Unpacking sustainabilities in diverse transition contexts: solar photovoltaic and urban mobility experiments in India and Thailand

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the concept of sustainability is not straightforward, but is subject to ongoing ambiguities, uncertainties and contestations. Yet literature on sustainability transitions has so far only engaged in limited ways with the resulting tough questions around what sustainability means, to whom and in which contexts. This paper makes a contribution to this debate by unpacking sustainability in India and Thailand in the context of solar photovoltaic and urban mobility experimentation. Building on a database of sustainability experiments and multicriteria mapping techniques applied in two workshops, the paper concludes that sustainability transition scholarship and associated governance strategies must engage with such questions in at least three important ways. First, there is a need for extreme caution in assuming any objective status for the sustainability of innovations, and for greater reflection on the normative implications of case study choices. Second, sustainability transition scholarship and governance must engage more with the unpacking of uncertainties and diverse possible socio-technical configurations even within (apparently) singular technological fields. Third, sustainability transition scholarship must be more explicit and reflective about the specific geographical contexts within which the sustainability of experimentation is addressed.

Framing the sharing economy: A media analysis of ridesharing platforms in Indonesia and the Philippines

“…What can be regarded as sustainable is of course contextdependent and reflects local values and priorities (Raven et al, 2017), but our findings illustrate that the values associated with the sustainability of ridesharing in Indonesia and the Philippines are greatly overshadowed by concerns of traffic congestion and economic growth. Our identified frames do not explicitly illustrate how to conceive the environmental contribution of ridesharing, but instead limited elements of sustainabily are implicitly evoked when ridesharing is presented as an attempt to solve the inefficiency problem and as offering a more affordable and reliable alternative.…”

Urban experimentation and institutional arrangements

“…Their situatedness has to be empirically and conceptually explored (Karvonen & van Heur, 2014). A range of diversities may exist across perspectives of what experiments and their sustainabilities mean to whom and where (Raven et al, 2017). In fact, some have warned about the potential danger of engaging with an 'experimentation' discoursetransferring a 'context-independent' perspective of rigorous academic method in laboratory contexts to the real-life, place-specific context of urban life full of history and lived experiences (May & Perry, 2016).…”

Towards a novel regime change framework: Studying mobility transitions in public transport regimes in an Indian megacity

“…In the sustainability transitions literature, the term 'transformation' is commonly used, loosely referring to 'wider', 'societal, 'gradual', 'large scale' 'structural change' processes (Sengers et al, 2016;Raven et al, 2017;Wieczorek et al, 2017). Many authors have used the notion of transformation and transitions interchangeably (Hölscher et al, 2017;Patterson et al, 2016).…”