this article, I think with a decade-long, ongoing collaboration with the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank to consider whether and how we can build abstractions in a scholarly way that resource Gullah/Geechee self-determination. Building on Haraway’s concept of “response-ability” I propose the concept of “response-able abstractions” as an approach to scholarly knowledge for transformative social change. I sketch out the concept of “Long Reconstruction” as an example of a response-able abstraction that can bring into relief the sociopolitical relations and space–times of environmental governance in Gullah/Geechee Nation, and as a way of producing scholarly forms of knowledge that resource Gullah/Geechee self-determination.

Social Change, Solidarity, and Mass Agency

AbstractCritics of social injustice argue that the agent of transformative social change will (or should) be a mass agent; namely, an agent that is large, complex, and geographically dispersed. Traditional theories of collective agency emphasize the presence of shared intentions and common knowledge, but mass agents are too large for such cohesion. To make sense of mass agency, I suggest a new approach. On the solidarity theory of mass agency, a mass agent is composed of (a) organizers who intend to fight for social change and (b) supporters who are in solidarity with organizers.

Contributions of School-Based Ecological Transformative Social Change Strategies to the Management of Teenage Pregnancies in Mombasa County

The purpose of this study was to assess the contribution of school-based ecological transformative social change strategies to the management of teenage pregnancy with reference to Mombasa County, Kenya. The study focused on seven public girls' secondary schools in Mombasa County, targeting Form 3 students, principals, guidance and counseling teachers, religious leaders, and government officials. Using a sample size formula, 402 participants were selected, considering attrition. Simple random and purposive sampling were employed. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and Focus Group Discussions, analyzed using SPSS for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data. The findings were presented through tables and figures, drawing conclusions from the results. The study aimed to understand and address factors influencing teenage pregnancy in Mombasa County. The findings show that the issue of teen pregnancy is of great concern in the county of Mombasa. This is evidenced by the high rate of school dropout among girls who got pregnant, early motherhood, transmission of venereal diseases, cases of abortion and death after abortion in some cases. Pearson correlation shows that school-based interventions (r=0.063, p>.05) did not have significant effects on the management of teenage pregnancy. Consequently, there is need to put measures in place aimed at checking teenage pregnancies and their associated consequences such as abortions, girls dropping out of school as well as early marriages among others.

‘Doctors advised to take medicines to remove these thoughts’: the violence and violations in sexual mental health care in community mental health programmes in Kerala

Abstract Community mental health programmes (CMHPs) have proliferated in both governmental and non-governmental sectors in recent times in India. Although CMHPs are mandated to work in close collaboration with the community, the operationalization of community is fraught with exclusionary tendencies, particularly concerning non-cis-heteronormative sexual subjects. Mental health professionals trained in the mainstream western biopsychiatric paradigm are largely silent on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual identity discourses as they institute pathological and reductive conceptualization about sexualities, psychosocial disabilities and resultant sufferings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out at two non-governmental and a governmental CMHP in Kerala, south India, I illustrate the lack of a human rights–based approach to sex and sexual orientation and gender identity, due to which pressing concerns of sexual life are mis/overdiagnosed as mental ‘disorders’ to be treated within a biomedical framework. The lack of an intersectional approach fails the marginalized sexual subjects to exert their agency, develop critical consciousness and recognize sexuality as a political issue—all vital for transformative social change. The consequence is a dehumanized mental health care system that fails to ‘archive feelings’ that are pivotal in making invisibilized worlds observable to tell ‘unwelcome truths’ that induce psychic pain. Collaborative alliances among other marginalised sections like Queer, Dalit, tribal and Crip (disability) groups are vital in resisting intra-individual prescriptions by increasingly commercializing mental health practice in a country beset by a host of social problems including poverty, discrimination and rising inequalities. It is crucial to understand systems of power (imbalance) that operate as major (social) determinants of (sexual) mental health.

