The international economics of resources and resource ... - Index of

292 R. Kemp
Research Council (NRC 1999) and Sustainable development: The challenge of
transition edited by Jurgen Schmandt and C.H. Ward (2000) contained contributions
from Frances Cairncross, Herman Daly, Stephen Schneider which came out in 2000.
In all three books the term transition is used as a general term, not as a theoretical
organizer.
In the last 8 years various articles appeared in which the term transition is explored
and used in a more theoretical sense. The new literature consisted of historical studies
looking back at past transitions using a multilevel perspective (Geels 2002, 2005, 2006,
2007), theoretical deliberations about transitions (Geels 2002, 2004; Berkhout et al.
2004; Smith et al. 2005; Geels and Schot 2007; Genus and Cowes 2008), and
deliberations about steering societies towards more sustainable systems of provision
and associated practices (Rotmans et al. 2001; Grin2006; Kemp and Loorbach 2006;
Kemp et al. 2007a, b; Loorbach 2007; Shove and Walker 2007, 2008; Rotmans and
Kemp 2008; Smith and Stirling 2008; Holtz et al. 2008; Foxon et al. 2009). People in
this literature are concerned with transformative change (system innovation), drawing
on a co-evolutionary perspective, with technology and society mutually shaping each
other, instead of one more or less determining the other. 1 This article will do two
things: a) it will describe transition thinking (Section 2) and b) it will describe attempts
by the Dutch government to apply transition thinking in the area of energy (Section 3).
A reflection and tentative evaluation of transition policy is offered in Section 4.
2 Transition thinking in the Netherlands
In this section we give an overview of transition research and thinking in the
Netherlands. The Dutch “transition to sustainability” literature is concerned with
fundamental changes in functional systems of provision and consumption. It involves
contributions from innovation researchers, historians of technology, political scientists
and systems analysts. It is not rooted in one discipline and people tend to be
multidisciplinary (some are even transdisciplinary which means that they are working
with practitioners). Basically there are four traditions: the work on sociotechnical
transitions by Frank Geels and others, the work on transition management by Jan
Rotmans and others, the work on social practices and systems of provision by Gert
Spaargaren and others, and the work on reflexive modernisation by John Grin and
others. People in those traditions are cooperating in the Dutch KSI programme on
system innovation and transition. Each of the traditions will be briefly described.
2.1 The sociotechnical approach
The sociotechnical transition approach is created in Twente by Arip Rip and Johan
Schot, and was used by historians in a big research programme about the history of
technology in the Netherlands. It is based on a co-evolutionary view of technology
and society and a multilevel perspective (Rip and Kemp 1998; Geels 2002, 2004;
Hoogma et al. 2002). The co-evolutionary holds that technology and society
1 Various contributions on the idea of co-evolution steering for sustainable development can be found in
the special issue of The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology.