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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociological Theory
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1206050
This article is part of the Research Topic Insights in Sociological Theory: 2022 View all 9 articles

Transition in Action: Toward a Social Theory of the Governance of Transitions

Provisionally accepted
Cristina Zurbriggen Cristina Zurbriggen 1,2*Marco Billi Marco Billi 3,4,5Anahí V. Urquiza Anahí V. Urquiza 3,6Angel Allendes Angel Allendes 5
  • 1 South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS), Maldonado, Uruguay
  • 2 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay
  • 3 Center for Climate and Resilience Research, University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 4 University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 5 Systemic Transdisciplinary Research Hub NEST-r3, Chile, Chile
  • 6 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This article explores how a re-interpretation of the socio-technical, socio-ecological and transition design approaches to transition from the point of view of Niklas Luhmann's general systems theory of society. The need to understand and promote changes that include a technological and ecological dimension has led to different approaches, such as socio-technical or socio-environmental approaches, to incorporate links with society. While these approaches often include sociological insights, they rarely offer a general understanding of how these are embedded into society. We need a new environmental sociology that helps catalyze change processes with a collectively reorganized society, empowering more radically transformative actions to change the current structures and processes that have led us to where we are today. The article offers a cross-sectional look at the socio-ecological and socio-technical systems literature, specifically for what concerns their understanding of the 'systems' in transition and how they can be governed, and re-interpret it from the theoretical lens of the deep sociological knowledge, which refers to the profound understanding of social systems and their dynamics, embedded in Luhmann's theory of social systems. From here, we suggest the second-order coupling for a sociologically grounded understanding of the interactions that comprise socio-ecological and socio-technical systems, heterogeneous and almost self-organizing assemblies of social, technical, and natural elements and processes. At the same time, third-order couplings are analyzed, focused on governance, relationships between operations, and structures mediated by a deliberate attempt to ensure coherence and coordination against the autonomy and heterogeneity of socio-techno-ecological systems. Therefore, this manuscript offers a deeper conceptual and methodological understanding of socio-techno-ecological couplings and systems in the context of sustainability transformation and gives insights into its governance.

    Keywords: Sustainable transition, Luhmann, Socio-technical approach, Socio-ecological approach, co-construction methodologies

    Received: 14 Apr 2023; Accepted: 09 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zurbriggen, Billi, Urquiza and Allendes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Cristina Zurbriggen, South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS), Maldonado, Uruguay

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