29: Navigating diversity, justice, and equity: Normative orientations and innovative solutions in the energy transition (Anne Kantel, Elisabeth Dütschke, Joy Clancy, Philipp Schepelmann)
In a world facing multiple crises, policy and research alike are increasingly facing challenges of complexity and scale in devising innovative solutions to address issues like the ongoing climate crisis, regional conflicts, and migration flows. While these challenges necessitate comprehensive and adaptable approaches - blending social, political, economic, and technological solutions - responses vary significantly, both between countries as well as within-countries and across communities. While some emphasize technology innovation and efficiency as pivotal strategies, believing that advanced technology can provide sustainable solutions, others advocate for sufficiency as a behavioural practice, focusing on mindful consumption and sustainable lifestyles to mitigate the impact of these challenges in a just and equitable way. Discussions on these seemingly contrary approaches are often connected to adverse worldviews and opposing assumption regarding the necessary changes to address challenges. This track focuses on the conference theme of conflicting or complementary normative orientations guiding STI policy and research in the energy transition field. Normative orientations, which include social values, attitudes, and policy practices at both individual and group levels, can be studied across different geographic scales. This track aims to encompass this diversity by inviting contributions from various disciplines within the social sciences, including psychology, political science, regional studies, geography, anthropology, and economics. In particular, the track aims to explore the theme of "Destabilisation and discontinuation of technologies, policies, and systems – Creating space for better worlds" by encouraging early-stage research papers. We strongly welcome both conceptual and empirical contributions. The focus is on fostering innovative and progressive discussions in the context of the energy transition. This can be achieved through the following key areas of exploration:
1. Introduction of Alternative Narratives: We encourage submission seeking to challenge the existing dominant technological and political solutions related to the energy transition.
2. Role of Diversity in Addressing Injustices: Understanding how diverse perspectives and experiences can shape policies is essential for creating more inclusive and equitable solutions. We particularly welcome submissions examining the significance of diversity in policymaking as well as everyday transition practices.
3. Integration of Normative Orientations: Exploring the interaction of normative orientations, such as values, attitudes and practices within socio-technical energy systems is vital to finding context-appropriate solutions. We invite pa-pers seeking to understand how different values and beliefs influence these systems, outline, and discuss potential synergy and conflict, or develop effective strategies for integrating different value orientations within existing or alternative sustainable energy transition policies and practices.
4. Impacts of Societal Fragmentation and Heterogeneity: Analysing how innovation and transition processes emerge or fail in polarized societies. We are interested in the dynamics between cohesion or dispersion and system change.
5. Interdisciplinary and Innovative Methodologies: Given the increasing fragmentation and polarization in societies, researchers increasingly need to adopt creative frameworks that allow for comprehensive exploration of these topics. We invite papers embracing innovative methods to develop a deeper under-standing of the challenges and solutions that can be achieved.
Keywords: energy transition, worldviews, social cleavages, interdisciplinarity, diversity, justice, equity, policy, technology, social innovation