Influence of Community-Based Ecological Interventions on the Management of Teenage Pregnancy in Mombasa County

The purpose of this study was to assess the contribution of ecological transformative social change strategies to the management of teenage pregnancy with reference to Mombasa County, Kenya. To this end, the study examined the influences of family-based interventions, school-based interventions, community-based interventions, faith-based interventions, and government measures on teenage pregnancy in the county. The findings show that the issue of teen pregnancy is of great concern in the county of Mombasa. This is evidenced by the high rate of school dropout among girls who got pregnant, early motherhood, transmission of venereal diseases, cases of abortion, and death after abortion in some cases. Community-based ecological interventions were found to be correlated with the management of teenage pregnancy (P<0.05) according to Pearson correlation. As a result, there is a need to put measures in place aimed at checking teenage pregnancies and their associated consequences, such as abortions, girls dropping out of school, and early marriages, among others. As a result, the contribution of civil society organizations, role models, and other targeted community-based interventions should be strengthened to advocate for changes that could lead to a reduction in teenage pregnancy among girls.

Exploring University Students’ Adoption of ChatGPT Using the Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Sentiment Analysis With Gender Dimension

This study explores the adoption and societal implications of an emerging technology such as Chat Generative Pre‐Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) in higher education students. By utilizing a mixed‐method framework, this research combines Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory with sentiment analysis, offering an innovative methodological approach for examining technology adoption in higher educational settings. It explores five attributes—relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, observability, and trialability—shaping students’ behavioral intentions toward ChatGPT. Sentiment analysis offers qualitative depth, revealing emotional and perceptual aspects, and introduces a gender‐based perspective. The results suggest that five innovation attributes significantly impact the adoption rates and perceptions of ChatGPT, indicating its potential for transformative social change within the educational sector. Gen Zs viewed ChatGPT as innovative, compatible, and user‐friendly, enabling the independent pursuit of educational goals. Consequently, the benefits provided by ChatGPT in education motivate students to use the tool. Gender differences were observed in the prioritization of innovation attributes, with male students favoring compatibility, ease of use, and observability, while female students emphasized ease of use, compatibility, relative advantage, and trialability. The findings have implications for understanding how technological innovations such as ChatGPT could be strategically diffused across different societal segments, especially in the academic context where ethical considerations such as academic integrity are paramount. This study underscores the need for a demographic‐sensitive, user‐centric design in generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Political-economic transformation and the reproduction of climate change vulnerability of a high-income city

System transformation is important for low-lying coastal cities to adapt to natural disasters related to climate change, but not all forms of transformation enable adaptation. An important question is how an enduring system change undermines the enabling conditions for reducing vulnerability. This paper addresses the relationship between society-wide transformation and vulnerability reduction. A case study of Macao is used to explain structural vulnerabilities to storm surges in the context of a historic social change process marked by the end of colonial rule. The post-colonial regime seeks political legitimacy from extraordinary economic performance. The capitalist growth model has created new and resilient urban spaces, but reproduced the vulnerabilities of the older ones. The transformation has resulted in a perverse social contract and increased dependence on a shadow regime, undermining the social agency for change. We deconstruct the perceived legitimacy of transformation and examine the social and political consequences of performance legitimization. A society-wide transformation that seeks legitimacy from an unsustainable practice is a recipe for maladaptation. Socio-political realities mediate the effects of transformative social change. Our conclusions highlight the importance of analyzing transformation as an enduring system change. This requires framing the disruptive processes and impacts of transformation as a determinant and explicitly accounting for their socio-temporal dimensions in conceptualizing the non-linear relationship between transformation and vulnerability reduction.

