Learning from emancipation: The Port Royal Experiment and transition theory

Over the last decade, transition studies has emerged as an intellectual field aimed at answering the question: How do we get to a more sustainable world? Emerging from a combination of science and technology studies, evolutionary economics, and studies of innovation, transition studies has become a widely used conceptual tool to frame pathways to a more sustainable future. However, its embrace of a systems approach to change, I will argue, transition studies remains unengaged with critical theories of change in sociology, history, and political economy. In addition, geographers have critiqued transition studies for its lack of attention to spatial relationships. Using a particular historical case study of transition in a particular place—the Port Royal “Free Labor†emancipation experiments in the South Carolina Sea Islands during the Civil War—this paper explores both the weaknesses and the strengths of transition studies as a conceptual tool, and how attention to critical and spatial approaches to change can improve our understanding of transitions. In particular, I will show how a political ecology, as a critical and spatial approach, can improve transition studies. I will use a historical case, the Port Royal emancipation experiments, to illustrate how the addition of political ecology to transition studies can improve one’s understanding of sustainable transition pathways.