One transition, many transitions? A corpus-based study of societal sustainability transition discourses in four civil society’s proposals

Feola, G. and Jaworska, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7465-2245 (2019) One transition, many transitions? A corpus-based study of societal sustainability transition discourses in four civil society’s proposals. Sustainability Science, 14 (6). pp. 1643-1656. ISSN 1862-4065 doi: 10.1007/s11625-018-0631-9

Abstract/Summary

When the civil society makes ‘transition’ its label, it cannot be assumed that different civil society actors share compatible varieties of localist or radical transformationists discourses. This study has comparatively analyzed the discourses in four civil society sustainability transition proposals using a corpus-based methodology. We found that the proposals are similar as they identify the economy as an object and an entry point for transition, frame the economy as embedded in the socio–ecological system, ascribe agency to grassroots movements for transitions from the bottom–up. We also found crucial differences among the discourses regarding the role of the State, the degree of reform or radical innovation, the degree of imaginative character of the sustainability vision, the degree of opposition to capitalism. We suggest that insights on how the civil society employs notions of transition with respect to the themes of politics, emotions and place can help advance theorizations and practices of societal sustainability transitions led by the civil society.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/79068
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11625-018-0631-9
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Department of Geography and Environmental Science Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
Uncontrolled Keywords	Sustainability Transitions; Civil Society; Social Movements; Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis; Transition Governance
Publisher	Springer
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