• Citer

Paradoxes of Transformative Social Innovation:: From Critical Awareness towards Strategies of Inquiry

par Pel, Bonno ;Wittmayer, Julia Maria;Avelino, Flor;Bauler, Thomas
Référence International Social Innovation Research Conference(11: 02-04 September 2019: Glasgow)
Publication Publié, 2019-09-03

Publication dans des actes

• Accès en ligne
• Détails
• Contenu
• Statistiques

Résumé :

Society is transforming through a whirlpool of innovations, including technological innovations and a wide array of social innovations such as new modes of governance or ways of working and living together. As researchers and practitioners are trying to make sense of transformative innovations, they run into various paradoxes: Despite being revolutionized or transformed, society remains all too familiar; or whilst being framed as something new and apparently breaking with the past, many innovations seem attempts to restore history. Various strands of research have documented such paradoxes of transformative innovation including social innovation research, sustainability transitions research, critical social theory, ‘diverse economies’ scholarship, social movement theory, and political sciences. Through these social-theoretical studies but also through work in innovation studies and Science and Technology Studies, these and other paradoxes have become widely acknowledged as an inherent dimension of transformative innovation phenomena. The question that remains is how to move from this critical awareness towards appropriate strategies of inquiry? By focusing on comprehensive strategies of inquiry, this contribution seeks to bridge the divide between rigorous but sterile methodological know-how, and critical-reflexive theorizing lacking methodological concreteness. While advances in this direction have been made, they remain rather dispersed over the various pockets of critical scholarship on transformative innovation phenomena. Inspired by the systematic distinction of theory-building strategies to handle paradoxes of social theory by Poole & van de Ven (1989), we formulate elements of paradox-acknowledging strategies of inquiry (SoI). SoI are comprehensive methodological approaches that integrate considerations of ontology, epistemology and methodology. Drawing on various case study experiences and mobilizing methodological advances from a range of disciplines, we seek to open up a critical methodological debate: How to study these paradoxical phenomena? Why such and not so?