Project description
Power relations in transformative social innovation processes
Social innovations (SIs) represent approaches to addressing societal challenges through new methods, perspectives, and organisational structures. To contribute to societal transformation, SIs need to challenge, modify, or replace the prevailing structures and institutions that underlie these challenges. However, as SIs diffuse or expand, they may lose their transformative impact. The ERC-funded POTRANSI project examines how power dynamics shift during transformative social innovation (TSI) processes and how SIs can gain power while preserving their transformative potential. The project will develop a framework to analyse how actors from different institutional backgrounds gain, lose, wield, or are subjected to power within TSI processes. It involves conducting in-depth case studies of four trends in social innovation across various scales and designing a methodology called Critical Power Moments for retrospective analysis.
Objective
Initiatives around the world are addressiInitiatives around the world are addressing societal challenges by experimenting with social innovations (SI), i.e. new ways of doing, thinking and organising. Examples include sharing economy, eco-communities, participatory democracy and many more. Such SIs can contribute to societal transformation if/when they challenge, alter and/or replace dominant structures and institutions that underly the root causes of societal challenges. To have such a transformative impact, SIs must undergo some form of diffusion, scaling or mainstreaming. In this process, they lose (some of) their novelty and risk reproducing or even aggravating the structures/problems that they meant to challenge in the first place, thereby possibly contradicting their original intentions. This project tackles this innovation paradox from a power perspective by studying how power relations are changed and/or reproduced in processes of transformative social innovation (TSI) and asking how/to what extent SIs are/can be mainstreamed and gain power while upholding transformative potential. We develop a novel power framework that synthesises major power contestations in social and political theory to analyse how actors across different institutional logics (state, market, community, non-profit) gain/lose/exercise/undergo power in TSI. We conduct embedded case studies of 4 SI-trends (sharing economy, eco-communities, decentralised energy, and participatory democracy) at multiple scales, including 12 translocal networks and 12 local initiatives in 3 geographical contexts (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal), using interviews, participant observation, document reviews and Transformative Power Arena sessions. We design a Critical Power Moments methodology for retrospective analysis of how power relations are (re)produced/transformed over time, as well as a prospective participatory Transformative Power-tool to identify challenges and strategies for powering TSIs.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.