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Holding the Future Together: Towards a Theorisation of the Spaces and Times of Transition

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  • Gavin Brown
  • Peter Kraftl
  • Jenny Pickerill
  • Caroline Upton

Abstract

Social scientists often use the notion of ‘transition’ to denote diverse trajectories of change in different types of bodies: from individuals, to communities, to nation-states. Yet little work has theorised how transition might occur across, between, or beyond these bodies. The aim of this paper is to sketch out a multiple, synthetic, and generative (but by no means universal) theory of transition. Primarily drawing on the British context, we explore and exemplify two contentions. Firstly, that the notion of transition is increasingly being deployed to frame and combine discourses in terms of community development, responses to environmental change, and the individual lifecourse. Specifically framed as ‘transition’, such discourses are gaining increasing purchase in imagining futures that reconfigure, but do not transform, assumed neoliberal futures. Our second contention is that these discourses and policies must try to ‘hold the future together’ in one or more senses. They must wrestle with a tension between imminent threats (climate change, economic nonproductivity) which weigh heavily on the present and its possible futures, and the precarious act of redirecting those futures in ways that might better hold together diverse social groups, communities, and places.

Suggested Citation

  • Gavin Brown & Peter Kraftl & Jenny Pickerill & Caroline Upton, 2012. "Holding the Future Together: Towards a Theorisation of the Spaces and Times of Transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(7), pages 1607-1623, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:7:p:1607-1623
    DOI: 10.1068/a44608
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michael Nye & Lorraine Whitmarsh & Timothy Foxon, 2010. "Sociopsychological Perspectives on the Active Roles of Domestic Actors in Transition to a Lower Carbon Electricity Economy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(3), pages 697-714, March.
    2. Carolyn Hendriks, 2009. "Policy design without democracy? Making democratic sense of transition management," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 42(4), pages 341-368, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Joana Ramanauskaitė, 2021. "The Role of Incumbent Actors in Sustainability Transitions: A Case of LITHUANIA," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-19, November.
    2. Karni Lotan Marcus, 2018. "The Pyramid Fallacy: Self-Organizing Decentralized Open Systems for Sustainable Collective Action," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(2), pages 21582440187, May.
    3. N/A, 2012. "Guest Editorial," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(7), pages 1529-1535, July.
    4. Marc Wolfram & Niki Frantzeskaki, 2016. "Cities and Systemic Change for Sustainability: Prevailing Epistemologies and an Emerging Research Agenda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-18, February.
    5. Strunz, Sebastian, 2013. "The German energy transition as a regime shift," UFZ Discussion Papers 10/2013, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    6. Gerald Taylor Aiken, 2017. "The politics of community: Togetherness, transition and post-politics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(10), pages 2383-2401, October.
    7. Dalal Elarji, 2022. "Minor Spatial Tactics from the Floating University Berlin and Agrocité Paris," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(4), pages 21582440221, December.
    8. Stewart Barr & Justin Pollard, 2017. "Geographies of Transition: Narrating environmental activism in an age of climate change and ‘Peak Oil’," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(1), pages 47-64, January.
    9. Gerald Taylor Aiken, 2019. "Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and containment, policy and action," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(4), pages 732-749, June.
    10. Iulian Barba Lata & Martijn Duineveld, 2019. "A harbour on land: De Ceuvel’s topologies of creative reuse," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(8), pages 1758-1774, November.
    11. Strunz, Sebastian, 2014. "The German energy transition as a regime shift," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 150-158.

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