SDG commentary: services from institutions that offer fair and sustainable living for all humans

PurposeThe purpose of this commentary is to present a critically constructive examination of the contribution of service research to the development of services from institutions that offer fair and sustainable living for all humans.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw upon critical thinking and critical social theory to problematise the neoliberal agenda (e.g. marketisation and privatisation) that shapes the service ecosystems within which the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and service research relating to SDG11 – sustainable cities and communities – and SDG16 – peace, justice and strong institutions – are often based. The authors critically review extant literature aimed at these goals and present constructive pathways for transformative social change to foster fair and sustainable living for all.FindingsThe authors find that the United Nations institutions, the SDGs and the service ecosystems that shape the research and practice addressing SDG11 and SDG16 are often grounded in neoliberal capitalist ideology that may inhibit transformative change. While service research has made some relevant and important contributions to support the development of services from institutions that offer fair and sustainable living, there is a need to consider alternative assumptions upon which service research and service design can be based to fully realise such transformative goals.Originality/valueThis commentary encourages service research scholars to engage with critically constructive perspectives that harness critique for transformative change.

Networked feminism in a digital age—mobilizing vulnerability and reconfiguring feminist politics in digital activism

AbstractIn what ways can we understand the productive tensions and complexities of digital feminist activism? This paper explores the increase of networked feminism, which focuses attention on digital activism and its relation to transformative social change. It suggests that we need a better understanding of how digital feminist activism might be changing the shape of transnational feminist resistance and praxis, and how feminist politics are created and enacted in digitally mediated environments. These result in new forms of feminist consciousness built on affective and embodied engagements. The paper explores the complex and ambivalent role of affective politics and embodied ethics to explore conditions of vulnerability. Using illustrative, global cases to show the nuances across digital activism, the paper contributes to understanding the complexities and differential effects of online environments, the mediation of feminist politics through digital knowledge cultures and the possibilities, challenges, and productive tensions that lie in the ever‐increasing use of digital environments.

Accountability in the environmental crisis: From microsocial practices to moral orders

AbstractThe global environmental crisis is the result of a complex web of causation and distributed agency, where not even the most powerful individual actors can be considered responsible nor remedy the situation alone. This has prompted multiple calls across societies for transformative social change. What role can accountability play in this context? Starting in the theoretical traditions of microsociology and pragmatic sociology, this article elaborates the role of accountability in social interactions. To provide an account that justifies an action or inaction is here understood as a process of social ordering, where accounts are assessed as acceptable only after they have been tested against higher normative principles. Microsocial practices are, in this way, linked to macrosocial order. The following section turns to the global environmental crisis, showing that the crisis raises normative as well as epistemic challenges. The complexity of the socio‐environmental situation makes it hard to know what should be done and opens normative orders and epistemic claims to contestation. This situation provides increased opportunities for strategic maneuvering to justify actions as well as opportunities to question social practices and social order. The article concludes by discussing the role of accountability in climate change. Accountability can serve as a mechanism to attach issues to the current environmental crisis and re‐embed decisions and practice in an environmental moral order. As part of a broader palette of instruments, rules and norms, accountability has an important function to play in transforming society towards sustainability.

Great transformations: Social revolutions erupted during energy transitions around the world, 1500–2013

Over the past 500 years, the transition to fossil fuels has been accompanied by sociopolitical upheaval, revolution, and counterrevolution in countries around the world. Previous research found that social revolutions occurred during energy transitions in a limited sample of 38 countries. This research expanded the investigation to examine the relationship between shifts in the energy base of societies and transformative sociopolitical change in 66 countries since 1500, and to address new questions about these transitions. We found that two-thirds of all 52 identified revolutions occurred during the initial phase of the transition to fossil energy use (between 0.7 and 7.2 GJ/cap/year), a “critical energy transition phase” that lasted 42 years on average. This “critical energy transition phase” can be understood as an arena where social and economic adversaries met to contest past and future relations, a contest that resulted in turmoil, violence, and transformative social change. We also assess the impact of revolutions and counterrevolutions on the speed of energy transitions, finding that revolutions might accelerate transitions and repressions might slow them down. We also find that, in our sample, colonial rule slowed the pace of energy transitions for colonized subjects. These findings are significant because similar sociopolitical developments may be associated with the current energy transition in response to catastrophic climate change, a product of the previous transition.