Giuseppe Feola presents at Leverage Points 2019 conference

06 February 2019. Giuseppe Feola presented the paper: Breaking out! Five propositions on the deliberate unmaking of unsustainable socioecological systems at the Leverage Points 2019 conference in Lüneburg, Germany.

Abstract

Societal sustainability transformations imply a disruption of modern, capitalist socioecological relations that inform destructive modes of interaction with the natural environment. Radical civil society initiatives may hold the potential for such transformations, but it remains unclear if they can generate societal transformation. Innovation and transition theories have usually assumed that the disruption of the dominant order is an automatic impact of innovation, and have therefore largely undertheorized this aspect of transformational change. On the other hand, those scholars who have investigated forms of disruption, have made strong ontological assumptions on how change comes about (e.g. class struggle in Marxist studies), and have failed to uncover the diversity of social change processes demonstrated by existing radical civil society initiatives. This paper discusses the notion of ‘unmaking’ : processes to deliberately ‘make space’ (temporally, spatially, materially, and/or symbolically) for radical alternatives that are incompatible with dominant socioecological relations. The paper mobilizes and originally integrates literature from across resistance and social change studies, and political ecology. It also innovatively connects the individual and the socioecological levels of analysis, which has been urged in societal transformation studies.This paper’s findings are distilled in six propositions, namely unmaking: (i) occurs through combination of emergent, situated processes; (ii) involves both symbolic and material deconstruction; (iii) involves the deconstruction of subjectivities; (iv) is a contradictory personal experience; (v) is often hidden, but can be used strategically for a new activism; (vi) is generative. Implications for sustainability transformations are that notions and practices of radical sustainability need to be deliberately ‘made space’ by unsettling established socioecological relations, rather than be expected to grow within existing systems, exploit supposed windows of opportunity, or await the decay of existing configurations. Deliberate unmaking underscores more proactive, disruptive, political and potentially conflictual transformation pathways than usually postulated in the sustainability transformation literature.